Smith Announces Formation Of Exploratory Committee For 5th Ward Seat

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Contact: Steve Smith stevenlsmith58@gmail.comSteve_Smith Professional Pic
For immediate release: May 27, 2014
Smith announces formation of exploratory committee

Today Steve Smith (D) 5th Ward Evansville city resident announced the formation of an exploratory committee to run for the 5th ward Evansville city council seat currently held by John Friend.

“The residents of Evansville are not getting the proper financial supervision and transparency they need and deserve,  Further our leaders have been focused on projects that have questionable returns to taxpayers while basic government services like sidewalks, parks, and water and sewers have been given low priority. It’s time for a new direction for our city. ”The City Council’s primary job is to serve as fiscal agent for the city. These recent failed audits and controversial projects have severely diminished the trust many citizens have in our city government and shown a failure to be a good steward and fiscal agent for the city.”

“Hitting the accounting reset button may be the right thing to do to bring our financial statements in balance but they won’t fix the poor management and accounting controls within our city. Further, you can’t change the score of a game or the grade of a test after it’s concluded and auditors should not change their opinion after their field work is completed without further qualifications and disclaimers.”   “I want to use my accounting and financial background to restore out city’s financial integrity and to apply financial analysis and tests to make sure large capital projects have a positive cash flow and return on investment to our taxpayers.”

“I would like to run a grass roots campaign in the style of Glenda Ritz and to make sure I bring objectivity independence, and integrity to the position I wouldn’t take campaign contributions from anyone doing business with the city.”
Mr. Smith has a BS in accounting from Eastern Illinois University, passed the Uniform CPA exam in 1982, has an MBA with a concentration in finance from DePaul University, and is currently a self-employed financial advisor and tax preparer.

If you would like to be a part of Mr. Smith’s exploratory committee please contact him at stevenlsmith58@gmail.com
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36 COMMENTS

  5. How many times has this Smith fellow run? What’s his win:loss record? Didn’t he support Rick Davis in the 2011 Mayor’s race when Rick proposed closing Lloyd Pool, located in the 5th Ward? What has Smith done in the recent past to promote the needs of 5th Ward or Evansville in general? If Smith is so keen on serving the North Side, why didn’t he file for one of the vacancies on this year’s Democrat ticket like County Council or County Commissioner rather than choose to become yet another infighting loser Democrat?

      • Indeed, she does appear to be unravelling on the subject. Who cares why he didn’t run for some other office? He’s running for this one.

      • Steve Smith is the one who reportedly has formed an exploratory committee. He apparently needs input on his pros and cons. I’m just laying out some of his deficits.

        He has a history of losing. That is not a total roadblock to running another campaign, but he should learn to pick his campaigns more carefully. One more loss and he may become considered unelectable. Is this the race he is willing to push in all his chips?

        He can’s count solely on the radical Tea Party vote indicated in many of the comments here or under Courier and Press news articles. Most commenters are radical in their philosophical bent. The majority of voters keep their feelings private only revealing what they really think and how they will vote to their trusted friends or not at all until the polls open.

        Announcing today, ahead of the City Council’s Thursday executive session emphasizes Steve Smith’s political naïveté. He should’ve waited until the majority of Democrat party leaders on the Council vote to see what sort of support he might garner from that group and their pool of supporters.

        His sole use of the City County Observer to broadcast his intentions only further emphasizes his political naïveté. While the CCO is an outlet to a certain political base, Smith would’ve done better to wait and release his intentions via media affording him a broader range of the political spectrum. Furthermore, if there is any significant competition within the 2015 Republican primary, the majority of CCO commenters who actually vote in a city election will not be voting in the Democrat primary. So Smith loses that portion of the small base he apparently has chosen to appeal to.

        • The email that we received from Smith was also sent to the Courier and all of the TV stations. This was no exclusive and was sent out at 1:55 today to all of the news outlets. It seems as though the others chose not to report the fact that Friend has a primary challenge coming next year.

          • You mean it took the C&P a little more time to embellish a response to Smith’s announcement. Unlike the CCO that posted the announcement in full without editorial comment, the C&P instead decided to muddy the waters.

