Pardon the interruption: "Today I am announcing my Exploratory Committee for the office of Mayor of New Albany."

Hello, I'm Roger Baylor.

Today I am announcing my Exploratory Committee for the office of Mayor of New Albany.

To refresh readers’ memories, here were the vote totals from the general election in 2011.

• Gahan: 4,506 votes or 64.3 percent
• Bagshaw: 1,389 votes or 19.8 percent
• Messer: 1,024 votes or 14.6 percent
• Keister: 88 votes or 1.2 percent

You may recall that I ran for city council-at-large as a Democrat in the primary that same year, finishing with 1,341 votes. Obviously, 20% isn’t going to cut the mustard, although the cheese is another story entirely, and this is the reason for today’s announcement of an exploratory committee, and the many opportunities for beer-fueled meetings it entails.

For ten years running, progressive ideals have been the sole impetus for progress in New Albany. The problem is that progressivism has been held hostage to leaden, glacial and sullen implementation, in tiny bits and imperceptible pieces.

This owes primarily (a) to too little book reading, and (b) to the dictates of the same, tired politics of patronage, as practiced by two boring, uncreative and frankly embarrassing political parties. To look back over three decades of decay management is to see numerous missed opportunities, when simply looking at what has been proven to work in more dynamic settings might have provided a ready template for reinvention.

Instead, old ways of thinking that first failed during the Warren G. Harding years are spiced with a dash of Sriracha sauce, and voila! Victory is declared, and the paybacks commence anew. Unfortunately, we haven’t won. We’re not even close to winning the future, and yet still the forward movement proceeds at the pace of tectonic plates.

Obviously, the usual suspects and the usual grudging, halting, dilatory tactics aren’t going to be adequate to usher New Albany into the 20th century, much less the third decade of the 21st. This is the reason for the exploratory committee. In barroom chat, veritas.

In the coming weeks, I will be reaching out to a broad, bi-partisan array of local men and women united by a common desire to drink gratis Progressive Pints as we brainstorm ways to contest the 2015 election. All I can guarantee at present is that not a single one of them will be employees of the Floyd County Health Department, and that at no point now or in the future will I agree to wear a suit and tie, although I may be compelled to purchase new underwear, because it’s been a few years now, and the chafing is getting to me.

Isn’t it time for progressivism to be pushed to the front of the local agenda? The back of the bus may have been good enough for your great grandfather, who voted for Eugene Debs before being hauled off to Leavenworth (maybe it was Birdseye), but it isn’t good enough now, when tolls threaten our civic fabric, and Bill Allen’s squalid dump of a Main Street building begs for immediate confiscation and redeployment.

There’ll be show trials, transparency, immediate two-way streets, the most heads spotted rolling since Robespierre, a Bicentennial do-over, exile, hemlock, sustainability, Wi-Fi, an annexation of Community Dark, a proliferation of Community Dark and the conversion of Main Street into a bicycle superhighway. No unattended child will be left behind, and no party boss behinds will be left without a vigorous spanking. There’ll be a chicken in every pot, and the farmers market in a roofless vacant lot.

This effort is not about a person, it is about the cause of New Albanian freedom and greatness and craft beer. I'd like to ask you to join with us - volunteer, donate, or just pass this along to a friend. Thanks so much.