I agree with the points about who was invited and who wasn’t. The specific selection of which council members to invite or not invite perplexed me, too, for mostly the same reasons. I let it slide in my initial comments because I have one fundamental operating assumption about DeSteph:

He’s too politically ignorant to be able to discern who on the council is a republican, who isn’t, and why. The why, especially, is important.

Sometimes I feel like many of the council members in Virginia Beach wouldn’t be the smartest man in the room if he was standing in a phone booth, but I will say this for them: they’re relatively non-partisan compared to some Northern Virginia municipalities (Fairfax, Loudoun, the P-Dub). They might care about some partisan issues, but they care more about keeping their jobs, and they don’t care what party you are as long as you’ll vote for them. Even the ones who are involved in Republican politics are mainly doing so because they want to keep their options open in case they have an opportunity to run for a General Assembly seat, and being a Republican instead of a Democrat is politically convenient in Virginia Beach. Or at least it was more convenient before now. (case study: Peter Schmidt)

I expect in the future that we’ll start seeing a few of the supposedly Republican council members taking a more active interest in what’s going on with local Democrats now that it’s politically expedient to reach out to them to garner support in the parts of the city where the electorate has been voting for Dems. But apparently Bill DeSteph didn’t get the same memo that Jim Woods did.

Second, DeSteph’s actions only illustrate, once again, why so many people — Council members included — think he is such a door knob. He charges in like a monkey on crack, throwing questions and demands left and right, not stopping to think things through, pissing people off and proving himself to be out of control and out of touch. He does all this under the guise of “trying to shake things up and get things done,” but he hasn’t learned some of the basics about politics — namely, you get things accomplished in politics by building coalitions and learning how to swap and trade with others. His jumping up and down and kicking his feet and holding his breath until he gets his way has even Republicans distancing themselves from him.

For Bob Tata to gush about how this means DeSteph is “moving things” because he wants to get things done just shows how out-of-touch Bob “Coma” Tata has become. If it’s such a great thing, why didn’t Ol’ Bob ever adopt this style of legislating for himself?? And “Fireball Bob” wants to accuse City Hall of being “fat and sassy???” I guess his volcanic presence and legislative record are the example elected officials should aspire to????

I suppose the upside of all this is that DeSteph will eventually self-destruct and immolate his career and no one will have to take him down — he will do that himself.

Third, there seems to be some discussions going around City Hall that says DeSteph has been complaining that Bob Purkey will “never move his butt out” (his words) so that DeSteph can run for Purkey’s GA seat. So now he is considering jumping into the mayor’s race for next year — Virginia Beach’s version of Don Knotts as our mayor.

There could be something to that and would explain why he invited Rebaaaaaa and not Urhin. Reba would have no problem seeing anyone try to take out the Mayor and Urhin is a known supporter of Will Sessoms — so why have him at a meeting and take the chance of having him go back to Will with the ol’ “insider’s info?”

There does seem to be a groundswell for DeSteph to run for mayor — of ANCHORAGE, Alaska. If he were to get elected mayor of VB, you would see so many employees, citizens and fellow Council members flinging themselves off the roof of City Hall, it would look like a storm of locusts had taken over the skies of VB. It would resemble the flying monkeys scene from the “Wizard of Oz.”

DeSteph as mayor . . . now that will get you waking up in the middle of the night screaming, won’t it?

Interesting points on who was invited versus who was not.

I agree about Diezel: his PAC was a contributor to the challenges by Peter Schmidt and Delceno Miles in 2005. I wouldn’t have invited him.

John Uhrin is part-and-parcel of what one observer calls “the Oceanfront cartel”, so you wouldn’t want him around if planning a conservative fiscal overhaul.

As for DeSteph’s meeting, advertise it and have it open for public observers. I can’t imagine what would be covered that would need to stay secret. That’s my problem with it: I don’t see how you discuss applying Republican principles to local government without taking up specific issues, which they can’t do in private under Virginia law.

Ultimately, the lesson is that just because a politcal neophyte can buy a seat on the city council doesn’t necessarily mean that he should.