State Senatorial Candidate Website Reviews!

Apparently, there was a debate tonight between Jennifer Flanagan and Brian Knuuttila, who are both running for state senate. Well, I'm not one for fancy debates or driving to Sterling to witness said fancy debates, but I am one to look over the candidates' websites and make fun of them. So let's do that now!

In case you're not aware, there's a contest in the works to replace the retiring Robert Antonioni as State Senator. Antonioni's a pretty good guy, so good luck to him in whatever he moves on to!

In the meantime, we have this weird little race to deal with. Two candidates are vying for his seat, and I don't really know all that much about either of them. What can I say, the site is called Progressive Fitchburg, and neither is from Fitchburg. There's only so much time in the day, people.

No problem though, they both have websites, and we can simply judge them that way!

Going in alphabetical order...

Jennifer Flanagan: www.jenflanagan.com

I'll tell you right off the bat, Flanagan's got an advantage here. Not only does she have this site, she also has a second site here for her State Rep. stuff and her official mass.gov page is the top result if you Google for her name. So she's easy to find. But that could be a bad thing if what she has to say sucks!

To be fair, I'm only going to deal with her campaign site. At first glance it looks pretty professional. It uses the totally cliched "make your site look as much like the American flag as possible" style of website design, but doesn't totally pound you over the head with it. Just a dull throb.

The front page is pretty dull. Mostly it's a press release. The main content is primarily the News page replicated here. Plus there's a newsletter signup thingy and ways to give her money. Uninspiring, but I can live with that.

Now to the more interesting pages! Our first one is simply called Jennifer! Hello Jennifer! Clicking on that link almost makes me feel like we're on a first name basis!

Actually, the page sort of has three parts to it, we're just dumped to the main "Get to Know Jen" part, which has this totally subtle picture on it.


Oh hello, Sen. Antonioni! I almost didn't see you there!

Also hello lady to Jennifer's right (our left)! I don't actually know who you are. Maybe I should, maybe not. Regardless, Sen. Antonioni is looking pretty sharp. I sort of wonder what he's looking at. Some tasty hors d'oeuvres perhaps? Hot chick in a bikini? Someone he's planning to murder? Hard to say, but maybe we'll get lucky and another photo will tell us? Unlikely.

From this page we're linked to Accomplishments. Yay, important issues! Here we find important details about my new friend Jennifer's work as a State Rep.

This is where things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Look, I know the subheading is "legislation filed" and that if you read the whole blurb it's about legislation she's working on to punish those who harbor minors (to protect runaways and so forth, I suppose). That doesn't change the fact that if you quickly skim her accomplishments it appears that the one she's most proud of is HARBORING A MINOR. Not good!

She also has FAILURE TO STOP FOR POLICE OFFICER LEGISLATION further down, which at least has that "legislation" at the end, but still is not at all what you want to have as the bolded, all-caps part of your accomplishments!

There's a lot on that page though, and much of it is good. There's also this, which I find utterly baffling:

MORATORIUM ON INTERNET HUNTING: CHAPTER 83 OF THE ACTS OF 2007 Aligned Massachusetts with 22 other states to ban the hunting of live animals through the Internet and establish a fine of up t [sic] $2,500 or imprisonment for 2½ years if a person is found to have participated in Internet hunting.

Huh? You can hunt live animals through the internet? How the fuck does that work? A webcam mounted to a rifle? Is it even a real thing, or are we preparing for a post-Skynet dystopia in which killer robots are trying to hunt us using the internet somehow and we're hoping this law keeps them at bay?

If it's the former, I must chide my new friend Jennifer for legislating about stupid things. If the latter, I applaud her foresight!

On to the Endorsements page!

Actually, no. Let's not bother. Just go read it if you really care. About the only endorsement that matters is the one from Antonioni, which we'd already figured out from the picture up above.

So instead we'll go to the Our Community page. It appears the main purpose of this page is to provide a map showing the district, and therefore letting people know that if they live in one of those towns they can vote for her. I suppose that's useful. Also, I learned that Clinton is apparently very tiny. Who knew?

The News page is what you'd mostly expect. Press releases and so forth. We already saw the main one on the front page. It also links to Photos on a big bloaty Javascript-ridden page that slows down my browser and annoys me just a bit. Nice effect and all, but I could live without it.

Here's a picture where Jennifer is being arrested by the very minor she was harboring! Citizen's arrests do work!


Perhaps as part of her plea bargain with the arresting pre-adolescent, we next find the odd Kid's Corner page. Apparently kids can vote now?

This page hosts what I assume to be Orson Welles' long-lost masterpiece of zombie filmmaking, "Citizen Brain: Feeding on American Democracy."

Actually, it appears to be about a kid named Vince whose brain escapes his head and starts menacing him while he's trying to play video games. It's creepy. Or at least the first 45 seconds or so are creepy. That was about all I could stomach.


The last page is just a Contact page. Nothing notable there.

Conclusion: It's a nice looking website, with a good long list of accomplishments (even if some of them are baffling). Unfortunately, it doesn't really look forward much. Lots of talk about what she has done, but very little about what she will do in the future. Still, nothing about it was totally ridiculous. Except for the zombie brain (which I assume is also a cannibal).

Now on to her competition!

Brian Knuuttila: brianforsenate.com

Well, it's obvious who spent more on their website here. Mr. Knuuttila's site looks like it hails back from 1995 or so. I really recommend you go visit it, because the magic of the marquee scrolling doodad at the top can't be effectively conveyed in my screenshot.

On the plus side, when I first visited the site it had blinking text too, and that seems to be gone now, so things are improving! In fact, it says it was last updated today! (It also says it's only had 178 visitors, let's get that number up!)

Anyway, we actually have a pretty busy front page. First off, we have his slogan, which is honestly pretty cool: "No matter how you say Knuuttila, it means good government"

So he's got a sense of humor.

Also, he appears to be a very literal tree-hugger!

Wondering what his site is all about? Wonder no more, he tells you right on the front page!

The website is intended as a way for me to express my views and qualities and a way for you to contact me with thoughts and ideas on how you would like to see your City and Town improve in the future with my support.

