With respect to Ashley Swearengin, what has she really done in regards to the city of Fresno? Does being a Job Coordinator, compare to what council members have done? Swearengin is inexperienced, and a calloborative and negotiative individual, which will not get her far with the current challenges Fresno faces today. Councileman Henry T. Perea, has proven that he is a leader, and can make his ideas reality, this is the sort of Mayor that Fresno is in need of. Conference meetings and talk are all important as well, but in the end we need someone like Henry to get the job done. Swearengin will not be able to sustain a city with this much at stake, when she really has no ties to the council, or the experience to lead this difficult escepade.

You dont even like him and probably didn't vote for Autry.
Just because you don't get to go skipping around with his approval your offended.
If HP Jr wins and doesn't go skipping over the rainbow with you what will you do?
Will you publicly come "out" against him?
Most of us can see thru his Brian Setencich act.
It's been used by other politions and is nothing new.

While listening to Ashley Swearengin on KMJ today, Ray Appleton said Jerry Duncan and Henry T. Perea were interviewed last week and they will probably interview two more next week. I am guessing Dages, Boyajian or Eben but that is only my guess. He did say they were playing 30-seconds spots in the morning from all the candidates.
I thought Ashley did a good job answering the questions. Appleton said some people were concerned that Swearengin would not have the direct line to Sacramento that Autry did, or, that Duncan and Perea have said they have. She did her best to dispel that myth by talking about how she was appointed by the Governor to lead the eight county California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley and the California Commission on Economic Development in 2007.

The community has a large number of gay citizens and the mayoral candidates stands are important. There are two big gay events in this town each year, the Gay Pride parade and the Gay Pride Film Festival.

The current mayor refused to support or attend either. The city is not displayed in a good light to film directors who come from afar to attend, and are ignored by it's officials, unlike with other cities. Autry's wife attended a few in the early days, I am sure to Allan's consternation. It is an insult to be snubbed by your representatives.

Let me know when Boyajian or the T-Man is going to be on kkkmj and I'll listen. Anybody see the replay of the mayoral debates at FCC on Comcast?
Miss Hunt was so funny! And the way Garrabay would shrug his shoulders after his answers was amazing. Over here in the Heaton area it's Boyajian country.

Unlike Ranaldo the soccer player I can spot the fake fish.

Dare I say her name 3 times in the dark and find my sewer pipes missing?
Was that you holding the sign and picketing about moving pipes at Fashion Fair?

Ashley Swearengin will be interviewed on KMJ today between 1-2 PM ( May 6th). Not a station I normally listen to except for Fresno State sports but I will try to be available to hear it.

I hear that T-Man was forced to cut his hair due an environmental impact report...

Yeah T-man can you elaborate?

Can you elaborate?

Tom is a real stand up guy whose actions speak for themselves. He's the only one who's stood up to developers, citing the Environmental Impact Reports that everyone else on the council (including Henry) ignored. This is just one example. I get the sense that being Mayor would not be a notch on his belt or a step ladder to something else, unlike the some of the other candidates.

Bee endorses Swearingen for mayor is a surprise to me. I thought for sure it would have been the T-Man or Boyajian. But, the Bee has endorsed other Republicans over the years and has supported conservative issues at times, too. They're not really the Liberal paper as labeled by the rightwing nutosphere.

Just saw Boyajian's tv ad last night for the first time. I thought it was heartfelt and true.

What's up with Paul Dictos getting a $27 refund on his filing fee?

