WIDMYER: It's all about leadership

This city election is not your run-of-the-mill, ho-hum voting day. This one is different.

We have a very clear choice for who will be our new mayor. Either we move forward in these challenging times, or we step back and spend the next four years blaming the previous administration and stalling the small amount of economic momentum we have garnered in the last five tough years.

Every organization that has interviewed all the candidates so far has wholeheartedly endorsed Steve Widmyer for mayor. Only the two groups that have met privately with Mary Souza have endorsed her.

Steve has run a clean campaign. He portrays a refreshing message about LEADERSHIP. The basis of measuring who should navigate our city is who is the strongest LEADER.

Steve’s primary challenger has based her entire public career on being negative. The foundation of her established website was her negative reaction to being let go from the City Planning Commission. She built her base on the negative aspects that she painted of the past city administration, and how unfair they were to her. Steve is not the past administration.

Steve is a conservative, successful citizen of Coeur d’Alene who has broad support due to his leadership skills and proven successes in business and civic involvement. He is a consensus builder who manages for the good of the whole, not for the individual.

As a past board member and chairman of Jobs Plus, I know how economic development works. Steve gets it. He acknowledges the differences between targeted economic stimulus versus a broad scattering of dollars to try to make everybody happy. I can also attest to the fact that in economic development, leadership in the local government matters. Steve has what it takes to bring new jobs to the community.

JOHN BARLOW

Coeur d’Alene