Shawn Coleman, not going to happen

Thielin over at his blog has Shawn listed as a slam dunk for election. Not going to happen. Sean will finish in the 9th to 11th range.

1) Shawn has no money, therefore no campaign. Many people will not get their information from the internet, or by reading candidates pieces in the paper, but from their campaigns. This means literature, newspaper adds, and neighborhood buzz. If you have money and a campaign, people talk about your campaign and urge friends to vote for you. This has to happen on a reasonably large scale. Sierra Club/ Plan B have a hundred plus volunteers working on the ten candidates they endorsed, this creates buzz. Sean's campaign just does not have enough buzz to create a critical mass of interest to get people to even look at voting for him.

2) No important endorsements. Sure FI-DOS and the Camera endorsed him, but this just isn't enough, because these endorsements do not come with campaigns. A FI-DOS endorsement means a letter to their email list. So what? Many of the people on the FI-DOS list are going to vote, for example, Crystal anyway, for Christ sake, her f**^&ing dog has bitten half of Boulder. There really is no dog issue this campaign, everybody knows that council is not going to touch the issue after the VMP fiasco. So the FI-DOS endorsement doesn't get him that big block of votes you need. The important endorsements are the ones that come with buzz, (not Buzz), and therefore, FI-DOS just doesn't create it.

The Camera endorsement is worth 2,000-3,000 votes. Look at the toke-a-Polk-Cowles split from the last election, it shows the value of a Camera endorsement. If Coleman had the BOC endorsement, it could put him closer to the magic 8,000 to 9,000 votes a candidate will need in order to win seventh place.

3) He is a conservative. Thielin thinks that if a candidate can think for himself/herself, they are qualified. Well Dick Cheney can think for himself, but what he thinks we ain't interested in. Shawn's views just are not in line with Boulder.

4) Thielin's has Crystal finishing behind him, not going to happen. Crystal will get more than twice the total votes of Shawn, even if they both win. And contrary to Thielin's opinion, Crystal seems to go to every candidate forum, has money, too many yardsigns, and is the benefit of the Sierra Club/Plan B literature drop, which will drop 40,000 pieces of paper directly into your recycling in the next weeks.