No Sue Allen, I do not work for Fresno State other then paying for my season football tickets. I did graduate from Fresno State but I am guessing Ashley Swearengin was in junior high school at the time.
My point regarding vocational training with PG&E and the RJI is that the RJI is a collaborative effort where it works with a cross section of government agencies, private businesses and non-profits to increase the economy and improve the local community in the process. The RJI helps get these groups together to work in the same direction: A business has work for skilled workers. The local population needs a job but is not skilled. Using the state community colleges these workers are trained for that specific job. The private business now has skilled workers so the business is less likely to move to a part of the country where they have skilled workers. The local economy increases from the business prospering and the local citizens now can add to the local economy with the benefits of a good job.
Another way the RJI helps local businesses is with the industry clusters. There are over 80 software companies in the Fresno area! I did not know this before and I don't think the software companies knew the others existed as well. Many of these are one or two person companies but some are 40+. Not only do these groups swap advice ,local employees know where these companies are as well. So instead of thinking they have to leave Fresno to get a software job the local knowledge workers can stay local after high school or college. These workers add to our economy. Besides the software group there are another ten or so industry clusters that work similarly.
The main point is the RJI is a collaborative group. It helps get these important groups at the table and work from there instead of them all working in isolation. These groups are educators, government agencies, and local businesses.. This is a better way to improve our local economy instead of trying to woo an outside company that will demand lots of concessions to agree to move here and that is if you can out compete the other communities vying for these "silver bullet" companies. Once these business's concessions run out they are looking for the next community to do the same and move out of the valley and we are back to where we started. A locally formed company is more likely to stay local even after it grows successful.

Sue,

The Bee endorsed Ashley on Sunday. Thoughts?

And, the question is not "who is Ashley" but rather, "who is better than Ashley?"

Sounds like everyone is getting tired. Andy, do you work at Fresno State?In an earlier e-mail, you alluded to the RJI sponsoring the program that PGE was engaged in with the community college system to train future workers. Seems like they worked it out all by themselves without the RJI, wow, go figure. Sad thing is, the RJI did exactly what it always does, it puts itself in front of people who are actually doing the work, then they take credit for it. Kinda like the big employment boom of a few years ago that they were taking credit for then, opps, the housing bust came. So if they were taking credit for all of the jobs created, why is the RJI now silent on all of the job loss. Sustainability.
Fact is, the only job the RJI has created is Ashley's, with taxpayer dollars. Yes, let's look behind the curtain. Who is Ashley and what work experience does she really have?

Can I get one to eat Garlic Fries with at Grizzlie Games?
It was just a thought.

Autry should stick to collecting the garbage. His political gamesmanship doesn't mean that gay rights is a mayoral issue.

I'd say asking the candidates about their take on gay rights is fair enough, especially if you are a gay citizen. Autry felt it was within his purview when he held his Marriage Commitment Day at City Hall back in 2004, inviting thousands of men and women to take part but excluding same-sex partners back when gay marriage was big in the news.
Autry brought his agenda to City Hall. I'd like to know if the candidates would do the same.

I don't really see how their position on gay rights has anything to do with being mayor. The mayor's job is basically to make sure my trash gets collected every week. Leave the gay rights and abortion stuff to the guys in Sacramento and Washington.

I wish what you said made sense.

If elected will they supports the rights of all or just their donors?
If HP Jr. is elected Mayor will he "come out" in support of gay rights?
Or are we going to get more gay bashing self loathing denial?
Will daddy HP Sr. insist the County of Fresno recognize gay marriage or support the church against gay marriage?
Word is daddy want's to seek a State office.
Harder to get elected to State offices if public and media perceives you as hypocritical.

How about locations with computers linked to a message board throughout the city. At different times of the week, different ones are open for dialogs with City Council and the Mayor directly through messages posted. Sign up for the list with your Diver's License. Point being to put the City Council and Mayor in direct contact with the city, and make them accountable at the same time to the people they serve. A ticker would display the question and answers on all the sites for all around to see, kind of like the tickers at banks. Involve local TV and News Papers to keep people aware they have a chance in this area on this day to talk to their city leaders.

For instance

City Council member Jane Doe, what duties do you perform on a daily basis for the city and your district?

I'm not talking about using this only during times of election. I'm talking making this a consistent thing. Anyone can go to a city council meeting, but how many do. Maybe the Council needs to be more accessible somehow, that could help the city find community amongst itself.

Anyhow, just an idea for connecting city government to it's people.

