Running for City Council
A Story about Local Politics
Linda Gellerton announced her independent candidacy for the Daleville city council on March sixteenth. The next day, she released her platform. Among her twenty-page list of policy promises were the following:
She pledged to end the role of dark money in politics, tax billionaires their fair share, and eliminate share buybacks by corporations.
She would end the war in Ukraine in her first week.
She would end Daleville’s role in the systemic oppression of infant sea otters.
She would achieve net zero on day one, prosecute citizens who failed to separate their recycling from their compost, and bring a saner climate back to Daleville.
She would put the first woman on the Moon.
She planned to introduce a bill to require the use of electric vehicles by all residents by the end of the fiscal year.
She would implement a citywide public option for health insurance, along with childcare and parental leave for all citizens. It would be paid for entirely by the city, and funded by eliminating foreign aid.
She would eliminate the use of tobacco inside city limits, and would introduce subsidies to lower the consumer costs of CBD oil and marijuana.
She would end the systemic shaming and disenfranchisement of fat individuals.
She would put the Wall Street bankers in jail.
She would end the practice of local businesses operating with the explicit goal of increasing profits.
She would fine the oil companies.
She would bring peace to the Middle East.
She would withdraw from NATO and the USMCA, reduce Daleville funding for foreign wars, and introduce an across-the-board thirty-percent tariff on all goods entering Daleville from neighboring counties. The tariff would be set at forty-percent for goods coming from out-of-state.
Meanwhile the other independent candidates were mostly just promising to lower taxes, bring in new business, and clean up the corruption in the police department. The Democratic candidates were running on a platform of increasing taxes, giving more funding to public schools, and reducing funding for the corrupt police department. The Republican candidates were running on a platform of opening city council meetings with public prayer, increasing taxes on alcohol and marijuana while lowering them on everything else, and celebrating the corruption in the police department. The socialist candidate was promising to fight for unionization of all city workers, raise the citywide minimum wage to fifty dollars an hour, and add an antitrust division to the city government to go after the craft breweries. Even the Communist Party candidate was only promising to eliminate the private ownership of cars and nationalize the local coffee shops.
The Libertarian Party was also running a candidate. She had promised to begin the session of the new city council by introducing a motion to dissolve the city government and place all public property up for auction. If that failed, she planned to focus on abolishing zoning and public schools.
The local press didn’t take Gellerton’s candidacy very seriously, especially when she made a comment about the dog lobby controlling the weather. In a city with almost as many dogs as people, this comment didn’t go over well. Her campaign manager later tried to add context by saying that Gellerton was allergic to fur.