A 21 year-old UA - Fort Smith Student has launched a mayoral bid for
the 2018 election and says he wants to “Make Fort Smith Great Again”.
Luis Andrade, an immigrant from Brazil who says he has lived most his
life in Fort Smith, made the announcement and launched his bid for the
largely ceremonial office via Facebook this week.
He will be seeking the posted vacated by current mayor Sandy Sanders
who has said he will not be seeking re-election.
Andrade’s Facebook announcement is reproduced here in it entirety:
“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Social Media world, I am EXTREMELY happy
and excited to share with you guys that we are gonna be “MAKING FORT
SMITH GREAT AGAIN” in the near future!!!!
Anybody who knows me, knows how much I love our town, love our people,
love our state, and love our country. It has saddened me to see that
we have had during the past years of public administration a poor use
of our great potential, in all areas, the potential of our tax
dollars, potential of our natural resources, and most importantly, the
potential of our hard working people.
We see all around our town through the old and abandoned factories and
big companies that have left us, the existing potential that has one
day been well managed and transformed our great town into a money
making and prosperous place.
We have the chance to reverse it and bring it all back, get rid of all
the crime that is now here, bring high paying jobs back, fix our roads
that are in horrible condition, fix our schools, get rid of the drugs,
and make our people inspired to stay here instead of moving somewhere
else to look for a better place to live.
The circumstances we have in Fort Smith today such as simple things
like our sewage system that hasn’t been updated in years, utility
bills going up, harsh business regulations, and needless local taxes
that we have in place and that are keeping companies from coming to
our town (and absolutely nothing being done about it), and many
others, have inspired me to run for MAYOR during our next election.
I have attended UAFS for three years majoring in POLITICAL SCIENCE,
as it has always been a passion of mine, have already graduated with
an Associates degree, will be graduated with a Bachelors degree by the
time our next election gets here, have honorably served in the US ARMY
as a Construction Engineer, currently serving in the PARKING AUTHORITY
BOARD OF FORT SMITH, as well as the PRESIDENTIAL ADVISORY BOARD for
President Trump.
I am grateful I was raised by an amazing family of business people who
will be supporting me and advising me when it comes time to making
difficult decisions and throughout the entire process.
I am a young guy with the dream of transforming our town into a great
city one day, to where I can tell my kids and grand kids how great of
I place I lived in when I was young, like my grandmother tells me how
Fort Smith was when she was my age.
We have examples of young folks like me that are doing fantastic all
throughout America in various electoral positions, and I hope I get
the chance to be one of them, and make all of the people that live
here proud to call Fort Smith their home.
President Trump will certainly be a model of government I want to
follow, we have a great President doing absolutely beautiful things
for our country and using our potential wisely, but it’s important
that towns, cities, counties, and states follow the lead and cooperate
and work together to make the movement stronger, and that is what I am
going to do.
Papers will be turned in soon as I am still working on building a
campaign team who will be working with me along the way to make it all
happen.
I will be funding my own campaign and will be releasing the official
candidacy video in the near future. “
A trump like agenda is the last thing this town needs. The country is enough trouble due to the con artist. Hope we get some real candidates that are progressive.