| 7 January |
That youthful smile |
After telling Mark a few minutes ago that I was in too bad of a mood to write this tonight, I got a flat tire and have an hour’s wait for AAA. So to kill some time, let me tell you all about Mark Kirk’s youthful smile.
Those of you that live in the city of Hesperia probably get the inside joke. For those of you who don’t, I thought I’d take a minute to explain before I write the main post.
As anyone who has read the blog for a while knows, Mark ran for a seat on the Hesperia City Council this past November. Al Vogler personally financed several hit pieces targeting Mark. At least one of the hit pieces made reference to Mark’s “youthful smile” as though that was a good reason not to vote for Mark. Honestly, it was the dumbest hit piece I’ve ever seen. I’ve never quite understood why Al was so enamoured with Mark’s smile. Unfortunately for Mark, it has given me something to tease him about.
But it also is one reason why I have so much respect for Mark. You see, at the beginning of the campaign Al asked me to set up a meeting with the three of us. Al’s real purpose for the meeting did not become clear until we were all there and Al started badgering Mark over everything from the Central Committee to water issues. To his credit Mark kept his cool, answered Al’s questions and accusations truthfully and then agreed to Al’s callenge to run a clean campaign. Wihin days of that meeting Al, along with Paul Bosacki, started with hits pieces. Mark did not respond in kind but instead kept his word and ran a clean campaign, likely costing him the election. But I really feel Hesperia’s loss was the county’s gain. As of yeserday Mark became chief of staff to the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, one of the most powerful positions in the county.
I believe it was this past July when I first met Mark. The first thing that struck me with Mark was his candor and the second was that he stood by his friends even when it wasn’t politically correct to do so. There are two traits I highly admire: integrity and backbone. Mark showed me he had both of those. Thus an extremely unlikely friendship developed.
In the past six months I’ve learned more about Mark and I am convinced that as that along with his boss Gary Ovitt we are going to see a new attitude towards employees, a greater level of professionalism,and most importantly, a higher ethical standard.
Well Aaa is so I’ll finish his later.
There are things already that I cannot talk about where the county has gone with the status quo of employee abuse and Mark has said, “No, we’re not going to treat employees that way.” I’m not sure he wants me to talk about it on the blog yet, but I gave him one suggestion when I met with him Saturday that he has already put into motion to better communicate with employees. And there are at least two more in the works.
