The problem is exactly what that opposition is in name. No offense, but your party is having big problems on the national scene lately. Over the years the GOP has evolved to embrace demagoguery, hatemongering, and spreading disinformation as its primary tactics for winning elections and consolidating power. Your party is becoming more and more a regional bloc of misguided people stirred up by base emotions, bigotry, religious extremism, and insecurity.

In know many voters in the city who would gladly vote for someone in the GE who is not Byron Brown, yet they can’t bring themselves to pull the lever for someone under the Republican column.

Nearly everywhere in the urban Northeast suffers from the same “one-party-state” syndrome because the national two-party system completely fails to scale to state and local politics. Different regions of the US are home to different cultures and political realities.

I hate to keep tooting the same horn, but there seriously needs to be another party on the scene. A party that can find moderate common cause among those in opposition to the Northern big-city Democratic political machines.

But politics is supposed to be, at least theoretically, about ideas and the competition between them.

I don’t know if success would be in the cards if the best, most charismatic, most idea-filled Republican went up against the Grassroots GOTV juggernaut, but at the very least the discussion about the city’s direction and future would continue for another 1 1/2 months.

The fact that this is all over in September does a disservice to everybody.

Just think – the Democratic turnout in the city was 33%. 63% of that number voted for Byron Brown.

Out of a city of almost 300,000 people, only 24,600 decided who will be its next mayor.

There’s something horribly wrong with that.