Who’s going to win tonight?

Ok, ½ hour to go so time to make my guess. First for BVSD – who cares. No matter who wins, all of the candidates I saw will continue the BVSD tradition of being totally ineffective and we'll see no improvement in our schools. The children of the well off will do fine and the children of the poor will be screwed and stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Now on to the council. We have a clear race between the left, and the far far far far left. What happens in Boulder is most years the majority of voters ignore the race and let the looney left run the city. But when they take the city too far off into la-la land, like when Crossroads was empty, then the grown-ups pay attention and vote in a couple of people that will bring the city back to just far left.

So the question in front of us is – did the FAR effort cause enough people who normally don't vote to take the time to vote in this election. My guess is no. We'll see some vote, especially from Martian Acres. But not enough to control the election. So here's my guess as to the results:

1. Suzy Ageton – incumbent and appreciated by most in Boulder.
2. Matt Applebaum – incumbent and most everyone's 4^th choice – which is as good as 1^st in this election.
3. K.C. Becker – quality candidate with tons of connections into politically active groups in the community. Having some people upset at FAR and some who normally don't vote move her up to 3^rd.
4. Macon Cowles – The fact that some normally disinterested voters are paying attention will push him down to 4^th – but that's still a 4 year term.
5. Tim Plass – Quality candidate and darling of the don't build anything in Boulder crowd. Business as usual will get him in.
6. Barry Siff – He seems to have resonated the best with voters out of the remaining embrace the future candidates.
7. Jyotsna Raj – Having the backing of the freeze Boulder in Amber crowd will not make up for zero experience with the city.
8. George Karakehian – George never closed the sale with people. He'll be an interesting data point that you can't buy the election.
9. Fenno Hoffman – He was the 5^th vote for a lot of the people that wanted to see Boulder evolve.
10. Valerie Mitchell – The poor could use an advocate on the council. They never have one though because they don't vote.
11. Kevin Hotaling – Kevin also never closed the sale. And students just don't vote in these elections.
12. Rob Smoke – Rob gets the vote of everyone who wants to send a Fuck You to the City government. It's a surprisingly small number.
13. Seth Brigham – Seth has no interest group that supports him and that means very few votes.