As a former State Representative and still very familiar with the issues and needs of our district [sic]. We need new and fresh ideas to bring economic stimulus [sick] to our district and I plan to work hard for you to bring economic stability back to us. I am running for Senate and I am asking for your support. Please contact me with your thoughts and ideas as I promise to respond to you.

Sincerely,
Brian Knuuttila

How nice. Might want to do some proofreading there though, as I actually went light on the [sic]s. (In fairness, Flanagan got some too.)

First page! It's called About Me, which is a little less intimate than "Jennifer." I recommend he change the link title to "Bri-Bri" or some other funny nickname in order to one-up her.

On this page we encounter exactly two images, and both are flags.
These flags are supposed to be waving, but it seems blogger may have killed their rockin' animation. Regardless, it seems clear that Brian is both an American and a Marine.

In fact, as we learn from the "About Me" page, he was not only a Marine, but also a five-term state rep, a Gardner City Councilor, a cop, a firefighter, an attorney, and several other things. Clearly he gets around. Also he has a wife and two kids, so he's apparently heterosexual and capable of impregnating a woman. I'm not sure why these things matter, but politicians seem to like to point them out.

Next we move on to his View Points [sic].

Okay, let's ignore the typo in the fucking link menu and just deal with the substance of the page. It's mainly encapsulated in the bullet points at the top, which is handy!

Nice bullet points! He likes me!

Oddly, the rest of the page seems to veer off from the bullet points, since the headings continuing down the page are (in order): Education, Health Care, Environment, Balanced Budget, Jobs, Affordable Housing, and then a big huge "Honest and Responsible Leadership" at the bottom. All good things, and while the synopses he gives are unfortunately rather vague, it sounds like he has some good priorities.

Next is the News & Events link. Right now it's just four links to various websites with articles about him. Still, we can pass this up just like we would any old "links" page.

On to Endorsements. Okay, I pretty much ignored Flanagan's endorsements because I don't care about endorsements. But I do note that while Flanagan has Mayor Wong on her side, Knuuttila seems to have the lion's share of the city council. What's up with that?

Still, endorsements, meh. Hopefully the next page will be more fun!

Crud, it's a Helpful Links page (though the page title says "Key View Points" for some reason)! Oh well, at least they're helpful. And he has this nice blurb at the top:

Below are some links that I hope will help you. Please let me know if I can add other links that you've found useful.

That's a very nice offer! And he does have a "blogs" section at the very bottom (because nobody respects blogs). Maybe I can make it there!

Aside from that, it's mostly links to city government websites in the district. And you know what I said about links pages just a few paragraphs ago. So we move on...

To Photos 2008! I love a good photos page, and it's nice to know these are all recent photos! Even though they're all laid out in a single horizontal row in order to make a crappy-ass slideshowy thing that will require ridiculous scrolling... bah.

Interestingly, the majority of the photos do not in fact feature Knuuttila himself! Still, here's an awesome one!

Now you might be thinking I'm going to say something rude about how this is the multicultural shot that all political websites must have, just because it has a black man, an Asian, and either two women or one woman and a guy with luxurious long hair.

You are very jaded, my friend.

In fact, I just like the look on that guy's face. It's like he has some sort of really cool secret that he's keeping from the people in his little group there, but that he's sharing with the photographer, and by extension us. Awesome.

Anyway, it's probably better when Knuuttila stays out of the shot, because apparently he has a tendency to point directly at women's breasts...

Note to Brian: Please work on subtlety. Just because Prince Charles can get away with it doesn't mean you can!
Okay, better move away from these photos before things get dirty. What's the next link?

Oh crap, it's Photos!

Look, I like photos as much as anyone. Especially when they're goofy like the ones above. But do we really need to separate out 2008 from all other photos (which are presumably earlier and not from the future)? And seriously, tell me it's not just an excuse to run this one:

Actually, it's a fascinating photo. What part you like most about it depends entirely on who you are.

If you're a big Red Sox fan, it's the World Series trophy. If you're a pedophile, it's the teenage girl in the short skirt. If you're already a big Brian Knuuttila fan, it's Brian Knuuttila. If you're me, it's that awesome surly guy on the right side who looks pissed off at the whole thing. It's a feast for everyone's eyes!

But enough photos already! Let's move on!

Dammit, the final page is just a Contact Me page! I hate those things! Plus it's very limiting!


What if I just want to tell him a joke or ask him where he gets his ties? What do I check then, huh?

Okay, that's it for his site.

Conclusion: Somehow, I find this site both really terrible and very charming. It's probably all the pictures and the warm feeling I get remembering what web design was like in 1995. Still, it doesn't really tell me all that much about what the hell Knuuttila would actually do if he got elected!


VERDICT: Seriously, they both sort of suck. They get the job done, but neither site really tells me anything about what to expect if I vote for these people. They spend all their time focusing on the past and not what they're going to do, which is far more important. Flanagan's site is clearly more professional, but Knuuttila has a better sense of humor. If I were to vote based on websites alone I'd probably go with Flanagan, but neither of them is terribly compelling.

Councilor-at-large time!

Note to readers: I started this post reviewing all the Councilor-at-large websites but got distracted part of the way through. The election is now happening tomorrow and I'm too tired and lazy to finish what I started and update the bits that have changed since I wrote this like two weeks ago. Rather than let what I had go to waste I'm just going to post it. Enjoy. Or don't. Whatever.

Do vote though. And vote for the right people. Or else.

Post begins here ----\/

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Time for more website reviews!

We've been through the mayoral candidates. We've been through the Ward Councilors who actually bothered to have websites. Now we have the councilors-at-large!

There are five councilor-at-large positions. One of them is currently held by Tom Donnelly, who won't be returning. Annie DeMartino and Thomas Conry are both incumbents, but don't seem to have websites. Jesus "Jay" Cruz and Dean Tran are incumbents who do have websites! We also have newcomers Shaun Cormier and Marcus DiNatale running (who have websites).

Once again I've failed to find a decent list or just who's running and how many seats are contestable (I'm assuming all, but who knows!). Shouldn't stuff like this be easy to find? Isn't that what the internet is for? Could some kind person with more time than me put one together? Maybe the city clerk or a newspaper reporter or somebody? Sheesh!

Not that it matters for this post. Here I'm just going to critique the websites of the four Councilor-at-large candidates who do have websites. Anyone else can go to hell.

