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Mayor Manny Diaz: "Not the hot button issues"

2,608 views · Published 13 December 2007 · 4:26 · Indexed 8 October 2026

Channel: The Nation · 2007 · News & Politics

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MayorTV is a challenge from America's Mayors to 2008 candidates: start talking about cities! MayorTV asked Mayor Diaz what he thought a national agenda for cities should look like.

Of all the mayors we interviewed for MayorTV, Manny Diaz of Miami went the furthest in critiquing America's pollsters, pundits and media outlets for their role in driving the presidential campaigns. 
 
"The media and pollsters don't focus on urban issues," Mayor Diaz told us. "They focus on the war, abortion, gay rights -- things that, quite frankly, for those of us in the trenches, are not exactly the hot button issues."
 
According to Diaz, the candidates don't even deserve much of the blame.
 
"When you start the electoral process this early, and the polling is done every day, the hot button issues ... are not [even] the ones that the candidates want ... but the ones that the media want."
 
Diaz's list of the "real" issues reads like a classic bread and butter slate: jobs, crime, housing, infrastructure, education and environment. Surprising? Probably not. But watching these interviews, you can't help but think that Mayor Diaz and his colleagues actually have their fingers on the pulse of America. After all, Mayors preside over 80% of all Americans. They solve America's problem every day.
 
With such a disconnect between political discourse and the issues we care about, is it any wonder that half of Americans don't vote?
 
(More interviews and your comments at MayorTV.com)

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