Doug, Put Your Gun Away

Before I get to the point, let me first say that I am removing City Council member Ellen F. Robertson from my short/long list of possible candidates to succeed Mayor Doug. Ms. Robertson is quoted in this week’s Style Weekly as saying, ““We shouldn’t be hiring criminals to run this city,” and then made it clear that she was referring to Richmond Chief Administrative Officer Sheila Hill-Christian. (http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16447)
Whether she misunderstood the question posed by Style Weekly reporter Chris Dovi, as she claims, or was given four opportunities to change her statement, as indicated by Style editor Jason Roop, Ms. Robertson’s failure to consider the consequence of her words indicates that she is not ready to captain our fair city.

This gets me to the words of another “potential” candidate in November’s mayoral election. As quoted in the Times-Dispatch this morning, Mayor Doug used these words to describe what he intends to do to defend Ms. Hill-Christian:

"Will we do something? You better bet it. I don't believe in pulling out a pistol to tell you I'm going to shoot you. I believe differently. I believe in shooting you if that's going to have to be the case. I don't have to pull it out and show it to you. So whatever we will do, we will do it."

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-06-0191.html

Is this “one-gun-per-month” Doug that is talking about “shooting you” as a metaphor for a lawsuit? Doesn’t His Mayorship know that the Times-Dispatch is G rated and that there may be impressionable children reading his statement? There are far too many Richmonders dying of gunshot wounds for our CEO to use gun language loosely. When the mayor of our fair city states publicly that he believes in shooting people rather than merely threatening to do so, he has crossed the line. Mr. Wilder has demonstrated that he too fails to consider the consequences of his words and, like Ms. Robertson, is not the person we want leading our city.