Monday, April 13, 2009

Mayoral candidates for 2009 III

When the mayor's race is on in San Antonio, often a handful of colorful characters will inject themselves into the news covering the more serious candidates. This is more the case when there is no incumbent for the office, as with this year's race.

Phil Hardberger is term-limited, so he's not running again, though he is a popular mayor. The favorite for the 2009 race is Julian Castro, a former city councilman and one of Hardberger's opponents a few years ago. Serious contenders are Trish DeBerry-Mejia (a public relations person who will probably give Castro the most competition for votes), Diane Cibrian (a current councilwoman who you might remember from her days of fighting Boobie Rock), and Sheila McNeil (another city councilwoman).

And then there are the usual cluster of contenders that no one pretends will ever have a chance at being mayor, yet they still run for the office, some time and time again, and they provide a lot of entertainment. One of those other candidates is Napoleon Madrid. With a name like that, what's not to like?

A lot, if you dislike plagiarism.

The Express-News found some supsicous stuff on Madrid's Web site:

Napoleon Madrid said he jumped into the mayor's race because he didn't think they were talking about the right issues. But it turns out his distaste for their ideas wasn't so strong.

Madrid's “Issues and Concerns” page on his Web site was nearly identical to the platform on Trish DeBerry-Mejia's campaign site, including the order in which each issue was presented. The text was copied word for word in its entirety.

Madrid pulled the page down from his site Friday, shortly after a San Antonio Express-News reporter asked him how the two pages could be identical.

“No way,” he responded initially. “All I can tell you is the interns that were working on mine, I know that they went to everybody else's to check it out. I can't tell you on that, sir, to be honest with you.

“I would have never done that,” he said. “I don't plagiarize nothing.”

Madrid, who has said he believes theft is wrong, denied that he'd stolen from DeBerry-Mejia and placed the blame on an intern: “He was a student from, um, St. Philip's (College).”

"Yeah, and my wife is, uh, Morgan Fairchild. Yeah, that's the ticket."

(For more analysis of all the candidates, check out the Express-News's coverage.)

1 comment:

Dave said...

Of the crazy unelectable candidates that made it to our association's Mayoral Forum, Napoleon certainly stood out as one odd bird. In fairness, he really doesn't understand how his web site works; it took one of our residents to explain to him why it was broken and how to get it fixed.

But when you have an IQ of 180 and are eagerly awaiting your forthcoming Nobel Peace Prize, web pages and the lifting of content are not high on the list of priorities - I suppose.