          • 24 hours later and not a single comment on the Courier and Press article about the apparently unknown and unexciting prospective candidate Steve Smith proves my point. No one in the greater voter pool is the least bit interested.

        • I sure hope you aren’t Missy or even Friend. This is petty and pathetic. I’m surprised she hasn’t come on here to say if this is her or not.

          • And I must say you are not only Unbelievable, but you are also a dumbass.

            Why wouldn’t you want her or Wayne or Lloyd as for as that’s concerned to come on here and comment so you can get it straight from the horses mouth?

            Your comment was the easiest comment a lackey could make.

            Grow up or shut up stupid………

          • My wife told me yesterday that being cremated was her last chance for a hot smoking body.

            God love her………..

          • It looks like Unbelievable hit a nerve here. All he said was Missy should probably come on here and confirm if this name is hers or not. Now we have three posts with one of them completely avoiding the question; one of them going off on some tirade that isn’t even what Unbelievable said; and one post that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Congrats Unbelievable. You must be on to something.

        • And you think you are not radical in your thoughts? Pot calling the Kettle Black?

          Who are you to judge Mr. Smith.

          If I were going to vote for anyone running for political office I’d do my research on them first then decide if I’m going to vote for him or her.

          Right now my research shows me that Mr. Friend is not electiable anymore and either will fail to run for office or get kicked out of office for what he did. Just like Marsha Able got kicked out of the County Commissioners seat in the GOP primary. Heck she didn’t even make it to the general election this time.

          I told her she made a big mistake when she voted to approve the West Side development on the new N/S highway out by USI. She mad a lot of West Siders very mad with that decision. And the other commissioners better take heed too. The votes have long memories out on the West Side. Marsha had a uppity attitude about here that many people didn’t like. She was not very elegant in her presentations. She had a nasty “take it or leave it attitude” that I didn’t care for at times.

          She also voted to approve more development out on the North Green River Road area where there is a lot of flooding of new homes in that area when Pigeon Creek is flooded due to the Ohio River Being flooded downstream and a lot of rain. She failed to listen to the people at the meetings and evidently misjudge her constituents. She listened to the wrong little voice in her head. All politicians in this town need to understand the power of the internet these days with social media and the CCO. The public is not going to be stuck with just the machine media. No there is a new media in this town and one that won’t stifle the public comments or make them pay to speak at the microphone. Ask V about that mess. I’m sure that looking forward he can tell you all about analytic and Warming of the earth events going forward. 🙂

          • “Right now my research shows me that Mr. Friend is not electiable anymore and either will fail to run for office or get kicked out of office for what he did.”

            I see it the same way you do. Friend is “fried” as a future candidate for anything beyond dog catcher. If “Credible Source” is really the Crown Princess of the Mosby clan, she should be welcoming a Democrat that at least stands a chance. Party loyalty is their mantra, afterall. Maybe I should say the appearance of party loyalty is their mantra, especially in light of what was done to Rick Davis.

        • Sounds like given the choice you would prefer a charismatic, compromised, cheat over a boring compentent, nerdy type who would be a prudent, shrewd caretaker of the taxpayers resources.

          (I am not labeling either Mr. Smith or Councilman Friend either of these)

          Like moth to the flame. Like women who think they can tame the bad boy or men who like fast women only to find later that the relationship is shallow and meaningless.

          Studies do show that people would rather do business with the back slapping, schmoozer over the boring compentent salesperson who discusses both the positive and negative features of a product or service.

          • You did an accurate job of characterizing both Friend and Smith on the superficial level. Then you blew your credibility with your yellow bellied disclaimer.

            Why don’t you and anyone else who cares to take a little google time look up Smith’s campaign history, as thin as it is for his past two losing romps. You’ll see he is a lackluster campaigner, sacrificial lamb type candidate.