Diablo

Well, if you really want to over-analyze, none of the candidates provide a method for dialogue through their websites...no comments, no way to pose questions or comments in a public forum.
Actually, RJI aside, I think that Jobs & Education are the number one need. We can't pull out of an economic slump with public safety; sure, we might feel secure, but that doesn't buy the confidence that a living wage does. And I'm all for air quality, but I think what Ashley's priorities address are more fundamental: if you develop strong regional leadership and effective/responsive government, the issues that drive other candidates' priorites are much more solvable.
That doesn't mean she's my choice, but I do think she's a good one.

Right now I'm looking at Perea or Swearengin for mayor. This may be over analyzing the websites a bit, but looking at Perea's priorities it's 1) Public Safety, 2) Air Quality, and 3) Economic Development. For Swearengin: 1) Jobs & Education, 2) Safe/Quality Neighborhoods, 3) Effective and Responsive Government, and 4) Regional Leadership.

Just looking at the way they've listed their priorities, it looks like Perea wants to treat the symptoms of poor economic health, whereas Swearengin kind of just goes for the root cause. That seems like the better approach, and theoretically the other issues will resolve themselves to a certain extent.

Haven't heard or seen much from the other candidates that makes me too excited. I probably won't do extensive research until late summer, so sorry if that's kind of superficial, but to paraphrase Tommy_Tower, she's the best of a bad lot.

What other candidates echo her position?

Also, if you read my post carefully, you will see that I never said she was qualified. I said she was in the best position. Sort of a winner by default.

My point was that at least she's approaching the problem from an economic perspective. It's also unfair to lay the 11% unemployment figure at her feet, when the entire country is in what will likely be the worst economic downtown since the Great Depression. Moreover, you're assuming (unfairly) that the only way the RJI could be successful is by lowering unemployment in real terms. Maybe the RJI kept the unemployment from being even worse? Maybe without the RJI, unemployment is at 14%? I don't know for sure, but I do know that your understanding of success is incomplete. A big problem is that this area is without skilled jobs and relied heavily on construction to pay the bills. Good when the good times roll, but the lack of diversification will hit us hard. I'm not sure what a small non-profit organization could have done to change the entire economy of an entire region.

Can you please inform me what makes Ashley qualified? I am not opposed to Ashley, I just want to know what she has done for the people of this town. RJI is a dismal failure. In fact, unemployment is higher than before--at 11%.

Also her position on downtown is echoed by at least two other candidates--this position is not unique to her.

I know I have been critical of Ashley in the past, but I'm voting for her. In part, I think she's probably in the best position to help Fresno address the biggest problem it has (a backward economy with high unenmployment). I suppose the other part is that the other candidates are either kooks, carpetbaggers, or political cronies. Besides which, Henry appears to be closeted and has undoubtedly sold out to the unions. And the thought of electing someone's son reeks of Chicago-style politics (although, sadly, I do not anticipate Richard M. Daley-esque results from little Hank).

All of this leaves Ashley. And she seems to get to that (1) downtown reviatlization is extremely important to fixing the local economy and (2) downtown will not be revitalized with housing for artists and a few clubs. She gets that any downtown plan that doesn't lure the large local business firms back downtown is doomed to failure.

When I posted before (okay, in several places) about anonymous posts all sounding the same, and endorsing the same candidate, they were quite similar to Sue's. *sigh*

Don't forget to add to the long list of special interest groups who are supporting and giving money to Ashley, Perea and Duncan that include members of The Fresno Nuclear Group. Yes, the very same people who want to build a nuclear power plant in our own backyard are backing these candidates. It is wasy to verify. Just look at these candidate's websites and look into their "endorsements". These candidates are doing the same thing as other candidates have done and that is, tell the people what they want to hear, but they are still corrupt when we aren't looking.
I am actually surprised and saddened that the ONLY candidate who I have read about was not mentioned. That person is Jim Boswell. Mr. Boswell has founded a non profit that helps kids, he has helped develop green technology and if you listen to him or check out his literature, you will find that he actually has solutions to the many issues we face. Mr. Boswell has actually developed ideas that will save our city over 30 million dollars every year. He will also work for every person in our city instead of those who have paid him. Mr. Boswell has some amazing plans for Fresno and although he is straight forward and seemingly has no fear of challenging the other candidates to come up with actual plans, since he is not rich and does not have special interests behind him, the media doesn't talk to him as much. If the people of Fresno really want a mayor who will make a better city for all of us, then you should really check out Jim Boswell. I was thinking about Ashley until I read more about and listened to Mr. Boswell and now I know we have a great opportunity to finally have a mayor we can be proud of and who will work for us. Look at Mr. Boswell's endorsements. They are people from every background and social status. I truly hope the people will vote for Jim Boswell. We really need a mayor who has actual plans and who will work for the people of the city.

