In his Sunday Notes today, Gerry Nutter says that all the negativity about city government coming from the Sun and WCAP is designed to suppress voter turnout on November 5. I agree. Be sure to read his full post. A sample of it follows:

That is all fact, it supports and highlights the need for professional management along with a strong balanced council. Combined with the positive numbers I showed last week highlighting the upward direction the city is heading, why is this election being focused on stupid, petty garbage like OLD vs. New Lowell.

ALL that OLD vs. New Lowell talk is just that, talk! It’s a button pushing phrase used by the bubble/ downtown mob/ blogosphere / Lowell Sun / WCAP to stir the pot. We do it to get you to read what we write, to get you to call and to get conversation started.

However, it’s being used by some at the SUN and certain WCAP shows to take the election into a negative level. They want to discourage people, not encourage people to vote.

They don’t accentuate the positives, they don’t want voters to know how much the fiscal stability and plans for capital improvements have come. Instead they concentrate on the petty negatives and don’t want voters to focus on the Manager or the positives in the city, they want the focus on petty meaningless political BS that makes it seem there is no big issue. everything is fine, nothing to see here, just go to work, why bother to vote, Lowell’s fine, we just disagree on the Old vs. New and other minutia.

There is a group who are trying to keep people’s eye off the positives and off the success of the Manager and his Administration. Instead focus on the negative of “them versus us”. They want to get your attention away from the real issue – Re-signing the City Manager to a new contact.

This isn’t just about losing the Manager, it’s losing a team that has been very successful. If anyone thinks people like Adam Baacke – Tom Moses – Ralph Snow and other staff members who have worked hard at achieving the administrations goals will hang around, they are wrong. They are not going to stay and subject themselves to this negativity and negative environment. Most would and will be scooped up by others at the first opportunity.

The theme so far in this election season has been to throw as much BS against a challenger that they can think of and keep the focus on the petty not the positive or the Manager