Who favors Mayoral Control?

Not the public, by every trustworthy measure. Politicians who want it now, hid their positions in last year’s elections. What does that tell you? Polls from institutions on both sides of the issue (Gannett, RTA) show the public against it by lopsided margins, but the samples of city residents have been small. On the lighter side, a survey done by a "research" organization with well established bias against voting rights did a survey with a highly questionable "mail back" methodology that showed support, only to have a participant in the poll attend a forum on the issue, and identify himself as a nonresident of the city.

Support appears mostly to come from political bosses who want fewer elections, kneejerk privatization, supporters who dismiss the fundamental obligation of public schools to serve the entire community, and those "opinion leaders" who mistrust the outcomes of democratic inquiry and competition and trust the dictates of "the people who know best," and always assume they are among those people.