Last night I had the, for lack of a better way to phrase it, interesting experience of going to my first Wharf Street Debating Club Bun Feed, a Belleville tradition dating back to... Anyway, it goes back a long way - about a century.
This is supposed to be, more than an all-candidates meeting, a fun event and roast of the candidates for this years city elections. As can be seen in the
Intelligencer article, much fun was had by most, at any rate, with heckles, cat calls and wisecracks flying back and forth through the home of the Wharf Street rival, the Belleville Club, where the event was held.
My turn came to speak, and I laid an egg - and was roundly heckled for it. Tried to be funny and failed. I have never been the 'class clown', and demonstrated why last night. It takes a deft touch to be a true humourist. There weren't any in the room last night, but veteran speakers such as Mary-Anne Sills, George Zegouras and Ross MacDougall did a pretty good job, as did the Masters of Ceremonies from the WSDC, whose names I forget - and will continue to forget until I get over having the bell rung on me.
We all had a drink or two in us (not too much for me - I didn't want to make an ass of myself while drunk, so instead I made a fool of myself sober.
The last speakers of the night were the mayoralty candidates, and the last of these was Mitch Panciuk.
Now, Mitch is a guy I have generally liked, insofar as I have gotten to know him over the last month and a half. He owns the Belleville Boston Pizza, a great family restaurant as well as a great place to watch a game. He's an Edmonton Oilers fan, generally a good sign.
But for the most part, he has been partly tone deaf when it comes to the Belleville electorate.
He has heard the grumbling and complaining of our ever growing municipal taxes. This is a story that likely goes back to the incorporation of Belleville as a police village back in 1836, and surely predates Belleville becoming a city in 1878. So to assume that the taxation concerns heard these days represent the fuel to drive his campaign to victory is a dubious proposition at best. Victory would need more.
Early on, when pressed for answers on what he stood for , or what his plans and priorities would be if elected(by me and others), his response was that his priorities would be whatever the people of Belleville thought they should be. That was it. I was a little surprised, as he was essentially asking the electorate for a blank cheque beyond cancelling capital investments.
Then, on Tuesday, at the mayoralty debate hosted by Loyalist College, he was asked twice, by the president and then the vice president of the Belleville Professional Fire Fighters Association, if he had read the Master Fire Plan. His response was that he hadn't as he wanted to approach fire issues with an 'open mind'. This is a document which, amongst other things, will affect the costs of taxation and fire insurance throughout the city, and his reason for not reading it is nonsensical. If he just hasn't had time to read it, admit it. A mayor has to hit the ground running, and either knowing the fire plan or listening to the guys trying to implement it is a necessity.
And then he wonders at the BPFFA supporting Neil Ellis?
But those were just the vagaries of the campaign trail, smaller details in the painting of what will be the 2010 Belleville Election.
And last night Mitch Panciuk urinated in the paint can.
His was the last podium appearance, and I can only assume he wanted to finish the night with a bang. Which he did. In the midst of a derogatory commentary aimed at Ellis (and a shot at the Intelligencer)(very much an appropriate part of the evening, as I understand it - correct me if I'm wrong, please), he made reference to a crude 'nickname' allegedly from Ellis' high school years, and suggested, basically, that the Mayor enjoyed self-pleasuring, and was doing so currently, and as such the rest of us at the event ought not shake Ellis' hand.
I have worked in the political arena for many elections, federal and provincial, since 1985, and this is, far and away the most disgusting comment I have ever witnessed.
I am, as most people know, a conservative (voted Reform in '93, '97, Canadian Alliance in 2000, and Conservative since at the federal level), with a libertarian streak a mile wide. And I want to make something clear - as a conservative, I deplore the unjustifiable, vulgar, reprehensible - you get the idea - comments made by Mitch Panciuk last night. They were disgusting, have no place in an election, and have taken Belleville politics to a level I don't remember seeing before.
Mitch Panciuk owes Neil Ellis a public apology. Otherwise, I don't see how he can be seen as a credible candidate to represent our city as mayor.
Note: Going home last night, I asked my co-campaign chair, and good buddy, Kevin MacPhee if he could remember another candidate for public office committing political hari-kari in quite the same way. He thought of one - Joe Biden kicking off his run for the Democratic presidential nomination by commenting on how clean and well spoken Barak Obama was - for a young black man. Fortunately for Biden, Obama didn't hold a grudge.