Let's go in alphabetical order, shall we?

Shaun Cormier: www.shauncormier.com

What are the first impressions of Cormier's site?

Every page has a bigass picture of the city, which is actually the only picture on the site! It's not a bad picture though, and the site is actually pretty simple and clean-looking. Also at the bottom it says "This website is designed and maintained by Shaun Cormier," which I'm going to take literally. If he did indeed make it all himself he actually did quite a nice job. Seems like a FrontPage jobby.

On his front page he does the traditional "I'm running for office because I want improvement in the stuff that currently sucks" thing, lists where to vote, and gives this more-specific paragraph:

If elected as Councilor At-Large, I will strive for improving communications between city officials, propose that the City of Fitchburg use renewable energy sources, look into tax relief for first time homebuyers, and find ways to attract more recreational businesses to Fitchburg. I will further strive to find ways for the city to save money.

Not terrible, but not inspiring either.

Moving to his About Me page, we find no picture! Hey, everyone else has had a picture! This lack of picture may not be a bad thing. Cormier's quite young-looking (and I believe is just 22, so that makes sense), and conceivably his youth could turn off some old fogey voters. Personally I see it as a strong point, but old people have more votes than I do. Then again, young people have computers.

He gives some of his background (lived here forever, etc), talks about his job (sadly without mentioning the really awesome parts), and takes this interesting swipe at the current state of political discourse in the town:

There have been many negative articles written towards city departments blaming city council or city council blaming city departments on certain issues. I want to see all city departments working together to help solve problems. I would especially like to see a better relationship with the city council and mayor.

Oh, snap! Take that, stupid people who can't get along! Cormier's coming to town and he's going to make you all do trust-building exercises and give each other Secret Santa gifts!

Next we have his Ideas page, which is like an "Issues" page, but without the word "Issues" being involved.

It's pretty decent, actually. The best we've seen from Council candidates so far, at least. Renewable energy is the top bullet (I'll come back to that in a moment). He wants to kick the asses of "Delinquent Tax Payers," who I would argue should actually be called "Tax Non-payers," but whatever. He spells "increased" wrong in this bit, but it's just a typo. Still, Unicow hates tpyos!

He also proposes incentives for first-time home buyers, which is nice. Wisely wants to exploit FSC, which is something a lot of people have been saying for awhile now but nobody has managed to do. Then there's more bugging the city officials to get together and hug. Fine.

Last, he proposes a Route 2 On/Off ramp (both West and Eastbound) on Mt. Elam Rd. Which I've heard talked about before and isn't a bad idea.

The next page is actually the most prominent link, entitled Renewable Energy Information. Cormier is clearly big into renewable energy, which is something I also feel strongly about. So kudos for that!

He talked about the need for renewable energy on his "Ideas" page, and here he gives basically just a buttload of links to information about it. Unfortunately he doesn't go into any great detail. Just links. Which I suppose is okay, but I'd like to see more explanation of where and how these technologies can be best used in Fitchburg. Wikipedia pages do not help me with that! They're great if you want to learn to speak Klingon or find out the history of LOLCats, though.

Then there's a Links page.

Hey, I'm on it! That's awesome! Go me!

Anyway, it's just links and links are boring. It's sort of nice that he links to his opponents though. Classy touch!

The last page is a contact page, and suitably uninteresting.

Conclusion: Actually, not too bad. It's sparse, yes, but it does have a few specific ideas and remains pretty light on the political rhetoric. The design is simple but unobtrusive. I'd like to see the renewable energy stuff fleshed out a bit more, though. Also, the site is totally devoid of any pictures of the toys he made. I want to see the fire-breathing horse "Butterscotch!"

Moving on...

Jay Cruz: www.councillorcruz.com

First off, I have a major problem with Cruz spelling the word "councilor" as "councillor" (with two l's). Yeah, I know both may in fact be acceptable in some areas, but "councilor" is the right way! If you're on the fucking council you should know how to spell councilor!

Anyway, Cruz's page is done by Kreative Dezign, the same people I criticized for the god-awful Seney site. Yet this site doesn't look too bad. It does have a very strange looking blobby blue picture on the front page. Which I guess is an old-timey picture of Fitchburg, but looks like crap.

Let's start with Jay's Bio!

He went to Monty Tech, was in the Marines, has some kids and a wife, served on a couple of boards, and owns a heating & air conditioning business. Boring. Next!

Oh, next he just tells me How to Volunteer. But he hasn't given me a reason to want to volunteer yet so I'm not going to. Then it's Make a Contribution. Same deal. And on to Fundraising, which I almost skipped!

Good thing I didn't, because I would have missed the charming photos of him surrounded by former mayors, children, and assorted old people!



Okay, that was a waste of time too. How about some issues or something Jay?

The next link is called Articles and has one article on it: "Cruz Plans City Council Campaign / If Elected, Cruz could be the only Latino on the Fitchburg City Council." Umm, he already is. He's an incumbent (albeit an appointed one). Big whoop.

Then he has Contact Information, an offsite link to register to vote, Where to Vote, and Useful Links, which aren't all that useful and don't include me!

What the fuck, Jay? No issues at all? No information about where you stand? Nothing?

Oh wait, there's a link to Charter Reform on the other side of the page. But argh! It just takes you to a question of whether you'd sign a petition to support charter reform! He doesn't even tell you if he supports it!

Fucking waste of time.

Conclusion: This site wasn't half as ugly as the other Kreative Dezign site I've looked at during this process, but it suffers the same problem. Total lack of meaningful content. It has like 5 different ways to contact Cruz in order to help him, but absolutely nothing about how he'd actually help me. This is not an informational website. It's not even about self-promotion. It's about trying to get people who already support you to help more, because nobody else is going to have a clue what Cruz thinks. Plus he spells councilor wrong. Bad!

Marcus DiNatale: marcusdinatale.com

First impression? This site was designed for a tiny browser window. There's a little box with the important stuff in it, then a giant field of purply-red stars (communism?) as the background. I'm not crazy about the style, but it does look professionally done.

The front has a picture of Marcus, along with his slogan: "Stabilize, Prioritize, and Harmonize." For some reason this makes me picture him in a barbershop quartet.

