Endorsements for Mayor Smith.................................................................

The weekend edition of The Coastland Times features an endorsement advertisement for Mayor Smiths's candidacy.   The endorsees are:

Brian McDonald - Incumbent Council Member running for re-election.

Jim Phizenmayer - Current Council Member.

Kevin Stroud - Current Council Member.

Jack Shea - Dare County Commisioner

Col. Bill Beadling - Founder and current President of  the Outer Banks Gun Club

My purpose in this post is to explore and specualte on the motivation of the these endorsees.  So let's take a look:

Brian - Originally ran for council at the behest of  Don Smith.  Brian is an intelligent, independent thinker, with a number of excellent ideas.  But, as many have observed, he will often question or actually speak against some of Mayor Smith's initiatives, only to then oddly vote for them.

Jim and Kevin - During the last election in which they gained their council seats, Mayor Smith encouraged, endorsed, and campaigned  door to door fo them.  You can find material on this election in my archive among my original posts.

The Mayor has a reputation of  "running a tight ship:", and the three above are his crew.  So their endorsement of his re-election is no surprise.

Jack Shea - This is a surpise to me.  I really can't see Mr. Shea approving of a number of situations the Mayor has created, so I can only speculate that this is some form of partisan or ideological consideration (although I believe Don is regitered as an Independent).  As I believe the majority of sentiment in this election transcends party lines, this might be a "mis-step" of an endorsement.

Col. Bll Beadling - Without Col. Beadling and a few others, there would not be a county range and of course no Outer Banks Gun Club, of which I am a charter member.  I am both surprised and disappointed that he would choose to enter this fray.  He is not a Southern Shores resident, I know of no issue regarding the make up of our council that would involve the OBGC and I don't think he is aware of the miriad issues that the citizens of Southern Shores have faced.due to the current administration.  Apparently, both Don and Town Manager Charlie Read (former Secretary of the OBGC board?) are club members.  I have to wonder whether Col. Beadling would have made this endorsement if I had not withdrawn from this race. He would have had to make a choice of one member over another.

Something that I have to point out as ironic is, that in his original campaign for Mayor, one of  the planks in Don's platform was his opposition to "the good old boy" system he said existed at the time.  During my four year term on council I was not approached by nor saw any signs of the existence of the "good old boys".  Excluding Col. Beadling, what does the above list look like?