Exploration time!

Good news, everyone! The "exuberant" Ted DeSalvatore has formed an exploratory committee to look into running for mayor!

"It's a question of making sure, that's all," DeSalvatore said Friday.

"There seems to be an incredible outpouring to have me run for mayor, from the community," he said. "The exploratory committee has the task at hand of making sure that what we're hearing is in fact the truth, and not just the figment of the imagination of a number of people."

Well, I can answer that even without a committee.

There's a subset of people in Fitchburg who think Ted DeSalvatore is the cat's pajamas. A small subset. They're the ones with the good imaginations. They're also noisy. There's another subset that thinks he's an embarrassment to the city. Also a small subset. Less noisy, but more sane. Then there's a whole lot of people out there who have no idea who he is or what he thinks. It's those people he'd have to win over to become mayor.

Of course, that's easier said than done. Every time he opens his mouth something stupid comes out, and once he's officially a mayoral candidate more people are going to start to pay attention. At that point they'll realize he'd make a much better cartoon character than he would a mayor. A well-informed voting public is not Ted's friend.

But city residents have urged him to run, saying that "crime is out of control" and "the city has absolutely lost its friendliness," the councilor said.

Well, having an unfriendly city sure is problematic. I don't really see how you can blame that on the mayor though. I'd blame the weather. And the racially divisive marches.

As for crime, it certainly is slightly higher than in neighboring Leominster. But "out of control"? We're lower than the state average overall, though we do rank higher than the state average for violent crime. Let's call it a tossup. Crime could always be lower.

Of course, a mayor generally has to work well with the Chief of Police to do anything about crime. Given DeSalvatore's extremely rocky relationship with Chief Cronin I'm not sure that places him as the best man for the job. Maybe he'll just take his vigilanteism to the next level and run around town in his Bat-Mayor costume to deal with crime personally.

In other news, Dan Mylott is also going to run for mayor again. Which is no great surprise, but hardly the stuff excitement is made of. While Mylott seems like he means well (the same can be said of DeSalvatore), he's just not proven himself to be a very effective mayor. He does have the benefit of experience and name recognition that DeSalvatore lacks (despite Ted's incessant publicity stunts), but there are also plenty of people who will vote for "anyone but Mylott" in the upcoming race.

Let's hope some more people get involved. Anyone, please.


However, one word of warning to any potential candidates named "Matthew" or "Matt". My trolls have taken time off from tossing Ted DeSalvatore's salad to warn me they won't be voting for you because they think you're me (yes, all of you). Apparently when my parents gave me the ninth most popular boy's name of 1975 they didn't count on the possibility that I would one day have a blog about local politics. Go figure.

Former city councilor Matt Straight is in particular trouble, since apparently it's hard for people who've gone off their Haldol to differentiate between us. Of course, he has bigger problems.

What this all means to you unfortunate Matts and Matthews is you potentially may lose up to three votes from people who would have voted for DeSalvatore anyway. Try not to lose any sleep over that.

On a side note: In an attempt to limit future confusion caused by my having one of the most popular names of the last century I will now be writing under the pseudonym of "The Unicow". Hopefully nobody was planning on voting for her anyway. Although she just may be the best choice we have right now.