Election redux

Me? I blame Torre.

This column was going to be about how lucky we were to be done with another election cycle. About how we came together as a community and voted with at least a 50 percent consensus for a mayor to represent us for the next two years.

That would have been a High Point. But no. Instead we have another month of nonsense ahead with another "climactic" election day on the 5th of June.

All, thanks to Torre.

Why, you ask? Let's look at the numbers.

Mick Ireland, the "community candidate," as inferred in a recent Aspen Times editorial, received 1,036 yeas, or 48 percent of the vote. The tennis playing, mono-monikered, soon to be ex-mayor pro-tem city councilman, Torre, registered 370 total votes, 17 percent of the total. If the Torre supporters had simply stayed home, Mick would have won with a resounding 57 percent of the 1,813 votes cast.

If Torre's voters had gone to the polls and split their votes evenly between Mick and second-place finisher Tim Semrau (going out on a limb, I would suggest that scenario to be highly unlikely), then Mick would have won with 55 percent. Even if the Torre voters had overwhelmingly tossed their support over to Semrau, say by as much as 84 percent (313 votes to 57), Mick still would have won.

Any way you slice it, the mayoral runoff is a result to Torre's decision to abandon his City Council seat and seek the mayoral spot. Now he will spend his time playing softball and watching Monday Night Football.

But perhaps the biggest upset on election night was that a politician named Ireland seemingly could not find a place to get a shot and a beer.

"This town has dried up," said Ireland about his inability to set up a gathering, which is a sad indictment of this community and certainly raises questions about the Mick's qualifications for the job. Semrau, on the other hand, was able to secure a glass of champagne, the standard choice of celebrating developers.

Bonnie Behrend's poor showing was also a surprise of sorts. While she was not expected to contend, what with eschewing Squirm Night and pointedly not raising much of a ruckus, one still would have thought her pleas to help the babies would register with more than 30 folks. That number wouldn't even carry the day-care contingent.

All of this for what the Times noted was "a largely ceremonial position ... [whose] largest role is serving as an ambassador for Aspen locally, nationally and internationally." Ouch. Talk about calling a spade a spade. It makes the Aspen mayor sound a bit like the queen of England. All hat and no cattle as they say at the White House.

Oh well, come June, after a runoff that is likely to be a mere formality, we'll at least get to enjoy the irony of having a queen ... er, mayor ... named Ireland.

All thanks to Torre.