A Candid Interview with Republican Councilman Sam Talarico (Part 1 of 2)

About a week ago I sat down for an interview with Republican Sam Talarico, Jr. Sam's been on the Fort Wayne city council for 2 terms and has chosen not to seek re-election this time around. He has served this city well even if we don't always agree on the issues. He and Dr Hayhurst are going to be tough to replace.

I was originally only going to post parts of the interview followed by my comments. However, I think the interview was entertaining enough that readers will want to read the entire thing w/o sifting through my commentary. Therefore, I've decided to post the entire interview, unedited, but split into two parts. In Part1 Sam disses Angry White Boy, discusses how he got involved with local politics, and talks about consolidation among other things.

In Part2 he discusses Democratic Chair Kevin Knuth, Mayor Richard and the upcoming mayoral race - Matt Kelty in particular. So be sure to come back tomorrow for that. I've taken a couple of choice parts from Part1 and posted them below but I would encourage everyone to read the whole thing (Download Part1 Here):

Talarico: On the federal and state level I certainly do not agree with either party all the time and I’m definitely more of a moderate but I tend to agree with Republicans more than Democrats so I think I’m in the right spot.

Although when I see some of the stuff from Angry White Boy, and stuff like that, it makes me wonder. Any party that has a home for him is kind of alarming.

Pruitt: Now let me put you on the spot a little bit while we’re talking about candidates. You seem to be fairly close to Democratic candidate Tim Pape – do you support his re-election?

Talarico: Yea, I would imagine that I will contribute to Tim’s campaign. Tim has been an outstanding councilmember and I think he’s been a part of this new generation of people that have pushed things forward. I certainly like his opponent a lot, nice guy, I’ll probably get in trouble for doing it but I will probably contribute to Tim’s campaign.