He "respectfully" thanks you for visiting his website (really Marcus, it was no problem!), and seems to want you to send him a yard sign for some reason. His "priorities" are also listed, but is really the first part of a linked page (fancy!), so we'll deal with that when I visit the links.

Handily, the annoying "Volunteer/Contribute/Contact" links are all set aside from the links that might actually be interesting to me, so I'm just going to ignore all of those! Let's see what Mr. "I have a cooler goatee than Jay Cruz" has to say!

First we have Meet Marcus. Oh my god that's a confusing picture! The picture of Marcus in the banner has a goatee. In the picture of his family his father has a goatee and he's clean-shaven! But they look fairly similar! I've added some stuff to this screenshot to try to explain it:



As you can see, the goatee-Marcus up top corresponds to the clean-shaven Marcus down below. Disregard the goateed older DiNatale (state Rep. Steve!), and the sister (who really you wouldn't get confused about anyway but happened to be in the picture).

Why is everyone so proud of being a "lifelong resident" of Fitchburg? That's not a qualification! Also, he lists education and stuff. He's on the school committee too, which is good.

Moving on, he has a lengthy Priorities page! Like really dense-looking and long. The sort of long thing that actually discourages me from reading it, to be honest. I'm going to do it anyway, of course. But if I'm discouraged, then you can bet the casual web-weenie is even more discouraged.

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Hello again, readers. This is where I got distracted! I don't remember what did it, but it was probably related to sex, drugs, or rock'n'roll. Regardless, I didn't finish, but really all that was left was to make fun of Marcus some more and then hit Dean Tran.

I'll give super-short reviews of both of their sites just so you don't feel slighted:

DiNatale: Okay, but boring.
Tran: Has a thing called a "shoutbox", which is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Man, if I ever actually developed the motivation to review this thing I would have endlessly made fun of it. But I didn't, so bully for him.

There you go, folks!

More Campaign Website Reviews!

Good news, people who like my reviews of campaign websites! I'm doing it again!

I've exhausted the mayoral candidates of course, and even though one of our mayoral contenders has scandalously changed her website, I'm not going to focus there anymore.

Rather, it's time to dig deeper into the bowels of Fitchburg politics (yes I know that's a disgusting metaphor) and look at some of the city council candidates! Fun!

Incidentally, do you know how hard it is to find a good list online of just who's running for what? The answer: pretty hard!

Lucky for me a bunch of the candidates don't have websites, so we can just ignore them. And because I'm incredibly lazy, I got all these sites from the handy list Jason has posted over at Save Fitchburg. So if anyone's missing, blame him.

Now, let's begin!

Ward Six

Why Ward 6 first? Because there's just one candidate with a website. It's incumbent and City Council President Jody Joseph!Before I relentlessly make fun of Joseph's site, let me just say it is nice to see an unopposed incumbent who actually bothered to have a website. Way to go Jody!

Oh, but wait... I don't think it was made for this election. On the front page there's a link to something called Ward Six Contest Looms which is talking about an old election. There's also this thing:Also, nowhere does it mention that he's currently the City Council President, which seems like it would belong pretty well in his accomplishments section or something.

Also, as you can see, the site is flesh-colored! Gross!

Okay, in fairness it's not exactly flesh-colored. If my flesh looked like that I'd be concerned. It's more like the Crayola color called "flesh" than actual Caucasoid flesh. Still sort of gross.

Either way, I call foul on this website! It's old and not sufficiently updated for the current election (it does have the date right though).

Disqualified!

Ward Four

Okay, moving on to a ward that actually has two active websites and no incumbents! Ward 4 is a hotbed of internet activity!

Let's go in alphabetical order!

Stephen Seney: www.steveseney.com
The first thing that pops out about Seney's website is that it's really incredibly ugly. I mean super-ugly. Fugly, even. It was apparently made by Kreative Dezign, who seem to suffer from color blindness in addition to dyslexia.

I used to live right near Kreative Dezign's storefront and I actually thought it was a car customization shop for quite awhile. Obviously I was mistaken, because they make websites and stuff! Seney's site would fit in pretty well at a custom car rally, though. It's like a Honda Civic with a gigantic spoiler and spinny hubcaps. Style but very little substance.

As I am wont to do, my first step was to examine his Issues page. This is what I found...
As you can see, Seney has no issues! That screenshot there is all you get, concerned voters! Incidentally, the "my site is always being updated with new information" bit seems to not be the case. This issues page hasn't changed in the few months since I first looked at it.

Well, maybe the issues are cleverly hidden elsewhere. Perhaps the terrible navigation is to blame! So I clicked on the thing that looks like a play button beneath the heading "Who is Steve Seney?" and was presented with five options to find out! Sweet!

First up was Background, where I learned little of interest. Seney likes ice cream and fishing. Also, Fitchburg is his "home by choice." I guess it's nice that nobody's forcing him to live here. So that's something.

Next we have Education. In addition to his formal education we get this awesome bit!

I also consider myself self-taught in many areas that interest me. Real estate and finance are two of these areas. Additionally, and at times more important is the education that my parents gave me. They taught me thru their example as well as by their rules.

Okay, here's my contribution to Seney's education: "Thru" is not a word! The word you're looking for is "through". I know it's longer and sort of ugly, but that's the way it goes.

Also, who isn't self-taught in areas that interest them? I'm interested in physics, self-taught even! That doesn't mean I'm going to get hired at CERN anytime soon. I'm also self-taught in how to find good internet porn. So what?

Third, "Additionally, and at times more important is the education that my parents gave me." is a terrible sentence. Fix that please.

Okay, the "Education" page sucked, what about the exciting-sounding Commitment page?

Sigh...

Okay, the page is summed up in this one quote: "The citizens of Fitchburg deserve results not rhetoric."

Ironically, the entire rest of the page is nothing but stupid rhetoric. Basically, take every cliched thing you've ever heard a politician say and cram it all into the same page. That's what you have here.

Next!

Alright, Vision! I love a candidate with vision! I crave a candidate with vision! Tell me about your vision, Steve!

My vision for Fitchburg as a whole is to work with the Council, the Mayors office, Department Heads, and City Employees to strengthen our city. We are all on the same team and we must act that way. Everyone must bring their best to the table for the benefit of the resident’s Fitchburg.

