Yesterday Bill Haslam was elected Knoxville’s new mayor over Madeline Rogero by a relatively close 15,370 to 13,684 margin. The victory came in no small part thanks to this:
As of Sept. 15, Haslam had raised $578,571 – nearly four times the $155,700 Rogero raised. About half his contributions came from well-heeled business leaders and their families, while the other half came from more than 2,000 donors who gave smaller amounts.
For his part, Haslam gives credit to his grassroots campaign, which knocked down many Knoxvillian doors. By my calculations, Haslam received 0.77 votes for each alleged door his campaign struck. I have no door knocking data to assess whether that’s a good ratio or not.
Haslam says, “It’s Knoxville’s time.” Let’s hope so. There’s a lot of untapped potential here.
As for me, I’ll be looking forward to those new bikeways.
It certainly was much closer than the experts predicted and the argument that it took 4 times the money to get 5% more votes offers some hope for progressives in the future.
Nice job Brian
btw: consider http://ospolitics.org for your blogroll here on your very nice new site.
I keep thinking about changing but I resist.
Yours looks very nice tho.