Meet Joe Bartenfelder
Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder is on the board with what may — or may not — be the first ad of the 2010 election season.
Bartenfelder has announced his intention to run for county executive in 2010, though he has not officially filed. Councilman Kevin Kamenetz is also on the list of likely candidates. Both have been raising the kind of money one needs to mount such a campaign.
Don’t look for a lot of positions on issues in the video that appears only on Youtube.com. It also doesn’t actually declare what office the councilman is seeking. It’s your basic campaign 3 minute, 57 second candidate introduction ad (set to country music star Alan Jackson’s “Where I Come From.”)
Bartenfelder, in an interview, maintained that the video “is not a campaign piece because there is no campaign.”
“I haven’t officially declared,” Bartenfelder said. “I’ve only said I am running.”
The authors of the video weren’t campaign folks. Just supporters. “They kind of started on their own,” Bartenfelder said.
The Youtube.com page is likely to be updated every couple weeks, he said.
Feel free to see how many cameo appearances of local politicos and celebrities you can count. I initially caught Mayor Sheila Dixon, but completely overlooked her nephew, Juan Dixon.
Bartenfelder said the move to the Internet (he has a facebook page, too) was “not a must, but a plus.”
“The bar kind of got raised to that in the national elections,” he said.