            The 5th Ward is a swing district that usually swings Republican. Friend overcame that by switching parties. Now with the addition of the recently annexed areas and their heavy apartment complex population, a bit more Democratic flavor may have been added. However, apartment dwellers are notorious non-voters, especially in primaries. When the general election rolls around any sort of ambitious, go-getting Republican will whoop the daylights out of no-go Smith in the 5th Ward.

  7. YES! If you don’t know Steven, you need to. This is the type of person I have been wanting to see run for this position for some time now. This is a candidate who I have witnessed time after time stand up for principles not politics. If you do the right thing and support Steven I promise you you won’t regret it.

    It’s time we moved on from Friend. Three strikes your out. I want someone who won’t bend and won’t break when the machine comes with hell, fire, and brimstone. That person is Steven Smith.

  8. It sounds as if he is as well-qualified educationally as Not-Your- Friend, but does he have a boat and/or a mug shot? He has my support. He’s well above my bar for a candidate to support instead of JF. He’s a much better candidate than a striped jackass, and that was all I would need.

    • N-Y-F will have the burden of a potentially strong challenger hovering over his putsch when he makes his move Thursday. I noticed the unraveling above too, I believe they are coming out of the denial stage.

      • Speaking of Thursday, I do hope there will be a good turnout of support for SBR. It’s at a bad time for a lot of people, but I plan to attend. I want to see for myself who would vote to strip her of the Vice Presidency of the City Council. Poor N-Y-F! If he doesn’t accomplish his ax job, he’ll have to spend more time running meetings and less time on the boat.

        • Is It Possible that SBR will record Thursday’s executive session for public release, or will she be searched at the door for recording devices?

          • (Recordio):
            She certainly should record it. Several councilmen have their long knives out. So far her phone seems to be mightier than their swords. Why are they afraid of the truth? The efforts to ruin her reputation and criminalize her actions have backfired. They are reduced to parliamentary procedure to try to punish and silence her.

            However their secret session goes, she has already won and the people of Evansville are better off for it.

            • Just ask Harvey Silverglate, Boston lawyer, activist, civil liberties advocate, and author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. As he explains, the Feds routinely take advantage of the vagueness of many of our laws by starting from the target and working backwards, selectively prosecuting people they want to go after by charging them with crimes they often don’t even know exist.

              “We are in terrible trouble as a nation under law,” he says. “When you have a system predicated on jurisdictional interests rather than on specific, identifiable, understandable, definable violations of law, there is a great opportunity for tyranny.” As a result, just about any businessperson, especially in highly regulated industries, can be construed by a prosecutor to have committed three or four arguable felonies a day. “If for some reason the authorities are eyeing you and they look closely enough at your daily activities, they can find something. That makes us all very vulnerable.”

          • Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it turns out she has Friend recorded asking if she “got it”, or acknowledging that he knew what was going on, at the end of the audit conference? I hope she re-listens to the original recording and gives it a couple of minutes after the end of the meeting.
            I doubt she got it, but I do believe that Friend was aware she was recording it. Missy and the crew “set up” Councilman Lindsey, so it only seems fair that Friend should have to get something on the other Councilperson who looks out for the public instead of the “in-crowd.”

        • Anyone else notice that PBS or Channel 9 has been off the air with Technical Difficulties lately?

          I wonder if that has anything to do with the same technical difficulties that the Civic Center’s WiFi had when SBR gave her news conference last week on the steps at the Front of the Civic Center.

          Doesn’t PBS locally cover the City Council Meetings and broadcast them over and over again for the General Public to watch?

  10. Could we please have some biographical information on Steve Smith? I know nothing about Mr. Smith or his politics.

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    • The CCO did one of their cut-and-paste-from-press- release-in-its-unbiased-and-unedited-entirity bios on Smith back when he ran unsuccessfully against Suzanne Crouch. Actually she whooped him like flop eared donkey.

      You can go back and look at that bio if you wish. It’s actually sort of Lincolnesque. Or you can ask Jordan for his version if you want another full page rant on what Smith did to save Roberts Stadium during his other failed campaign for City Council.

      • What I would require is a first person account from the source himself. If he is not interested enough to put that out there, then I am not interested enough to consider him as a candidate for any office.

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