Our endorsement: Vote Kruzan for Bloomington mayor

In an extremely close decision that took multiple votes and an exchange of over 150 emails between members of the Indiana Daily Student editorial board, we have decided to endorse incumbent Mayor Mark Kruzan for re-election in the Democratic primary May 3.

While both of the candidates express extremely similar views on almost all of the usually heated political issues — both are in favor of same-sex marriage, both are pro-choice, both consider themselves progressives, etc. — Kruzan has the experience of two mayoral terms behind him to prove he’s a capable, effective and truly progressive mayor.  

While challenger John Hamilton would probably make an effective mayor, he has offered very few specific, concrete policy proposals that distinguish him from Kruzan, who has eight years of success behind him as mayor of Bloomington plus several years as majority leader of the Indiana House of Representatives.

It was in Kruzan’s role as majority leader that he successfully stopped one of the Republicans’ attempts to pass a constitutional ban on gay marriage in Indiana. He also brought a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Indiana to a vote simply because it was the right thing to do.

Several of the biggest issues that Hamilton has brought up in the campaign are simply inaccurate. A supposedly rising violent crime rate has been one of the principal talking points of Hamilton’s campaign, but one can easily tell after even a cursory look at the facts that Hamilton has been cherry-picking statistics to make it look like violent crime has risen much more dramatically than it actually has.

A graph on his website that depicts only a five-year period seems to show that violent crime is very high in Bloomington.

But Hamilton chooses to omit the fact that crime had fallen prior to the years he selected on his chart and he also failed to include the most recent data available, which shows that crime is indeed falling.  

And to top it off, Hamilton doesn’t provide any effective solutions to Bloomington’s supposedly high violent crime rate. Instead, he provides a three page report in which he talks vaguely about creating a task force to tackle the city’s problem.

Hamilton’s spent a huge portion of his campaign attacking Mayor Kruzan about how the violent crime  rate has risen, and his alternative is only to talk about it more. This seems to be Hamilton’s solution to almost everything. He has repeatedly offered the vague promise to “talk to people more.”

Talking is nice, but it seems to be the primary proposal Hamilton has to offer. We would rather have a mayor who gets things done.

Kruzan is that mayor. During his term he has increased the police force by 25 percent, created the Bloomington Entertainment and Arts District, established 175 acres of greenspace throughout the city and developed the popular B-Line Trail among many other accomplishments.

Kruzan has been proactive in trying to keep Bloomington Hospital downtown.

Rather than simply opening a conversation with the community about keeping the hospital downtown — as Hamilton has suggested doing — Kruzan is offering concrete proposals to the hospital so that it would make more sense for them to stay. This included offering to allow them to create buildings that span the roads in the area and making First and Second streets one way pairs, which would greatly facilitate easy access to the hospital.

Mayor Kruzan is a visionary leader who has earned national recognition for raising the quality of life in Bloomington.

He has had a laser focus on making Bloomington the most livable city that it can be. That’s the mayor that we have, and that’s the mayor we still need.

Let’s keep a good thing going.

On May 3, make sure to vote for Mark Kruzan for Bloomington’s mayor.