Shit!

That's not vision, that's more rhetoric! Worse yet, it's rhetoric with bad capitalization and missing apostrophes! Fitchburg should be run like a business, blah blah blah. So it's another page of nothing but vapid rhetoric. God this is getting tiresome.

One more, please let it be good...

Experience... well here's a handy quote

Owning a business taught me several things about myself and my abilities. I am constantly pushing myself to achieve more. I have learned to set goals and achieve them.

Oh yeah, more rhetoric. To hell with this!

Conclusion: Stephen Seney's website really sucks. He doesn't say anything at all about the issues, gives no specifics about anything, and does nothing but bullshit us with the very rhetoric he derides. Bad website! Bad!

Okay, now his opponent!

Kevin Starr: www.kevinstarr.org

So what's the first impression here? Well, Starr clearly likes the color red. Red signs, red website. Also, the black-and-white picture of him on the top of the page looks almost identical to the color picture of him in the middle of the page, but I think is different. But I'm not sure! It's kind of creepy if he can pose the exact same way in two separate photos, but maybe that could be considered a political skill. Sort of creeps me out.

Also, while the picture of his family is nice and all, I don't know what's propping up his daughter! She appears to be levitating between them somehow! Yeah, I know he's probably holding her, but I prefer to believe she's somehow magically floating there.

Anyway, this is a much more simple site than Seney's. No fancy but horribly-conceived navigation here, just a few pages. Is it a case of substance triumphing over style though? Let's see!

Wait a second! I was going to put a link here to another page, but there's trickery afoot! All the links are controlled by Javascript, so no matter what you click on the page still claims it's just kevinstarr.org. Sneaky! Points lost for this, because it means that when I went there with Javascript disabled none of the links worked and I saw this:... which isn't very appealing.

Why the subterfuge? Digging into the site reveals the horrible truth! It's all hosted on the joemccarthy.net domain! Yes, Joe McCarthy! Probably a Joe McCarthy who makes websites and not the Joe McCarthy who gave birth to McCarthyism (and who died in 1957), but still scary! I wonder what Mr. McCarthy thinks of Starr's red theme...

Oh well, on to the About Me page. Note that if you follow that link it's not actually the way the page looks if you just go to the website and click the link, but I couldn't freaking link to it otherwise!

It's the basic background/biography page. He went to meetings at city hall when he was five? That's child abuse!

Nothing terribly exciting there, but it does have this bit:

My focus now is working with Councilor Boisvert and others to create a World War II Honor Roll. Over 11,000 city residents answered the call of their country. The Honor Roll will list each of those brave people, including my grandfather Peter Starr. We have a long way to go to raise an estimated $200,000.This monument would eventually be placed in Riverfront Park.

I didn't know about that before, and that's actually pretty cool. So way to go!

Still, the page is a throwaway, on to the similarly crazy-linked Issues page!

Okay, the page is pretty slim. Better than Seney's, but nothing to write home about. Basically he focuses on financial stuff, which is pretty sensible at this time. He does the same "treat the city like a business" bullshit that it seems like everyone running for everything anywhere does. Man I'm tired of hearing that. The only real specific on the page is this:

I will ask our mayor to have each city department make public quarterly financial reports stating the goals and objectives of each department. This would give the residents the opportunity to see how their tax dollars are spent every three months.

Decent enough idea. Still a pretty slim page.

Okay, one page left, but it's the one that may put Starr over the top! So far things have been pretty slim, but now we get to his Blog! It actually pops up in a new window and has a bit different design, but I'm going to consider it part of the site anyway.

Starr is the first candidate whose site I've examined who has a blog, and it's a good move on his part.

It's only been active since early October, but he comes across well in his posts. Positive, articulate, etc. Good things to be! It also gives him a bit of humanity, which is something that can often be missing from candidate websites. It could use a few more posts, though.

Conclusion: This is definitely not the fanciest website in the world, and could really use some more information on the issues. It is clean and simple though, and doesn't irritate or insult you with giant flag pictures and pages of rhetoric (there is rhetoric, but it's minor). The site doesn't really do anything wrong, but it doesn't really impress either. The blog is a very nice touch.


So who wins the showdown for Ward 4 website? Easy, Starr does. Not that either website is fantastic, but Seney's was actually annoying while Starr's was just sort of plain.

(On a side note, you may be interested in this information about Seney, which is also sort of disheartening.)

Anyway, that's it for this installment of campaign website reviews. I'll be getting to the candidates for Councilor-at-Large in a bit, but we have four websites to review for them and the post would just be way too big with all that in it! I might even deal with the school committee candidates. Anything could happen!

Stay tuned!

Another website review? Yes!

Okay, I thought I was done with the website reviews. Dionne's apparently not a computer-user so he won't be having a site at all, and I already covered everybody else.

While Donnelly's site has changed a little (for the better, in my opinion), it's not so different as to warrant a new review. Ditto for DeSalvatore, whose site still looks like crap, but has had some minor updates.

Lisa Wong, on the other hand, has pretty much a whole new site! Which makes my previous review totally obsolete! So please join me for yet another installment of reviews of mayoral campaign websites with www.votelisawong.com!


Okay, first thing I noticed is probably obvious to everyone who goes to the site. Right there up top in the header thingy it says "Fitchburg Mayor". I'm pretty sure that Wong is not yet the mayor of Fitchburg. Self-confidence is nice and all, but that's getting a little ahead of the game.

Also somewhat baffling is the image of a fish getting speared in the same banner. Maybe it has some metaphorical significance or something that I'm missing, and it actually doesn't look bad, it's just sort of odd. Is Wong the spearfisher? Does the fish represent Fitchburg's poor bond rating? If so, that's a really weird metaphor.

Traveling over to the "About Lisa Wong" page, we get stuff that was mostly on her old site, but this time there's a picture of a puppy at the bottom! And yes, it's a pretty damn cute picture. Not sure what that has to do with being mayor, but people who enjoy pictures of puppies are in for a treat!

There are also some pictures of her doing things across the globe in a lot of places I've never been to. For instance, "Scuba Diving in Belize":


I can only assume that this so-called "scuba diving" may also have involved some spearfishing, which would make the image in the banner make total sense!

