Latest in a series of posts on the Gadfly Forum 
Lookie here!
Now there are, Gadfly thinks, 5 candidates for mayor in Allentown. More than us.
And the topic of this forum is important but narrow: “to learn where candidates running for Allentown mayor stand on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community.”
Are we to have no online face-to-face forums for all candidates in Bethlehem?
The “print” candidates Forums that Gadfly is running here (tune in at noon to see if Council candidates respond to a prompt on development) are good, he says with a smile, but how can primary season be complete without one or more events that bring all the candidates together “live”?
Candidates Reynolds and Callahan, and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Crampsie Smith are “known quantities.”
For good or for ill, Reynolds and Callahan seem like they have been around forever. Many people may have already categorized them.
But, granted he has “history” in Bethlehem government, how many people really know Dana Grubb as a potential mayor? He’s been out of the “public eye.”
In the Council cadre, Gadfly’s sense is that candidates Wilhelm and Kwiatek, though perhaps not active or all that active politically, have a potential base of followers. But how about Leon? Gadfly hopes not to offend if he says that his sense is that she is the most “unknown quantity.” Yet he has talked with her, and there is a lot to her.
It looks like many people will never have the opportunity to hear the voices of Grubb, Wilhelm, Kwiatek, and Leon.
That’s not right.
How can we have a complete campaign season without bringing all the candidates together to strut their stuff in front of us?
Where are the organizations we should depend on to put on these events?
And, for proper time allotment, we should have 2 separate events, right?
Is there a feeling that the election is not important? Or that the conclusion is foregone? Tsk, tsk.
Is Gadfly going to have to do this in between naps at his headquarters in Senior Day Care?
This shy man who was labeled “Edward Scholarhands” by his IT Department.
It won’t be pretty.
