Skyward - (NaNoWriMo 2013 Novel)

The Shrinking Mayor cont'd - (Nov 21, Thursday)

They cut power away from the miraculous shrinking mayor little by little. First it was emergency powers; then it was the ability to appoint and fire staff from executive committees. Then they reduced his budget; then they reduced his office staff. At first he fought bitterly, trying to hold on to any last vestige of his former role: threatening legal action, threatening that this would all come back to haunt the other councillors in the next year's election, threatening that it would be a war, and, in the desperate, sorbid end, merely threatening physical harm.

The councillors were only embolden by it all. There was some token resistance to the first motions; some more conservative members decrying the process as the death of democracy, as a liberal coup, as a thinly veiled, dictatorial power grab. But the resistance lessened as the mayor grew more irrate at the perceived injustice of being slowly neutered of power, and his few supporters began to find it distasteful to assoociate themselves with a man who was so clearly falling to pieces. The increasingly questionable political motions against the mayor began to pass unanimously as those who formerly opposed them elected to instead sit by in silence, abstaining from the votes.

Eventually the mayor himself joined them. As it became clear that his red-faced, verbally violent outbursts were falling on dead ears in the council chambers, he retired to his own office, where the impressive, international media circus he'd attracted followed him. After each new motion passed, he would emerge from his office doors to the near-constant horse shoe of media that awaited him there, and he's speak "directly to the people" about how he felt in regards to that motion. He opened the doors of that. office to an ever-broader range of media outlets looking for interviews with him. At first his older brother and fellow councillor, Dan, would sit by his side for them, a solid rock of support who would speak only occaassionally, barking out challenges or condemnations of other councillors, media, celebrities and public figures. He'd interject less and less as the controversy rambled on through weeks until he stopped attending the interviews altogether, claiming that his time was better spent fighting the injustices of council IN council.

The following year's election came, but by that point the council had succeeded in passing a rather dubious motion forbidding the former mayor from standing for election again. It was likely of only symbolic importance since the man had already begun his exclusion within his own office by that point. A vigorous write-in voting campaign from his most ardent of supporters in the populace netted an impressive ten thousand votes, but accomplished little more.

# # #

Here's a fragment that I meant to get back to, didn't, then forgot to post on Thursday. It's a continuation of the Shrinking Mayor idea, and the story still isn't done.