The long goodbye starts

Writing for STYLE Weekly, Scott Bass and Chris Dovi offer a smorgasbord of reactions to Doug Wilder’s announcement last week that he had decided not to seek a second four-year term as Richmond’s mayor.

So readers got Bill Pantele’s “comb-over” flapping in the breeze, a few of John Moeser’s what-ifs, a Paul Goldman’s I-told-you-so, again, and a wry warning from Larry Sabato that Wilder is far from being through with making news. Click here to read the entire piece in today’s issue of STYLE. Here is an excerpt:

...What Wilder squandered in terms of potential is also open to debate. While the business community supported Wilder’s campaign in 2004 and genuinely fawned over the mayor early on, Wilder wasted no time attacking the city’s power structure upon taking office.

His first target was the business community’s pet project, the performing arts center, which led to Wilder publicly dressing down Jim Ukrop and criticizing the project’s architects for misusing public funds. It caused an immediate rift that didn’t end until, ironically, Wilder appointed a committee of business leaders to right the ship and scale down the arts center.

In hindsight, Wilder’s first term appears to have re-energized the business community to get more involved, even if no one seemed to predict Wilder’s announcement last week.

Whoa! Nobody “seemed” to predict that Wilder would not run?

Well, maybe no one at STYLE Weekly predicted it, but readers of SLANTblog got a heads-up prediction over a month before Wilder’s announcement. Click here to read a prediction that was made here at SLANTblog on April 2.