No matter what you say, I don’t feel a single drop of sympathy for Shein. And not only because he is a Socialist Revolutionary. It's not a problem yet. But it’s that he’s a miser, which ones to look for - that’s what’s really annoying. People who worked for him on different campaigns unanimously claim that a person is quite capable of cheating. His assistants, as it turned out more than once, actually worked for food.
Theoretically, I could have ended up in the elections in Astrakhan. My friends negotiated with the Sheinskys. But two months before the elections, they were convinced that with the departure of the former governor to Volgograd, and the departure of his entire team after him, the city had practically been surrendered to them. Open it and drink champagne! But everything turned out to be completely wrong...
Shein is generally a master of losing when everyone is sure that he stands to win. This was repeated so often that my friends who dealt with Shein, as well as worked with his opponents, were sure that Shein was behaving specifically in such a way as to lose. Such a political businessman, constantly extracting profit from defeats. That's how unthinkable this candidate's behavior was,
As for the current situation with the "Maidan" in Astrakhan - well, understand, a person in the current system cannot become the mayor of a large city if he is not able to negotiate. To be not only an electoral candidate, but also to come to an agreement with the owners of administrative resources - the regional and federal elites. This person, even if he receives an elected position, will only increase conflicts. Why does the city need a mayor if he is not a consensus figure?
It's funny that a significant part of our opposition are so-called Republicans who in one way or another want to limit universal and secret suffrage. Supposedly, this is how you can overcome administrative resources and achieve real democracy, when “responsible people” vote and not “cattle”. Obviously this is a lie. Republican institutions are not developed in our country, but they gradually live and make their way to the light in the form of ugly phenomena such as political corruption. Administrative resource is the devaluation of the universal vote at the expense of the votes of regional elites. And this system cannot be corrected by any reforms, but only by constant struggle within an already existing field, or by revolution. It turns out that the republicans are fighting what they themselves stand for - against a real, albeit illegal, property and administrative qualification.
But there are also democrats in the radical opposition camp. For example, the task that Navalny and the big top in Astrakhan are solving - at least if you believe the media and the fact that electoral chaos is allegedly happening in Astrakhan - is to raise the value of an individual voter’s vote in the internal administrative market and, at the same time, depreciate the voices of dead souls, that is, those who exist only on paper or by order. The task is generally noble.