My Big Fat Greed Wedding

Forgive me for indulging in more Raleigh City politics but Mary-Ann is at large again. Monday night she danced around the issue of developer contributions:

Baldwin - explained contributions from a broad base of support. Made comparisons of “development” backed funding to other candidates.

Tonight at a City Council candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters and WakeUP Wake County her two-step was more rehearsed. She said that she had accepted donations from "members of the development community" but that they needed to be looked at "proportionately" with respect to other contributions.

So she's getting mucho dinero from the real estate community. But don't worry. She's getting so much more money from other people that realtors and developers will have to wait in line behind the other money. That's reassuring. Once that water hits the Ouzo it turns cloudy. It doesn't matter which faucet or bottle it comes from. And yes, that is money pinned to those jackets.

She is running on a platform that includes communications (hasn't she heard about open meeting laws), community values (whatever that is, insert your value here) and balanced growth. Balanced growth? That's the mantra of the Triangle Community Coalition (formerly known as the Wake County Real Estate and Building Coalition) who gave her a thumbs up in the Triangle Community Coalition Political Pig Pickin’ 2007 Straw Poll. Baldwin claimed tonight she had no endorsements from the development community but it sure looks like she's gotten the nod from them. You may recall the Director of the TCC gets a $5,000 monthly retainer from the NC Association of Realtors through his company Public Solutions, as does Baldwin's political choreographer, Campaign Connections.