Primary Night Speech

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Tuesday, February 27th, 2007

I want to thank all of you for being here tonight, for your support and hard work on this campaign, and for sharing the vision of a better Kansas City. We made it through the first round in a respectable position, and in four weeks we'll be in the final election. I just got off the phone and congratulated Jan Marcason for her strong finish today. I look forward to the next four weeks. There's a lot at stake for Kansas City, and we will have a great discussion.

There are people I need to thank. I want to thank my wife, Linda, for all her work and support. I want to thank my children Laura and Marc, my son-in-law Chuck, and my grandchildren Madeline and Zoe. And, of course, I know we all want to thank Kevin Hager for his tireless management of the campaign which led us into the final election. Four weeks to go Kevin!

There are two more people I sincerely want to thank. They are Ezekiel Amador and Mark Forsythe. Don't be fooled by what it says on next month's ballot. These are smart and talented leaders who are going do great things for this city. I thank you both for your insights, your passion, and all you did to enhance the debate in this race.

When we started this campaign last year, we were fortunate to receive a tremendous amount of support from our friends, our neighbors, and people we'd never met but who shared our vision of how to improve our city. There were plenty of people who said that it couldn't be done - but I think the results today show that it can be done.

I didn't campaign with special interest help. I had something even more powerful: the hundreds of individuals and families I've worked with over the years to improve our city and the thousands of people I've met while campaigning. I knocked on more than 7,000 doors across this district, and talked to voters at their homes one at a time. It's an old-fashioned way of campaigning that allowed me to talk about a new vision for our city.

So now I'm going to give away what the strategy will be for the final four weeks. We're going to do everything the same exact way. I'll be knocking on doors and making phone calls everyday. The core issues we've focused on - strong neighborhoods, quality public schools, smart development, and honesty and integrity in government - remain the bedrock of this campaign. I will continue to bring to the campaign trail the vision of an architect and the passion of someone who loves this city and has worked his whole life to improve it.

We've got a few more votes to get, so I need your help for four more weeks. I need your help talking to voters about my commitment to Kansas City, and the work I've done to improve our quality of life. I need your help because I want to continue this work on the City Council. We're going to push on and win this thing.

Again, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for being part of this campaign.

Sincerely,

Melvin Solomon