Pounding The Pavement ~ Frank Wolland Is Worth The Work And The Walk

Monkette was getting pooped from all that walking in the hot sun. Distributing campaign literature for Bonnie Schwartzbaum, Frank Wolland,and chatting with people seemed like and endless task. Those blocks seem pretty long too when you're less than 18 inches tall. She sat down for breather.

"Hey Al! You know that Kenny Rogers song The Gambler?" "Yes" I replied, "What about it?"

"Well, you know how the lyrics go: You gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em and know when to get up and walk away..."

"Yes, I do" I replied. "What are you leading up to?"

Monkette took another swig of water and continued "Well, just about everybody in North Miami knows that I'm the political consultant mapping out strategy for a couple of the candidates, and they know that I planned out Mayor Kevin Burns' winning campaign two years ago. Of course two years ago everybody kinda thought it was only a joke, but this time around I've had candidates vying for my services! Of course I'm a toy monkey and my head is stuffed with cotton. That makes it rather difficult to comprehend humans' thought processes, you know, how do humans think?"

"OK, what's the problem? What's your concern here?"

She paused for a minute, took another long swig of water, and we resumed our talk. "It seems to me that if I was human and a candidate, and my opponent was using a toy monkey as his or her political advisor, mapping strategy, writing speeches, and so forth, then the voters would realize the actual candidate of record was really just a stand-in for the toy monkey, right? So losing to that candidate is in reality losing the race to a toy monkey!"

I muttered something along the lines of "I guess you could look at it that way! Why?"

"Well, if that's true, then we have a few candidates running who should know when it's time to fold 'em and when it's time to get up and walk away. Fold and walk! Simple! They gotta know that they don't stand a chance in hell of pulling off a win at this point. Crap Al, if they can't figure that much out, how do they expect to function as a mayor or work on the council? The only honorable thing for them to do would be to save the city the expense of the run-off and just withdraw from the race. They could actually make themselves look good to the voters by doing that. Save face! Political capital in the bank for a run in the future!"

I couldn't argue with that! We felt a bit more refreshed and resumed our campaigning.