BARRY HOBBIS, SADDENED, EMBARRASSED, ECHOES GEOFF YOUNG: Losing Candidate still optimistic about ‘process of empowering people to run for office,’ but resents attention given to ‘clown with Rudolph nose’

 

VICTORIA ELECTION 2008 POST-MORTEM

CRITICAL POLITICAL ANALYSIS BY GREGORY HARTNELL

OPTIMISTIC LOSER BARRY HOBBIS SAYS HE IS SADDENED AND EMBARRASSED FOR VICTORIA

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Barry Hobbis, an independent Candidate for Victoria City Council who was often seen running for the door of All Candidates’ Meetings when the going got tough, is ‘at a loss to explain [his] state of mind,’ saddened and embarrassed by what he describes as ‘a broken election process.’

Mr. Hobbis is understandly bitter; as a neophyte Candidate he is not used to losing.  Apparently, as an ex-RCMP officer with a simplistic campaign slogan (’I want my city back’) he expected to win on the first go-around.  Those few Victoria voters who bothered to vote thought otherwise.

He echoes concerns voiced by another Candidate, incumbent Geoff Young, who was elected but is equally if not more bitter than Mr. Hobbis, about what he calls the ‘degradation of the process to elect responsible leaders in our community.’

In their hubris, both Candidates display a haughty and disdainful contempt not only for democracy, but for their fellow Candidates, choosing to use them as scapegoats for their elitist notions of how the City of Victoria should be governed.

Both have attacked fellow Candidate Tavis Dodds of the Work Less Party without bothering themselves to actually name him, citing his use of a plastic clown nose as a disruptive prop to garner attention during recent All Candidates’ Meetings.  

While I myself had concerns about Mr. Dodds’ use of the gimmick and how it might adversely impact his own reception by Victoria audiences (and conveyed those to him), I never once felt personally diminished by associating with the Christian Candidate who chose to audition for the great tragic role of Councillor as a Comedian.  I understand that he still has a Charter-protected right to play it straight or play it as a tragic clown.

In fact, I find it truly comic that these two uptight Candidates (Messers Young and Hobbis) feel so anxious to dissociate themselves from the hoi-poloi who actually are still interested in participating in democracy at the local level, however unconventionally, in this great dramatic audition called the Victoria Election.

In their haste to distinguish themselves from the riff-raff, in their very bourgeois anxiety to be thought of as ’serious’ Councillor Candidates, they make themselves look very foolish indeed.

For a link to the Hobbis essay, found in the Comments section of the November 21 number of the Times Colonist daily monopoly rag, please go to our Comments section below.

- ‘Goyo de la Rosa’

Gregory Hartnell, Councillor Candidate

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Victoria Election 2008

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