My (Rauterkus) advice to Ludwig and others in the Whack Pack: Pick your time and bail!

Today I talked with Les Ludwig in a hallway on Grant Street as city council was in session. On Saturday I talked with David Tessitor at the WPLUG.org meeting at CMU. On both instances, I asked these candidates for mayor to resign their race. The wise thing for them both to do is to make an exit statement and toss their support to another candidate who has a chance of getting more than 1,000 votes.

My generous predictions say that Tessitor will get less than 1,000 votes and Ludwig will get less than 50.
G.W. and David Tessitor in front of news cameras with efforts on the North Side some years ago.

This same advice was given by me to Ludwig as soon as I heard that he was not going to quit his race for the general election after his poor showing in the Dem's primary. I feel that Ludwig is doing the wrong thing.

I am a realist.

These two, Ludwig and Tessitor are not helping the city's discussion in the final weeks and are not going to have any impact at the polls with voter results.

I am going to make a rash statement as well about the Socialist Party candidate as well and put him in the same category. But, so what. That's their history of being harmless, once every four years. The Socialist Party has a long-standing practice of running a candidate for Mayor, City of Pittsburgh. It happens all the time. Four years ago the Socialist candidate was a coal miner. Frank has since moved out of town. To some degree, the Socialist does not get under my skin because he is on the ballot, nor on the debate stage. Likewise he was full of national views.

I think that Ludwig and Tessitor could make more noise and have a bigger impact for the good of the city as they exit the race than they could if they were in the race. They both have some decent ideas -- be they hidden under a mountain of other burdens. But the ideas are not catching on in the minds of the voters when it comes to election day. The election avenue, at this time, for them, is a dead end!

On another matter, the Green candidate won't cave to the Republican.

Finally, sadly, I don't think Joe Weinroth has done much waving an olive branch of peace in the directions of his loyal opposition on the ballot, yet alone the masses of voters in the city.