After three years of blogging against Mayor Reed, we’re here with two very different choices for Mayor of Harrisburg.

One has been President of City Council for the past few years and the other is a Legislative Director of the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

One rents an apartment in the upper floors of a high rise near Midtown and the other owns a home in the 3000 block of 2nd Street.

One runs a non-profit and apparently exists on a salary of about $20k/year and the other earns over six figures.

One has run a loud, boisterous, in-your-face and very well funded campaign and the other has been relatively quietly plugging along on the streets.

And for the first time in this writers life, I’ve been volunteering at a poll this morning handing out literature and attempting to sway those few undecided voters to elect Mindlin.

In the big scheme of things, I’m a relative newcomer to Harrisburg politics. I only started paying attention when a good friend brought me to my first City Council meeting sometime in 2005. Back in the Vera White days. And it was at that meeting that I wondered to myself how a person like that; so seemingly clueless and uneducated, so out of touch and delusional could ever possibly get elected to anything, much less president of City Council.

But then I got to know the players. Clare Jones. Andy Giorgione. Randy King. Judge Kleinfelter. Roxbury. Waters. Patty Kim, Gloria Martin Roberts and Susan Wilson. James Ellison. Bill Cluck. Darnell Williams. Gerald Kohn. Linda Thompson, Dan Miller and even Steve Ketterer.

This local election is historic for SO many reasons. And bloggers and independent media can deservedly take credit for enlightening the public to a lot of the murky underlinings of our local government that undoubtedly influenced the election results over the past couple of elections. So for that, I’ll never complain about Steve Reed being out of office.

But what I will make note of today is how incredibly uneducated many voters appear to be. How many voters I heard saying that they’re voting for Linda simply because they don’t KNOW Nevin.

Apparently, their decisions weren’t swayed by the massive amount of negative stories that have recently surfaced about Thompson. No, these voters who I spoke with didn’t care that she took a $5,000, zero-interest loan from her non-profit and refused to explain what it was used for and how she got such wonderful terms on it. No, these voters didn’t care about the fact that Linda Thompson- a “champion” for home ownership for the urban-dwellers is actually a renter, herself. No, these voters didn’t care that Thompson was recently sued for $1,400 by Discover Card for defaulting on a credit card. And no, apparently these voters didn’t care that, through nearly every debate and interview over the past three months, Linda Thompson did not clearly answer a single question asked of her.

You see, the way I view an election like this is that I want to know EVERYTHING about the person who is running. The person who is running is telling me that they are the best person to represent me as a constituent and they will have my best interests in mind when making decisions about what to do with city finances, public safety, economic development and quality of life in the city where I reside.

I want to know about what you’ve been doing for the past twenty years.

I want to know whether you own or rent.

I want to know what your credit score is.

I want to know who your campaign contributors are.

I want to know who you are beholden to in the event that you win.

And on many accounts, I’m simply not happy with what I’ve heard about Linda Thompson.

Nevin Mindlin, on the other hand, has never sued anyone after spilling gas on himself or getting into a fender bender. Nevin Mindlin appears to have AAA credit and a good grasp of how the financial system in the city works. Nevin Mindlin has verifiable employment and tax records. Nevin Mindlin, after speaking with him on many occasions now, seems to be a very calm, balanced and humble individual.

THAT’S who I want running this city for the next four years.

Whomever wins this election is going to have some pretty big shoes to fill. Not necessarily in a good way, but Steve Reed has twenty eight years worth of connections, alliances, contacts and contracts already in place. Most of his problems were able to be solved with a single phone call.

Mindlin OR Thompson will be starting nearly from scratch. Which is certainly a good thing, but it comes down to savvy. Are we better off with someone going in, aggressively swinging a battle axe and taking no prisoners? Or will it be better to have a calm, reasonable and more gentle hand who will facilitate the changeover smoothly? Will our basic services like police, snow removal and staffing of city offices suffer during the transition?

All of these are relevant questions and concerns.

And all of the campaigning, muckraking, dirt-digging and mud-slinging is over now. It’s in the voters hands.

But what REALLY wins an election? Sadly, it’s looking like the most qualified candidate will, again, lose this race. And if there’s one thing I learned from the people hanging out at the polling station at 15th and Market today (South Allison Hill) is that they’re not voting for Thompson because she’s the best candidate. They’re not voting for Thompson’s non-existent plans for doing the things she says that she wants to do. They’re not voting for Thompson as the best candidate to oversee a budget which barely buoys above hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. No, they’re voting for Thompson mostly because they know who she is. Her face is recognizable city-wide.

I heard it ALL morning. “How am I supposed to vote for Mindlin when I don’t even know who he is?”.

That’s the thing about our election process- those who are campaigning do the best they can with the resources available to get their name into our collective consciousness. Thompson out-fund raised Mindlin exponentially and was able to buy more propaganda and pay more campaign workers than Mindlin.

And it’s unfortunate. Unfortunate in this day and age that the most qualified candidate nearly never wins the election.

Most people aren’t voting for a policy or morals or philosophies of a candidate. They’re voting for the most well known name.

And in the City of Harrisburg, there hasn’t been more of a prominent name in the press over the past several years than Linda Thompson.

And that’s not a good thing.