This also raises an important question. Now that we know what Wong looks like in a wetsuit, when are we going to get to see Donnelly, DeSalvatore, and Dionne in their own wetsuits? Also, what the fuck does scuba diving in Belize have to do with being mayor?

Oh yes, Wong is well-traveled. We get that.

I don't honestly know if that helps you or hurts you in a town where people seem to almost take pride in never having been anywhere interesting. Hell, as far as I can tell Donnelly has been here his entire life! While some of us may appreciate a mayor who knows more of the world than the Route 2 corridor, I have to wonder if there aren't others who view the well-traveled as "outsiders".

On to the "Accomplishments" page!

I looked at this page a couple of days ago and one of the images was HUGE. Like 2 or 3 megabytes. Now they're both quite tiny and reasonable. Way to update!

The actual content of the page is pretty decent, albeit a little boring. Also, there's a typo where the word "properties" is spelled as "propertied". Also also, there's a misplaced comma in the middle of "Fitchburg Redevelopment Authority". Argh! The pedantic proofreader in me bristles with disgust!

Overall though, the page does a decent job of presenting what Wong has done in the past, which actually looks pretty good. This is a candidate website so it's not like she's going to present herself in a bad light, but these accomplishments come complete with facts and figures so it's hard to argue with them.

Now, there's the "On the Issues" page.

This is actually where the new website really shines. Wong presents four "top priorities": "Financial Stability", "Cultural Vibrancy", "Economic Growth", and "Opportunity".

Each of these headings has its own link which in turn leads to "Measurable Goals", a statement of "Fitchburg's Challenge", and then "Lisa Wong's Solution/Plan of Action". This is actually a really nice and very well thought-out issues platform.

If you're wondering where crime falls (since it's so overhyped by some other candidates), it's actually under "Cultural Vibrancy". She doesn't harp on it, and in my opinion that's a very good thing. This is hardly the first time I've said this, but crime in Fitchburg is just not the huge boogeyman that other candidates are trying to make it out to be.

I was going to quote from the issues pages a bit, but really you're better off just going and reading them yourselves because there's so much stuff there. They're quite extensive and specific, which is great to see. I thought Donnelly had done a very good job with his issues page, but Wong one-ups him with her new site.

Could this lead to some sort of Issues arms race between Wong and Donnelly? I hope so, because that's where the important stuff is. DeSalvatore is a very distant third in this, and Dionne doesn't even exist. If Wong and Donnelly are the USA and the Soviet Union in the war of addressing issues, then DeSalvatore is the island nation of Tuvalu and Dionne is lost at sea somewhere.

Moving on, Wong has a "Media Room" page, which basically reproduces articles written about her. That's fine, but doesn't particularly thrill me since I've seen most of these articles already.

Finally, there's a "Get Involved" page, which is sort of standard issue for mayoral campaign websites. I'm not sure why the form on it defaults to Alabama for the state (aside from the obvious alphabetical reason), but that's a pretty minor issue.

So what's the verdict?

Overall, this is a pretty decent website for a mayoral campaign. The important part really always comes down to how the candidate addresses the issues, and Wong has done quite a good job with that. It's not the most professional looking site (appears it was made with godaddy's "Website Tonight"), but none of the mayoral candidates have particularly professional-looking websites.

I'd put it a bit above Donnelly's site at this point thanks to the depth of information on the issues and way ahead of DeSalvatore's site, which is really terrible on the issues. Dionne, of course, has no website and is the loser here.

Since I had Donnelly in the lead before, that means the lead has changed hands! Will Donnelly respond with an improved web presence? One can only hope so, because the better the quality of the information online, the better the voters of Fitchburg are served. Let the website war begin!

In closing, here's that picture of the cute dog. Enjoy!

Donnelly has a website too!

Good news, people who find my reviews of mayoral candidate websites mildly amusing! Tom Donnelly has joined the fray!

Let's take a journey through donnellyformayor.com...


First off, big points to Mr. Donnelly for bravely using the word "for" in his URL instead of making it "donnelly4mayor.com". Smart move!

Not picking a stupid domain name offsets the points lost for having half a mile of mysterious blank space at the bottom of each page. What's up with that, Tom? Are you trying to hide the hit counter at the very bottom? Because we can just scroll down, you know.

Now is the point where I'd normally count the pages on the site and compare it to the other candidates. Donnelly certainly looks like the winner if you consider his navigation bar, but here we encounter the dark underbelly of deceit at the heart of this site! There are a whopping 13 navigation buttons, but a bunch of them are basically the same damn thing.

Contact Info, Contributions, Feedback, Help Tom, Site Problem?, and Stay in Touch all fall under the general category of "contact me". Sure, they're mildly different, but they could have all been on the same page with no problem so I'm only counting them as one page. Donnelly still leads the pack on sheer website size, but man that's a lot of contact pages! Hell, even the banner at the top of every page has contact info on it. On the plus side, this does suggest that Donnelly really really loves people to contact him, which is sort of cute.

The front page of the site has a friendly welcome in which he mentions "fiscal stability" and crime reduction twice. One suspects that this may be what his campaign will focus on. He also has contact information in the body of the page. Someone give the guy a call already, I'm starting to think he might be lonely.

Let me take a moment to digress here. What the hell is up with people not proofreading their websites? Is it really that hard to just read the thing over after you've made it? Then you can avoid minor but stupid things like:

please visit my campaign headquarters at 713 Main Street at [sic] call the headquarters at 978-342-8590

You end up looking stupid when your campaign website has typos, grammatical errors, and crazy punctuation and capitalization. Spell-check doesn't cut it!

But back to the site...

The Bio page is pretty decent, if a bit dry. It doesn't have the bizarre gaps we see in some other candidates' biographies, so I guess he's not trying to hide much. Although halfway through the page the format changes from going chronologically from top to bottom to the reverse. Very disorienting if you're trying to read it while drunk (which I'm not, but I assume others will be).

There's also a nice picture of his family, which looks less creepy than some pictures of this sort. Unfortunately it's over-compressed, which makes his daughter's eyes look like they're glowing demonically.
Moving on, the Issues page is the best I've seen so far. It addresses a lot of issues, includes some specifics, and is light on the crazy. Crime prevention and fiscal stability predictably get top billing.