You will also find endorsing Ashley Swearengin huge proponents of revitalizing downtown Fresno such as Craig Scharton, Suzanne Bertz-Rosa, architect Chris Johnson, Central Valley Bank President Dan Doyle, Tim Stearns, H Spees, Kaye Bonner Cummings, and Dr. Tom Jones among others.

Interesting comments. Bill is right on point. With the group supporting Ashley, I would say that we could soon have the republican version of Karen Humphrey. She seems to be part of a group that likes to meet alot and figure out how bring public taxpayer dollars into their coffers. Did you know that the RJI, purported to be run by Ashley and the private sector is really funded by taxpayer dollars. Yes, the city of fresno provides over $300,000 dollars of the RJI budget, of which Ashley pays herself $100,000. Not bad, With Autry leaving office, this group is trying to figure out how to keep their gravy train going.
Maybe it is time to take a look behind Ashley, you might find John Welty and the Fresno State crowd.You know the ones that brought us the Stacy Johnson Klein debacle

We're in the process of interviewing all of the mayoral candidates on KFSR's program The Pulse, and you can download all of those interviews from KFSR.org as MP3 files. Doug Vagim was this week (4/26), Tom Boyajian is next week (5/3). We already have done interviews with Boswell, Dages, Duncan, Eben, Perea, Swearengin. The rest of the candidates will follow. Here's the link to the page with the audio files:

http://www.csufresno.edu/kfsr/election08.html

There's also links to the Downtown Fresno candidates forums for both mayor and city council on that same page.

I wasn't there, but I did hear that she did have to leave City Hall once during a public meeting.

I know there isn't much information about her online, but if anyone wants to make an educated vote for or against Barbara Hunt, if you search the City Council or Planning Commission minutes online on the city's website, you will definitely find her and the issues that she is for (and against).

Or as they say escort out of the building!

A "West Fresno" Pipe Lady.

Pipe as in conspiracy types.

Everyones involved and out to get her.

You might find her if you attend a City Council or Planning Commission hearing. She has been known to frequently comment on planning and development projects. She's a self-proclaimed "citizen activist", especially for the west side, I believe.

Like Mike Eagles
They are to far gone in "cartoon land" to ever really be a serious canidate.
But they keep putting their name on the ballot.
I think she is also the one always running for school board seats.
Isn't she the one that threw a fit last time because she filled out paper work to run for two diffrent seats on the school board or on two diffrent school district boards at the same time.
They ruled her name couldn't be on the ballot because she didn't live in one district and in her district she didn't correct her paperwork.
I wonder if like Mike Eagles it's not really her it's her friend(invisible).
The one everyone discriminates against because they can't see him
Could you just see it if Hunt and Eagles were to ever be elected to the City Council together?
You'd have to add 2 more seats for the friends.
Barbara and Mike would spend all day arguing with each other and with each others invisibles.
Yikes!
Also how would you know if they were voting or if the invisibles were casting the vote.
Do they each get to vote twice?
I wonder if you have multiple personalitys do they let each personality vote speratly then total up the majority to decide how your vote counts.
So something like 5 "yes" votes and 3 "no" votes by the personalitys gets counted as a "yes".
Or are the vote totals fractionalized.
5/8's yes and 3/8's no.
Now my head hurts.
Mine not my invisible bear.

