Sure, John. The explanation is that your statements are inaccurate, as Pete’s comment shows. No Green Party connection exists. As I wrote for the annarbor.com voter’s guide [link], “I’m an independent candidate because I prefer to build and serve a community rather than build and serve a political party.”

I can’t help but weigh in on the partisan/non-partisan debate just a bit. Yes, I did run in 2006 as a Green, and got around 16% of the vote. I worked hard in that race, and got a lot of support. The votes didn’t reflect that, in part because Michigan still has straight-ticket voting. In ‘important’ races, i.e., when state and federal offices are at stake, many people just vote straight-ticket. I think that does a disservice to the political process, in that voters don’t have to know anything about a candidate and his/her position, just affilitation – and in many cases not even the candidate’s name. It’s one-stop political shopping. If people were required to fill in a box for every race, yes, voting would take longer, but it would also be potentially much more thoughtful, and there would be a lot more cross-party voting – i.e., the best candidate has the best chance.

In the past, Steve has indicated he was once a member of the Huron Valley Greens. He has never stated why he left the group.

Could you explain this, Steve.

Mr. Bean’s campaign manager, Pete Schermerhorn, is a current Huron Valley Greens member and previously ran for City Council as a Green Party nominee.

I believe that a Green Party designation on the ballot would have been benficial for Steve this November.

All third parties on the Michigan ballot are expected to make record showings this November, including the Green Party.

I shall be supporting the Green Party nominee in the 15th Congressional District race. Dr. Aimee Smith is a far better advocate of the environment than Dingell.

I saw Rick Snyder’s ad the other day where he mentions a) that MI has lost 50% of all the jobs lost in the last 5 years and b) his master plan to solve the problem is to eliminate the business tax. It’s pretty obvious that most of those jobs were lost for reasons having nothing to do with the business tax, so how is eliminating going to create that many jobs?

- I don’t tend to use the word “feel” when I mean “think”, or “needed” when I mean “appropriate”.

- My pointing out the inconsistency with regard to RFP for Huron Hills wasn’t a suggestion that we should do it for Leslie, too, but simply a questioning of the thinking on that process.

- My “more police on bicycles” comment was a question, not a suggestion. I pose a lot of questions as a means of exploring options.

@4: The placeholder graphic on my web site (borrowed from the Chronicle by a well-meaning volunteer) has been replaced. The site wasn’t meant to go public until that had been done, but reporters wanted a link, and I didn’t have a chance to replace it. As for “issues to run on”, the Media Coverage page has links to articles (including this one) that include my comments on a number of issues. I’ll be adding more detailed statements and my responses to various survey questions submitted by various groups/sites as I find time.

@5: Mark, you seem interested in improving democracy. I don’t see how your prognostications contribute to that. And an independent candidacy is “quixotic”, but a Republican, Libertarian, or Green candidacy wouldn’t be?

@23:Thanks for the fine example of “political reason”, David.

Dave, since no one else has taken a shot at it yet, I will. Is that the welcome sign on Dexter Rd.?

Steve Bean’s comments would be more credible if he were actively campaigning for mayor.

From a Chronicle Old Media Watch item from this summer [link]:

“The Boston Globe reports on a UM study that found ‘when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs.’ The article quotes the study’s lead researcher, UM political scientist Brendan Nyhan: ‘The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong.’”

“…voters would be deprived of a vital piece of information about candidates’ political identities and views.”

Vital? Redundant, at best.

There are only a few people who are only interested in “local” politics without also being interested in state and/or national politics. It is no surprise that most people on the Arbor City Council is out actively campaigning for state/national candidates right now. They are campaigning for Democrats.

There are also very few folks in politics who are truly “independent”. Most people who identify themselves as independents are merely disgruntled partisans of one party of the other, or are folks who don’t actively participate in politics at all.

So local politics is, in a way, an extension of state/national politics. This fact should be no surprise.

If, contrary to all political reason, Ann Arbor should turn to “nonpartisan” elections, all that would happen is that voters would be deprived of a vital piece of information about candidates’ political identities and views.

No wonder that the most prominent advocates of nonpartisan elections are Republicans who want to hide their true identities. People who are Republicans locally have deliberately identified themselves with the most retrograde and bizarre views in our nation. That is their choice (even though Republicans are anti-choice).

They can run, but they can’t hide.