Greg Ballard 2.0
When my political counterpart Amos Brown of Radio One can’t yell racism and instead has to argue on the merits, you know something is going on. Amos, like me and several hundred other people were at Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard’s re-election announcement Saturday morning at the Indiana War Memorial. Ballard was introduced by Reginald Jones, a prominent African-American businessman who owns several McDonald’s franchises here in the city. And he was surrounded by an ethnically and economically diverse crowd of supporters.
The mayor highlighted his accomplishments which he hoped would show voters he deserves a second term. Those achievements included the following…
- Creating and retaining more than 35,000 jobs in the last three years, as well as attracting more jobs to Indianapolis this year than in the past 10 years.
- Increasing city spending with minority-owned businesses from $15 million in 2007 to more than $57 million this year and with women-owned business, going from $2 million in 2007 to more than $20 million.
- Reducing income taxes by $7 million.
- Working to achieve a “AAA” bond rating for the city.
- Using good financial management to save the city more than $1 billion in costs regarding the Wishard project and re-engineering the city’s agreement with the federal government regarding combined sewer overflow.
- Statistics showing overall violent crime in Indianapolis is down 10% and last year’s murder rate was the lowest in 15 years.
The Mayor also pointed to Citizens Gas deal which provided nearly $425 million for infrastructure improvements, as well as the repair of city pools which had been leaking millions of gallons of water and costing taxpayers thousands of dollars.
Despite those achievements the Mayor acknowledged challenges, including continuing reforms with the police department as well as finding ways to keep the libraries open with running up deficits or tax increases.
The Mayor also acknowledged something he’s needed to do for a while, which is tell the story of Indianapolis’ successes. It’s no big secret I agree with most of the Mayor’s agenda, I have always thought they could have done a better job of getting that message out to the voters and residents. Now they have that chance.
No one doubts for a moment that next year’s Mayoral race won’t be competitive, to say the least. Democrats have a clear voting edge in Marion County. The Mayor will be challenged on his handling of public safety as well things like the Pacers deal. However I think Ballard is in a much better position today than six months ago. The Mayor’s fundraising machine is dusting off the mothballs. By my count he raised more than $300,000 at a fundraiser Friday night. Second in the back and forth with the Fraternal Order of Police, I think the FOP gave the Mayor the upper ground when it voted to pay for the legal defense for David Bisard who is accused of killing one motorist and injuring two others earlier this year. And I also think the Mayor’s political arm understands that they cannot take for granted that Republicans will show up at the polls, nor will they automatically write off the votes of African-Americans, Hispanics, the LGBT community or anyone else for that matter. It also doesn’t hurt when the Marion County Democratic County Chairman is quoted as saying “unemployment, not job growth, should have been Ballard’s focus…”
I’m frankly looking forward to see what 2011 brings here in Indianapolis. After Saturday morning, it just got a lot more interesting.
