Before last weekend, it's hard to imagine the last time so many people turned out at Riverside Park in New London to watch the traditional Yale-Harvard Regatta. It's possible, though, the ladies were wearing bonnets.

Before plans surfaced last year to sell a part of Riverside to the Coast Guard Academy, how many volunteers ever turned out to clean up the park and throw a community picnic, as they did May 1?

And is it possible to make your way through the park these days without running into a candidate for city mayor?

Really, I think more New London mayoral candidates turned out recently for festivities at the park than there are candidates in the pending race for probate judge in Groton, Stonington, North Stonington and Ledyard. And that's a lot.

It just goes to show you that maybe the best way for New London to showcase some of its prime assets is to threaten to sell them.

Maybe people will spruce up City Pier if the City Council would vote to sell it to Electric Boat.

It is beginning to look as if the proposed sale of Riverside Park, which will go to voters for their approval the same day they choose a full-time managerial mayor for the first time in decades, is turning into one of the major issues of the mayoral race.

This makes sense, too.

You're asking voters to ponder and decide two major issues at once. Why wouldn't they conflate them?

This apparently has not escaped the notice of at least one councilor candidate who, strangely, voted for the sale of the park and then turned up at a community event organized in the name of saving it.

I expect to hear from some councilors the argument that they only voted to sell a big piece of the park so that the issue could go to voters for them to decide.

This strikes me as similar to saying you lit a big building on fire so that firefighters would have a chance to step in and save it.

In any case, it doesn't sound like sound leadership.

Leadership, it seems to me, is more about taking a stand and convincing people it's the right thing to do. It's not about organizing a referendum to help overturn your vote on an issue.

Of course it is certainly possible that a silent majority in the city supports the sale of Riverside Park to the Coast Guard and those voters will triumph Election Day, selling nine acres of city land for $2.9 million and sweeping into office a park seller.

Since there are no polls in this race, that's an outcome we can all only guess at.

I am impressed that community organizer Kathleen Mitchell, one of the most outspoken opponents of selling the park, has so successfully put this issue on the front burner in the mayoral race.

Advocates for selling the park, and the wafflers who want to see which way the winds of public opinion blow, have all taken Mitchell's bait and helped her keep the issue at the center of the mayoral election debate.

Meanwhile, Mitchell, who claims to be running for mayor, has yet to file any paperwork for getting into the race.

I would question how serious a candidate she could be after sending out an email blast Tuesday in which she talked about a questionnaire from the New London Police Union and said the police station should move near McDonald's on Colman Street so "all they would have to do is take their fat asses across the street" when fetching meals for prisoners.

Still, she seems to be doing a good job campaigning for the other big issue that city voters will decide in November.

This is the opinion of David Collins.