Griswold's New Tone

Interesting article from Gary Nelson regarding Griswold's new tone in the waning weeks of the Mesa Mayor's race. As we have pointed out here, Rex Griswold has gone on the offensive in the past few weeks in the mail and on the phone talking about Scott Smith and his background as a developer.

First, Griswold should thank Nelson for the article because its helping him get extra mileage out of his flyers and phone calls... well, I guess he should probably thank me as well since I have reposted them in their entirety. Here is one of the most interesting lines from the piece:

"Griswold said he has not accumulated a long list of high-profile endorsements because he wants to retain his appeal as an unencumbered political outsider."

Personally, I find that hard to believe. I would bet that he tried to get the endorsements of the other people and was not able to do so. Look at the endorsements on his site, he takes a great deal of effort to make sure you know the occupation or the background of each one of his endorsements. Do you really think that he was trying to shy away from a high-profile list? Why say that someone was Mesa's Man of the Year, if it doesn't really matter about their profile?

I think that Tom Freestone hit the nail on the head. Based on the first election and the endorsements of late, you have to assume that the momentum is going for Smith. Griswold needs people to know that he is out there and to do so, he is trying to reinvent himself as this outsider. I guess if it worked for Smith before, Griswold figures it can work for him now.

He goes on to say that he was brought on "to reform." The he points to the hire of a new City Manager and Police Chief as his types of reforms. Did he do those all by himself? Did he even take a leadership role on either of these efforts? I'd be interested to see if anyone else gives him credit for those two events. I've also heard from several people that the building codes still need a lot of work, so I wonder why he is taking credit for that as well.

It would be interesting to see who Griswold considers among the "insiders" of Mesa. It would be especially interesting to hear on how he intends to work with those folks if he were to get elected. The problem with election races is when they heat up, the heat is on you as well. When he turns up the negatives attention on Smith, he can't help but put more emphasis on his accomplishments (or lack thereof).