A bit on "City Government Reorganization":

As someone who has navigated the halls of city government for years, I am aware of how frustrating it can be to communicate and find the answer to simple questions.

I will as Mayor immediately upgrade our telephone system, work to improve our computer technology and make all forms available on-line to better serve citizens.

Aha! So that's why there are so many ways to contact him!

He also kisses elderly ass:

Our senior citizens are a source of wisdom and inspiration for all of us. We must continue to develop programs and plans to address the needs of this growing population, especially in the areas of transportation, housing, health, public safety and recreation.

That's not unreasonable, of course. Sucking up to the elderly has rarely hurt a candidate, and I don't think there's been a lot of talk about them in general. I'm just jealous, because as a white male between the ages of 18 and 34 nobody sucks up to me except every advertiser in the country.

Overall, the issues page is really pretty decent. At least on par with Lisa Wong's, and probably a bit better. Well done!

There's a Links page, which is as boring as one would expect. That's all about that.

Moving on to the Photo Gallery! It's less entertaining than Ted DeSalvatore's photo gallery, but that's mostly because it's a real photo gallery and not a crazy-ass collection of photos of garbage (literally). There are two photos I particularly enjoy though.

First is this incredibly subtle one entitled "Tom going door to door.":Apparently the title "Tom standing next to a flag" was deemed too obvious.

My other favorite is the one of his campaign announcement. It's big and badly framed, so I'm just cropping out one section. Just look at the excitement in the crowd!

There's also a Press Release page, but all press releases are boring. They're also linked from the Issues page, so it's another redundant link!

That's about all, so what's the verdict?

In my opinion, this is the best of the mayoral campaign websites to appear so far. Good "Issues" page, decent background info, nothing too crazy, and innumerable pathways to get in contact with him if you want to. It loses a little bit for not being proofread adequately, but is still miles better than DeSalvatore on that account (as well as just about everything else). Wong's site is a bit more streamlined and grammatically immaculate, but doesn't quite have the same depth of information available. Dan Mylott's site is of course now a moot point since he's dropped out of the race.

You're left, Ronald Dionne! Make with the website!

Another Mayoral Website!

We suspected it was coming, and it's finally here! Ted DeSalvatore has a website! As part of my ongoing series of Mayoral candidate website critiques please follow me on a journey through www.ted4change.com!



First let me say that the only reason I found this site is that I was tipped off by a friend. Thanks friend!

Google was no help, since a simple search for "ted desalvatore" mayor brings up mostly blogs (this one included) and a couple Sentinel articles. (By comparison, the same search for Lisa Wong or Dan Mylott gives their sites as the first result.) As we'll see later, it's possible that DeSalvatore isn't happy about this lack of listing...

But on to the site. It has 5 pages, which puts it one ahead of Lisa Wong and four ahead of Dan Mylott. Also, each page is wonderfully reminiscent of the web circa-1995. An overabundance of different font colors and styles, weirdly-encoded images, images used where text could do the job, animated gifs, and so on. If only it had blinking text it would be a perfect recreation of how I remember the web in its early days (or Myspace now).

In fairness, maybe this is by design. He could in fact be trying to appeal to people who love Myspace. That would also explain why he used "ted4change.com" when the less stupid-looking "tedforchange.com" is perfectly available. Gotta appeal to all those text-messagers out there!

Ted's "History" page is as good a place as any to start.

First we learn this odd tidbit:

Ted was born in Rochester New York on July 7th, 1955. He grew up in the suburb of Greece, which today has about 90,000 residents. The City of Rochester and the surrounding communities as of the 2000 census, boasts 735,343 residents in 286,512 Households.

Well, my longstanding curiosity about the population of Rochester, NY has now been satiated! I can just imagine all the other mayoral candidates now scrambling to find census figures for towns they grew up near in case DeSalvatore brings them up in a debate.

One might think that would be the last bit of weirdness on the page, but one would be horribly wrong:

Ted attended Greece Arcadia High School and majored in math but needed a sport to keep him interested.

Now, it's been awhile since I've been in high school, but I don't recall ever being given the option to "major" in anything. Is this commonplace in the Greece school system? Also, not sure how good a move it is to say you "needed" a sport to keep interested in school. I could be mistaken, but I think most people would prefer a well-educated mayor to one who's good on the parallel bars.

I'm going to assume the "business owner" bit of this page is intended to fill the mysterious gap from the time he left the Army in 1976 to his teaching job begun in 1999. Not that he gives any exposition on his businesses, but they're physically located in that gap on the page. And calling yourself a "Business Owner" sounds better than writing "1977-1998: Dilettante" on a resume.

One does have to question the statement "I have no political baggage and therefore I am the only candidate that can effectively challenge those issues that give our city its poor reputation." First off, how does alienating virtually the entire city council, the police chief, and any number of others as Ward 4 councilor equate to "no political baggage"? That sounds like an awful lot of political baggage to me.

Anyway, there's also a picture of him and his wife looking out the porthole of a submarine, which is sweet:


Enough of that. Let's move on to the "Details" page!

This is about as close as he gets to a real listing of issues. The front page has some vague language about wanting to improve things, but here we get into the meat and bones. Sort of. But first we need to get past the self-aggrandizing bits:

Ted is the challenger who will implement the changes needed. In the face of exhaustive criticism and threats, Ted has continued to fight for our rights. Help us put back the “We” in We the people!” [sic]

All right...

So, what's DeSalvatore fighting for? Umm... well, here's what he's against...

Against! The Slumlords that nurture the environment for Gangs, Crime, and the Ruin of our inner-city neighborhoods. Slumlords must be held responsible!

Against! High Utility Rates & the Dual Tax Rate, causing reduced investments in commercial and industrial properties. [and so on...]

Okay, so he's for exclamation points and against a few other things. So what is he going to do about them?

Ted will bring an end to irresponsible spending and work hard to return lost services. Ted will encourage business growth by aggressively taking on the utility company, which creates a regional imbalance, robbing us of our competitiveness. Ted will institute a new approach to crime by addressing the environment through code enforcement, which will in turn support our local law enforcement officers, assisting in getting the job done.

