Can you hear me now?
by Douglas Heizer
About the election
Congratulations to Anthony Majhess for the huge victory. His win was not only against a fierce challenger, Frank Chapman, but was against all of the people, known as “Establishment Boca,” that supported and endorsed his opponent.
Like I commented at the beginning of this race, with some people, including some council members, this public support of Chapman by the council members, even if it resulted in victory, would not be good for the city. The loss shows that the citizens are not happy with them. The Majhess win should put council members on their toes.
The citizens said that they don’t have enough credibility in the council to endorse a candidate, and the council’s action made the citizens angry because they got involved in the electoral process.
My next prediction. The actual City Council members will need to work very hard to regain the citizens’ credibility or they will have their re-election bids jeopardized.
The biggest winner, the citizens of Boca , now have enough “cash value” and will deposit everything in the bank of hope with Anthony Majhess as their faithful guarantor. Majhess, with his second victory against the “Establishment Boca,” come with pockets full of supporters and with the possibilities of soaring even height at the next election.
It’s not only about the election
The second biggest buzz in the city is about The Boca Raton Tribune. Everywhere you go, you are going to hear comments thatThe Boca Raton Tribune’s coverage of this race was fundamental to help people to express their feelings and decide their vote.
Our questionnaire was a real open debate that was available not only for a small group of people that went to those debates around the city, but was available for more than 20,000-plus online readers and printed in another 20,000 newspapers distributed free in the city.
The article written by Al Zucaro, expressing his personal point of view of this race, made people know they are not alone with their feelings and gave them courage to express themselves and also gave them confidence to decide who to vote for. We received hundreds of emails, online comments and voice mails from citizens proud of their community newspaper. Al Zucaro will continue his duty as “The Citizens Voice” in our next issues and his column that used to be at the business section will be moved for municipal section.
If someone wrongly doubted the penetration and the level of credibility of our newspaper, I am pretty sure that this was enough to make them rethink the power of the free community press. We are here to be the best partner of the city.
All about a clean campaign
Two months ago, I met Anthony Majhess for the first time. He came to my office to introduce himself and asked if we couldpost his campaign press releases. Also he talked about buying 8 full page ads to use for his campaign. He guaranteed me at that time that he would never send us any defamatory ads and he would make a clean campaign. He did what he promised.
At the same week I called Frank Chapman and offer him the same deal. He gave me Lorie’s numbers and said to call her. I called. I called both again two weeks late. No answer. I met Frank at the Chamber debate and again I approached him and offered him a chance to use their press releases. He thanked me and introduced me to Lorie. Later, she called me and bought two pages. I went to visit him at his campaign office and he handed me a full dossier against Majhess. I asked him if he knew about the web site someone published about him. He said yes and gave me his side of the history. I told him that the paper would not publish his dossier against Majhess and neither the information on the web site against him. I am an advocate of clean campaigning, especially because I don’t believe that the sinless and mistake less people don’t exist
We are very confident that we gave the same opportunity for both candidates.
About advertising and credibility
The Chapman campaign did use a lot of TV commercials that were very expensive and broadcast to a lot of homes. He sent his message, he choose the TV media to send his message. Majhess’s option was to send his message using the community newspaper. Both candidates have flood people with mail advertising with a very high cost and with yard signs, t-shirts and other campaigns souvenirs. Their expenses are a public record and we will have a special article about this later this month.
Guess what: The community paper won! The Boca Raton Tribune was more effective than all the TV commercials combined. Who do you think will deliver your business or institutional message to our local citizens with better cost benefit?
Congratulations, Boca Raton for this beautiful democracy festival! I sincerely hope that Chapman continues to be involved with the city issues and maybe run for office in the future.
For the citizens and business owners, support your local newspaper. And for all: I hope you can hear me now!
