Who is Mark DeSantis?

Mark DeSantis is starting to seem like that crush you get when you are sixteen. The girl (or boy, for those of you of the opposite gender) can do no wrong, and you attribute all your favorite characteristics to her. Thus in an AP piece (from TWM via the Burgh Report) there is a small business-woman from the Hill who supports DeSantis, saying "He says he's a Republican, but he has a Democrat heart because he's all about, like, people and the community and helping, too." In my limited experience with DeSantis he is, in fact, all about helping business people because he doesn’t want to see the city go under and business people generate the income that can be taxed at the right rate, where everyone makes the most money they can. That kind of makes him a republican, in my book.

Or DeSantis is like the boy (or girl) who is going out with your crush, evil incarnate. My last post was an attempt to respond to an anonymous commenter on 2PJ’s who compared MarkDeSantis to Grover Norquist. One point I tried to make was that if Dr DeSantis wanted help out his rich friends, and cut government assistance for the poor, he would have gone after the county executive’s job, which is better positioned for that because it controls home assessments and county funded public health. I wasn’t saying Mark DeSantis said any of those things, just that a real conservative republican would want to do that.

But make no mistake, Dr DeSantis wants the city to do more with less, and that would be at least partially a painful transition. Painful because when people have gotten used to doing things a certain way, they generally resist change. A little painful too because City Council has a few of the same members it had when it resisted Act 47.

At the moment, Mark DeSantis is also at least partially the ABR candidate, Anyone But Ravenstahl. As people are starting to say, it’s kind of the Mayor’s fault, since he keeps making errors, the kind that most people would think, I’d better not do that. But being the ABR says nothing about DeSantis himself, it only says he’s not Luke. For some people, that’s enough, but maybe not for all. I kind of hope that’s not the sum total of the prevailing spirit around the Burghospree … I mean, Burghosphere.

The best I can say is to go the Dr DeSantis’ website and/or read the transcript of the latest debate and decide for your self. Mark DeSantis – myth or man?