We’re used to it, to be honest.
A trip to the grocery store isn’t complete without being panhandled. Some of the solicitors are more traditional, claiming to be homeless veterans in failing health simply needing a few dollars for a meal. Others get more creative, admitting they’ll spend your ducats on booze and women in the hope their honesty will loosen your change purse.
Then there are the artists, playing saxophone on the corner while asking not for a handout, but for tips.
Whatever the approach, we’re used to being solicited in the public space. Which made it all the more jarring when approached in the parking lot at the local green grocer with a quick, “wanna sign a petition for term limits for the mayor?”
Here was a novel approach. The downtrodden have gotten truly creative this summer.
But no, it wasn’t a panhandling approach. The solicitor had a clipboard replete with petition in one hand, a pen in the other. He thrust both toward us with a smile.
Wait, aren’t there already term limits for the mayor? Oh yes, our solicitor admitted, but this petition will extend them from two terms to three.
There it was in plain English.
Ambition lost
Have you seen Mayor Wade lately?
It seems he has largely disappeared from public view. Literally. As in he’s lost a lot of weight. He looks healthier, but also older than his years.
Gone are his grand plans for Toledo as expressed in those giddy days after his election in twenty seventeen. His waistline has shrunk, but so, it seems, has his ambition for the City.
Remember universal pre-K? We do, but apparently Wade doesn’t. Because almost seven years on it still doesn’t exist in Toledo.
See, spending one hundred and eighty million dollars in free federal money is easy work. Negotiating competing interests to do big stuff is much harder. It seems Wade prefers the easy.
It begs the question. What would Wade have accomplished without that one-time infusion of federal cash?
Whatever it is, he needs to do it fast, because he’s up against term limits at the end of next year.
Wade says, hold my beer.
Short term
It’s common for elected officials in Toledo to return to the private sector after being term limited. Lifers like Rob Ludeman and George Sarantou are the exceptions that prove the rule.
The problem is, Wade has been an elected official his entire adult life. He doesn’t have a private sector career to return to.
His first attempt to extend his mayoral term went down in flames when voters rejected his bloated charter revision ballot initiative. It’s likely that extending his term was the poison pill that tanked the proposal.
Not one to take a hint, here he goes again. Another year, another brazen attempt to extend his term.
Hey Wade, we have news for you. Term limits are popular. So is the current charter that limits you to two terms. Get over it.
Solicitors might trick folks into signing the petition to get your proposal on the ballot by saying it’s about “term limits for the mayor.” Voters won’t be fooled at the ballot box.
Oh, and one more thing, Wade.
Get a job.
Otherwise instead of hiring folks to solicit for signatures in the parking lot, you might be there yourself, asking for a handout.