Oh. He'll use vague language to fix the problems! Aggressively! Also, he'll further push his belief in the largely-discredited "Fixing Broken Windows" theory of crime reduction.

That's it for the issues, but there's a beautiful nugget of insanity on the bottom of the page. Recall how earlier I mentioned that I suspect DeSalvatore is upset that when searching Google for him you get mostly blogs and the Sentinel? Well, here's why:

Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers or on the Blogs. Reporters don’t always have the greatest sense of context and the Blogger world is filled with character assassinators, having the mentality of pyromaniacs. If you ever have a question or wish a clarification, the best thing to do is ask me directly.

Basically what DeSalvatore is saying here is to ignore any independent reporting that mentions him, because they won't spin it they way he wants them to. Never mind the facts or reality of the situation, just ask Ted what you should think. I believe this is known as the "Bush/Cheney method" of dealing with the press.

Given his stance, it's a little odd that DeSalvatore doesn't just put what he thinks (with specifics, not just vague ideas about change and fighting) on the website. That would be a great way to avoid people having to find out about him from blogs and newspapers. Or it would be if they could find his website more easily.

Okay, last page now. The "Gallery" page. It's, um, a gallery. Mostly of trash cleanup and abandoned cars and stuff.

It's also interspersed with some funny bits of text, like this:

These [abandoned] vehicles like graffiti, trash, junked white goods and other ugly or concerning conditions, aid to the control of an area by its local thugs and gangs.

There you have it, gangs and "local thugs" exist because of littering! I'm all in favor of cleaning up trash, but I think that's a bit of a reach...

So what's the verdict on DeSalvatore's website? Well, it's better than Dan Mylott's. Not as good as Lisa Wong's. Also, it exists. Which puts it ahead of Donnelly's and Dionne's.

Unfortunately, it really doesn't address the issues and focuses mostly on the vague concept of "change" and DeSalvatore's self-styled outsider/rebel image. On the plus side, it has plenty to make fun of, but on the minus side it has very little real substance to it. Which puts it closer to Mylott's site than Wong's (which is not huge on substance, but does have a decent "Issues" page).

So there you have it, three websites down and two left to appear (hopefully).

Now I'm off to go set something on fire! Cheers!

Mayoral candidate websites are fun!

As a public service (and because I'm bored at work), I hereby bring you a critique of the websites of the mayoral candidates. This will be a short preview, because I couldn't find websites for three of the five announced candidates. If anybody knows where they are (if they even exist) please pass them along. In the meantime, enjoy!

• Mayor Dan Mylott - www.mylott.com:
  
  
  Well, it's almost a website. It has a picture of the mayor and a bunch of signs. It also has old news that he's running for mayor, and a slick babelfish translation button at the bottom so you can try to translate it from French to German (doesn't work), or read the page in what I assume would be badly mangled Japanese.
  
  Here's his catchy slogan to illustrate:
  
  Sweet...
  
  Oddly, that's it. There are no active links on the page at all. Nothing about issues. No list of qualifications. Nothing.
  
  Well, unless you dig into the actual html, where you can find the old links commented out. It appears this website is just recycled from the Mayor's 2001 campaign. As evidence, here's the image beneath Dan's picture on the front page:
  
  Compare to the image in the same spot on every other page:
  
  Now, there's nothing wrong with updating an old campaign website for your current campaign, but sheesh Dan, at least put something on the new site!
  
  For a trip down memory lane, here are the old pages no longer linked to:
  News & Events
  "Where Dan Stands"
  "Dan's Biography"
  More news, apparently
  Old gallery of funny pictures
  
  Now, I'm sure that Mayor Mylott could at least update his Biography. Plus I'm willing to bet he might still stand for something or other. Maybe all that information is out in the media, but it's beyond me why he's not making his own case. C'mon, Mr. Mayor, give us something new!


• Lisa Wong - www.votelisawong.com:
  
  
  
  Lisa Wong's website when it first came online was embarrassing. A single page of mostly white space with a weird-ass slogan and very little of anything else on it. Mylott's page above was superior in comparison, which is pretty sad.
  
  Happily, they've switched places. Where once Mylott had a real site that turned into one page, Wong's one page has turned into a real (four page!) website. The new site is in place now and it's much better. It still has its quirks (it would probably be good to rename the main page to something other than "Page 1" for instance), but it's at least got some substance to it now. For instance, there's this awesome picture of her and her brothers preparing for a formal-dress game of "Red Rover":
  
  
  
  Aside from the charming family photos, there's actually a pretty in-depth Issues page. I won't bother quoting it here, but overall it's a pretty decent list of what Wong hopes to do as mayor. As such, it may be more of a "plans" page than an "issues" page, but at least it's not an annoying "What Lisa Stands For" page.
  
  I'm also going to go out on a limb and bet that Lisa actually made this website herself. Why? Because the title of the "meet Lisa" page is actually "ABOUT ME". Aha!
  
  This isn't a bad thing, though. There are zero cases of "it's" being used when "its" should have been, nor are there problems with "insured" versus "ensured". This automatically makes Wong a better writer than 95% of the people on the internet. Which is obviously a qualification you want in a mayor.
  


• Ted DeSalvatore - not really...:
  
  
  I don't know if Ted DeSalvatore has a real website hidden away somewhere. After all he's a computer guy right? Or if my suspicions are correct and this is his LinkedIn profile, a "Computer Service & Support Training Specialist". Either way, a dude who should have a website.
  
  But no, once again I've linked to the hilariously incomplete Team to Elect DeSalvatore's contact form. Incidentally, if you're an obnoxious blogger who perpetually makes fun of Ted they probably won't want to hear from you, even if you try to be nice.
  
  Regardless, it's not really Ted's site so it doesn't count in the grand total.
  
  UPDATE 7/18/07: He's got one now! Review is here
  


• Ronald Dionne - ?:
  No website I could find, but I don't think anyone gives him much chance anyway. He could better his chances with a bit of self promotion on the web, perhaps. But then people might have to give him more of a chance.


• Tom Donnelly - ?:
  I couldn't find a website for him either. Probably he's just too big a pussy to make one.
  
  UPDATE 8/3/07: Not so! Review is here

There you have it, your handy "Progressive Fitchburg Guide to Mayoral Campaign Websites, Featuring the Unicow". Now back to work.