Karlo Silbiger, former School Board member, now is in the business of guiding fellow progressives to victory.
Thomas Small, perhaps the most unique of the seven City Council candidates for the April 12 election, is his newest project.
“Thomas called me last June and asked if I would meet him,” Mr. Silbiger recently was saying. “I never had met him. Didn’t know him. Hadn’t heard of him. I had been sort of out of it. I had been busy doing a dissertation (for my doctorate), and I had not been paying attention.”
Young Mr. Silbiger trekked to the Small family’s much-talked-about Carson Street home, adjacent to Downtown.
“I sit down with Thomas for an hour, like I do with a lot of candidates who call me,” Mr. Silbiger said.
“By the end, he asked me if I would run his campaign. I had never met him before. And I was ready to do it.
“Thomas is somebody with such amazing ideas.
“I mean, it’s one of those things where you meet him for a couple minutes. You listen to him talk, and you leave inspired that the community could be a much better place,” Mr. Silbiger said.
What about Mr. Small appeals most strongly?
“The fact he has big ideas,” said his manager, son of a former mayor who seems comfortable farther away from the spotlight than he once was.
“Usually when you are running for office,” Mr. Silbiger said, “you don’t want to mention too many big ideas because you can offend people. People aren’t going to like it.
“But here is Thomas Small with a grand vision for the community.
- “Neighborhood-centric.
- “Conversations around development.
- “Traffic.
- “Transportation.
- “Looking at our environmental work on a big scale.”
Mr. Silbiger was and is in awe. “I am just blown away by Thomas’s big ideas,” he said.
An intimate relationship with the fine arts world is another bonus dimension, Mr. Small’s manager contends. “Bringing in all of these new people for a conversation on culture has to be a positive,” Mr. Silbiger said.
