Comment of the Day

Mike Sylvester has a post about the incredulous fate of Memorial Stadium. In the comments, councilman Sam Talarico amusingly responded to John B Kalb's assertion that Mayor Richard would attempt to name the Harrison Square city park after himself:

John B. Kalb, I have heard you say some ridiculous things about H. Square, but this may be the best yet. Yes, John, its going to be Graham Richard park. That is what is behind this. Mayor Richard has an insatiable thirst to have a park named after him. I also think they should name the left field wall the "Kalb Monster" in honor of your wall like opposition to change downtown.

Is there still time to work the Kalb Monster into the design?

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

In Part 2 of this interview Sam gives us his thoughts on Democratic chair Kevin Knuth, Mayor Richard and the current mayoral campaign. He also pulls no punches when discussing the Kelty campaign and their campaign finance reports. Once again I've provided a few choice tidbits but I think it's all worth reading (Download Part2 here):

Pruitt: is there really a divide within the party establishment if you will, or those at party headquarters? Is there a really a divide there or is that overblown.

Talarico: I’m not sure divide is that right word because divide implies that there’s half the room in favor of Matt Kelty. I know that there’s just a lot of Republicans that feel strongly that he’s just not the person for the mayoral job...

I like Matt personally, he is a nice guy. I would support him for most legislative type positions, but being the mayor of the 2nd largest city in Indiana is something very different. It’s not a legislative position where you’re one of a hundred; you’re the CEO of this huge entity. And I’m just not convinced he has the background for it. He’s done things in his campaign that make me feel he’s not the person for it...

All I can say is given the transaction as it played out, I can not imagine as a candidate not having come to the conclusion that I needed to report who gave me that loan. Notwithstanding what the form said or anything else, I just can’t imagine me going to my treasurer and saying I just got a loan from Jeff Pruitt for $150,000 but it’s in my account so I’m gonna show it from me. I mean my treasurer would’ve been like “what the heck are you thinking?”

Ouch. When a respected Republican councilman has this little confidence in the party's mayoral candidate - well I think people better start listening...

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.