Doug Clark: Election autopsy finds more bucks, zero bang

The Spokane City Council has been rocked by a seismic shift in the balance of impotence.

The council’s right-leaning rube majority has been replaced by a preponderance of lunks of a more leftist persuasion.

This was the big news after the ballots were counted last week on election night.

Which was pretty lame, if you ask me.

Washington’s mail-in ballot baloney has turned democracy into a process with less fun-factor than sending your aunt a thank-you card for that hideous sweater she sent you for Christmas.

It’s time for citizens to stand up and demand a return to the old voting system of driving to the local grade school, waiting in line and getting a cookie from one of the sweet volunteer poll ladies.

That’ll never happen, of course.

The lazy public – meaning everybody except you and me – never gets outraged except when the cable goes out during a football game.

But getting back to last week’s election, so many questions still remain, as in …

• Are you (#**^ing!!) kidding me?

• This is what we got for the record gazillions of dollars in union and business lucre that poured in for campaign spending?

• Election 2013 – What Was it Good For?

Here in River City, liberal incumbent Jon Snyder easily retained his council seat despite a spirited assault from his conservative geezer opponent, former state Rep. John Ahern.

Prior to the race, this smarty-pants political insider I know predicted that Ahern’s relentless grass-roots campaigning style would give him a huuuuge edge over Snyder’s fernlike demeanor.

Ahern, he vowed, would knock tirelessly on doors and beat the bushes for votes like a farmer smashing invading locusts with a shovel.

Good thing I didn’t place any bets.

In fairness to Ahern, maybe he made a wrong turn and did all that furious campaigning in Cheney.

That would explain how a snoozer like Snyder could wind up with almost 65 percent of the vote.

In our other council race, the margin of larceny was not nearly so egregious.

Candace Mumm, former TV smilecaster and Plan Commission chair, captured about 54 percent of the vote in her win over housing board chairman Michael Cannon.

That’s close enough to make you wonder what Cannon could have done differently to change the outcome.

Besides stealing all of Mumm’s dirty union loot, I mean.

The solution came from this other political know-it-all I know. He offered the following winning template for future candidates to consider:

Step 1. Make headlines by pulling a handgun on a motorist during an angry incident.

Step 2. Make more headlines by trespassing onto your opponent’s property.

Step 3. Compound the shock value by posting a creepy photo of the intrusive act on your Facebook page.

This, of course, was the winning strategy state Rep. Matt Shea (the Road Rage Republican) used last year to defeat Democrat Amy “Playmate” Biviano.

At any rate, shockwaves from the council’s new philosophical makeup are already being felt in the rarefied regions of City Hall.

The day after the election, in fact, I listened to Mayor David Condon give a radio interview and he went several seconds without saying “City of Choice.”

That should tell you how shaken, if not stirred, the poor man is.

The mayor, after all, has been the beneficiary of many 4-3 votes from the current slackers.

So look for the new Commie Council to give our business-backed mayor the bum’s rush by, say, voting to turn every downtown avenue into a bike lane.

And speaking of mayoral woes, did you catch all the fuss being made about Seattle?

The New York Times, no less, thought this was actually worth writing about:

“Voters Oust Mayor for the Third Time in 12 Years.”

This is just another case of West Side bias.

Spokane hasn’t re-elected a mayor since Jimmie Durkin hawked hooch on Main Street.

Does the New York Times give us the humiliation we’re due?

Heck, no. It’s like we don’t even count over here east of the scablands.

I’d write an angry letter to the Times about it if there weren’t so many good football games on today.