Sticking with this week’s Rhino, John Hammer writes up Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins’ ‘I’m not a deadbeat dad’ press conference and raises the same issue I raised earlier:
Perkins was badly defeated in the Tuesday, Oct. 8 primary election by At-large City Councilmember Nancy Vaughan, who garnered 49 percent of the vote in a three-way race, to 39 percent for Perkins. George Hartzman finished third with 12 percent.
Vaughan has made a point not to bring up the personal and financial problems that have plagued Perkins during his term as mayor.
So it is more than a little surprising that Perkins would hold a press conference to talk about his bankruptcy, as well as the foreclosures on his condominium in Center Pointe downtown and the home where his ex-wife and daughter live in Irving Park, a few blocks away from Perkins’ present home in Country Club Condominiums.
Perkins has maintained that his personal and financial problems should not be a part of the campaign, but now he has made them the center point of his campaign and it’s going to be hard to ignore them, since Perkins himself insists on talking about them.
The main point that Perkins said he wanted to make at the press conference was that he had taken care of ex-wife and child and was not a “deadbeat dad.”
Meanwhile Rhino publisher Roy Carroll comes to Perkins’ defense, echoing Perkins’ contention that his membership in the Greensboro Country Club “is essential to his occupation as a commercial real estate broker.”
Hard to imagine at this point that Perkins’ personal problems won’t be the difference maker, considering the fact that prevailing logic is he and Vaughan are very similar candidates. Perkins can put one feather in his cap, though: the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau will finally get new digs in the old Canada Dry building next to the coliseum complex thanks to a $2 million renovation contract approved by the City Council at its Tuesday night meeting.
The city purchased the building in 2008 for $3.2 million, and Perkins— the coliseum’s biggest booster — has pushing for something to take over ever since.
