The new Salisbury ‘Dream Team’ – Day and Ireton

It probably wasn’t a big surprise based on the primary results and the perception that this election was a tag team match between Jake Day and Jim Ireton vs. Debbie Campbell and Joe Albero. But the preliminary results are in, and it’s all but official that the Day/Ireton side won handily: Day picked up just under 72% of the vote in routing two-term incumbent Debbie Campbell while Jim Ireton managed just 68% of the vote in defeating Joe Albero and winning a second term.

Campbell was the only one of the three incumbents to lose, as District 1 Council member Shanie Shields won a third term with just 48% of the vote – a quirk in the City Charter allowed both challengers to advance through the primary. Cynthia Polk received 3 more votes than April Jackson did this time.

So where will Salisbury go now? Later this month it appears we will find that the 3-2 majorities which always seemed to stymie Ireton’s key initiatives will now become 3-2 votes in favor, with Day joining incumbents Shields and Laura Mitchell to provide a pro-Ireton majority. And I’d love to get a hold of Debbie Campbell’s green-highlighted copy of the Day plan just to see how many of these items indeed cost city taxpayers.

But another question may be the fate of River’s Edge, which was touted by Campbell as one of her achievements. While the money from the state is probably still going to be there, will the plans have to change to accommodate the retail aspect Day wants to bring to the city? (It’s still pretty sad that taxpayers all around the state are going to be paying a subsidy for a artisan community, but that’s a subject for another time.)

Still, given the primary results none of these results were completely unexpected. Both Day and Shields actually improved their percentages from the primary – which was not surprising to me because people like to back a winner. Day gained 723 votes from the primary while Campbell picked up only 292. Over 71 percent of the new votes went to Day, reflective of the final margin and perhaps a result of the (somewhat undeserved) negative reputation Campbell acquired over the years.

Of course, it’s too early to tell what the future will hold for the losers. While April Jackson was a first-time candidate in District 1, Cynthia Polk has now lost twice. And while Debbie Campbell can look back at eight years where she went from the reformer darling against the “Dream Team” in 2005 to being portrayed as the Wicked Witch of the West on one local blog, Joe Albero literally relocated himself to an apartment inside one of the properties he owns a year ago to establish city residency after living outside Delmar, Delaware for several years. Is he through with Salisbury?

For all the talk about attracting businesses in this campaign, it should be noted that Jim Ireton is a financial supporter of the man who has all but single-handedly turned Maryland into one of the most hostile states toward business in the country, Martin O’Malley. His redistributionist policy is one of the greatest handicaps to making Salisbury into a jewel, and we can’t do anything to change that until next year.

And so another election season comes to an end in Salisbury, but the work for those of us who believe in liberty begins now. It’s time to find a conservative slate of candidates willing to stop the subsidies, cut the red tape, and truly place the “open for business” sign in Salisbury – hopefully working in conjunction with a like-minded state government in Annapolis ready and willing to roll back the excesses of the O’Malley era. This city can thrive, but it needs the right people in charge to do it.

4 thoughts on “The new Salisbury ‘Dream Team’ – Day and Ireton”

  1. If you’re upset about the outcome, go look in the bathroom mirror, Mr. GOP central committee member. The best you guys could come up with was a sociopathic high school drop out. So go write some more artfully crafted, big worded blah-blah-blah about it. As a matter of fact, go write a whole nuther book about it that no one will buy.

  2. I have stated the same in other forums. But I would sit at our meetings and we would discuss potential candidates for the Salisbury race and keep hearing, “oh, so-and-so doesn’t want to run because of (fill in excuse.)” We didn’t actively recruit Joe, though – he just sort of fell in our lap.

    As for my book, did you buy your copy? I’m not sure a Gothic horror novel about the Salisbury election could sell, not that I could write one anyway. But I’m glad you like my artfully-crafted big words.

  3. Oh good gracious.

    First, the Salisbury elections are technically “non-partisan”, so neither Central Committee really has a say anyway. No one runs as “anything”. You can’t blame this on the GOP.

    Second, the problems that plague Salisbury are not and will never be something the city government can solve. They are not sovereign. Under charter government, they are implementers of local government policy driven largely by state prerogative. The economy sucks in Wicomico County because Annapolis– with the acquiescence of home-grown Norm Conway — has made it so.

    No manufacturing business that has to ship its products off the shore will relocate to Salisbury, with miles to go and massive gas and transportation taxes. No business that is dependent on large acreage of impervious surface is going to relocate when they have to pay massive stormwater management fees. No business is going to relocate employees AND THEIR FAMILIES to a county with a school system that is remarkable in its ability to continue a trend of failing surpassed only by the NY Mets and the Cleveland Browns.

    What can the mayor or the council do about any of these things?

    Nothing.

    That is why the people everyone would want to run, won’t. Truly successful people do not become successful by accepting responsibility for impossible tasks and hoping they can pull it out.

    Only wannabees do that.

    And that is what city government is.

    Wannabees.

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