Who, amongst the mayoral candidates knows anything about the $36million fund available for New Technology Transit? As gasoline prices reach $4 per gallon, driving an automobile is going to have a definite negative effect on our local economy. Which mayoral candidate has even mentioned this? The past 80 years of sprawl development is not an effective manner of urban planning: Downtown Fresno needs to be the regional commerce hub. Who is talking about this one thing that will have the biggest economic impact on Fresno’s future?

I’d talk to any of the candidates about this, call my office: www.centraltransit.com

I thought Ashley should have done more to prevent the nation wide sub-prime mortgage foreclosure problem. What was she thinking??? She should have known not to give out those loans to people with no credit and no money down!

But Andy, none of that matters when unemployment is still "above 10 percent" (which it has just recently risen to again). I guess that couldn't have anything to do with a nationwide recession, seasonal employment, an over-inflated housing market that's burst in all our faces, and the slashing of jobs across many industries as the financial belt tightens.
Obviously, Ashley couldn't tackle those things with the RJI, so she's just not fit to be mayor...

Through the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley $3.5 million has been secured to be used for vocational job training. There is 2,500 available high wage, high growth jobs available in the area but no trained workers for those positions. With the local city colleges now providing the training for these specific jobs , the economy gets better, the industries win and the unemployed person wins.
PG&E has job training at Fresno City that produces $70,000 a year job in four-months of training. So many of their linemen are retiring that they are cooperating with the city colleges to produce more young workers to fill the shortage. I think this is how the RJI is working to lower our poverty rate and boost the economy with all the industry clusters like the new WET incubator ,the advanced manufacturing, tourism, logistics etc.
Also, Ashley Swearengin worked for some private marketing firms before she asked to lead the newly formed non-profit RJI and didn't "luck out" while still in school. She was also worked to help get the $3.5 million for the above workforce training as part of the Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley.

I don't know much about her (I've tried to research her online to no success, and she doesn't provide printed materials), but I do know that after two candidate forums, she's, well...unforgettable.
@Guest - that's an interesting list of reasons not to vote. Just for fun what does it take, and who has it?

Is she from the Hunt's food canning family fame?........

Wow, so just because someone looks like the Hedgehog meams they would be a shitty mayor? That's a well thought out political view there.

Ashley has no experience she fell into the RJI thing when she was going to school. We still have above 10 percent unemployment here, and the workforce investment board study shows we also have a major skilled labor shortage. Not sure what she has done over there at the RJI.

Perea is spoiled and a career politician looking to advance his career.

Duncan and Dages or good ol boys looking for self gratification.

Boyajian looks like that porn star (Ron Jeremy?) nuff said

The police officer guy will spend all the general fund money on the PD, and won't understand anything else.

Who else is there? Not sure.

Barbara Hunt for mayor:)

Look at her fundraising statement filed earlier this month and you'll see where she is getting her $$$. She and Henry are splitting the big developer $$$.

Arthur L Selland 1958-1964 was the best mayor Fresno ever had. Must've been friends with Al Radka?

Small Rack for a gal,but she has not sold out to the council, sorry you rat bastards, I have many time to do business...you know who I am, and ya'all said to be quiet about our business.....Nuff Said.

Paul is a minor libility, but only in "Hillary" like negetive campaign will that be a issue.

All other have been bought and paid for, so we know that.

Other than Jim Patterson, Ashley won't go down on those rat bastards that think they have the power.

Go on girl...small tities and all!

It's not their business.
Why are they running background checks on people running for office?
They are not hiring them.
I mean it's not like any canidate running ever pretended to be someoneelse or did drag.
The canidates credit history or police files should not be made public.
This is how they steal your identity.
Nobody should ever give out their SSN.
If they run a back ground check and find something damaging what do they do with the information?
Do they make it public or do they hold it over the canidates head as black mail?
Sounds like the "Good Old Boys of Fresno" are up to no good again.

Was Dan Whitehurst the last best mayor of Fresno?

I do not know who was before him as mayor of Fresno, is there a list online?