With President Barack Obama in town today, I know it is difficult to think of anything other than presidential politics, and how the free world last night was run from the Lawrence Holiday Inn. But for a moment, let’s tune into some City Commission politics, which have taken a bit of a Washington-like turn.

Two city commissioners are expressing concern about an e-mail they received Wednesday from the leader of Lawrence-based Wicked Broadband. Commissioners Bob Schumm and Terry Riordan, who both are running for re-election, said the e-mail from Wicked co-owner Joshua Montgomery crossed a line by insinuating that Montgomery could deliver nearly 1,200 votes to their campaigns, if the commissioners approve a $300,000 loan guarantee and other city incentives the company is seeking as part of a project to bring gigabit Internet service to part of Lawrence.

“It struck me as being inappropriate,” said Schumm, who was asked about the e-mail after the Journal-World obtained a copy of it Wednesday. “It pushes the envelope to the edge of what is ethical.”

The e-mail’s subject line is “1,184 votes in Lawrence municipal elections.” The e-mail then goes on to inform Schumm and Riordon that Montgomery has been “organizing a block of voters for this upcoming election.” Montgomery wrote that he has 1,184 voters committed to voting in the primary and general elections. He said the main issue that will determine their votes is the idea of a high-speed broadband network in the city.

The e-mail closes by asking Schumm and Riordan to meet with Montgomery to “discuss your position on the issue and how we might be able to work together for the benefit of Lawrence.”

“I think at very best it is very poor judgment,” Riordan told me when I asked him about the e-mail. “I think we need to be honest and above board about this process, so this is concerning.”

Riordan said he has asked the City Attorney to review the e-mail, and determine whether it put him in any untenable position. Riordan said he is now reluctant to even have a one-on-one discussion about the broadband proposal with Montgomery.

“The whole thing looked just too much like a quid pro quo proposition,” Riordan said.

Montgomery said there was nothing inappropriate about the e-mail. He said he wanted Schumm and Riordan — thus far the only two sitting commissioners seeking re-election — to understand that high-speed broadband was going to be a key issue in the upcoming elections. Montgomery said he is organizing a whole contingent of people who aren’t your typical voters in City Commission elections, but are very interested in the community having gigabit Internet service, which is the same type of super-fast broadband service being offered by Google Fiber in Kansas City.

“I’m telling you, those people are going to come out and vote this time,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery also didn’t mince any words about his ability to influence the decision of those voters. He said any vote by Schumm or Riordan against Wicked’s proposal will be construed as a vote against high speed broadband service in the city.

Montgomery told me that if Wicked’s proposal fails to win a ‘yes’ vote from Schumm, that “I can guarantee those voters won’t vote for Bob Schumm.” (At this point, I hadn’t yet confirmed Riordan also had received the e-mail, so his name hadn’t come up in the interview.)

I believe I can hear a yawn coming from the president’s Holiday Inn room. (I think he also is upset that he hasn’t been able to find the putt-putt golf course that used to be in the atrium of the hotel, and that some guy in line ahead of him is taking an inordinate amount of sausage gravy from the breakfast bar.) The point being, though, that this type of politics perhaps isn’t that unusual in D.C.

But it is interesting to watch in Lawrence, and I’m curious to see how people react to it. The timing certainly isn’t coincidental. City commissioners are scheduled to again hear Wicked request for incentives at their Tuesday evening meeting. Conventional wisdom holds that Montgomery needs to win a vote from either Schumm or Riordan to have a chance of victory with the commission. Mayor Mike Amyx has pretty much forecasted that he is not going to be able to support the idea of a loan guarantee for the company. Commissioners Mike Dever and Jeremy Farmer both have been more open to the idea. Both Schumm and Riordan have expressed concerns about the proposals at various times.

Schumm reiterated those concerns on Wednesday.

“I want to bring fiber to the city in the worst way,” Schumm said. “It could create a whole new subset of entrepreneurship in the city. I’m just not convinced a loan guarantee is the way to move it forward.”

One other twist in all of this is that Montgomery is the husband of Kristie Adair, who has filed for a seat on the Lawrence City Commission. Adair, who is currently a Lawrence school board member, also is a co-owner of Wicked Broadband. I didn’t get a chance to chat with Adair Wednesday, but Montgomery said she was not involved in the writing of the e-mail. He said Adair at this point is no longer involved with the day-to-day operations of Wicked Broadband.

In other news and notes from around town:

• While we’re on the subject of faster Internet service, the folks at WOW, the city’s largest Internet service provider, say they now are offering 110 Mbps service in the Lawrence and the surrounding areas that WOW serves.

The 110 Mbps service is more than twice as fast as the 50 Mbps service, which previously was the fastest residential service WOW offered in Lawrence. But it is not as fast as the gigabit service that is being discussed at City Hall. We reported back in September that WOW was going to introduce the faster service sometime in 2015. That announcement came as the city was considering whether to offer incentives to Wicked. WOW’s most recent announcement that service is now beginning comes as the commission is set to discuss those incentives again.

In terms of how much the service will cost, WOW is encouraging people to call a customer service representative because the price varies depending on what type of bundle you are in. When asked to be more specific, a WOW representative told me via e-mail that the service would cost $13.05 more than the 50 Mbps service, which has prices that vary depending on what bundle you are part of. But my understanding, based on a conversation with a customer service rep, is that standalone 50 Mbps internet service costs $99.95 per month, so that would put the new service at $113 per month, if you didn’t want any other services such as cable television or phone.

WOW has launched the faster service in several markets, including Chicago, Detroit and parts of Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Alabama and Georgia. The new service should be good for video streaming and households that use multiple devices at once, the company said in a press release.

But it is important to note that the 110 Mbps speed is only for downloading information. Upload speeds are still at 5 Mbps. So, that means you can download a video or large file from a website, for instance, at the very fast speed of 110 Mbps. But if you want to upload a file to a website that will occur at the much slower speed of 5 Mbps. That is different than what has been proposed by Wicked and others who are seeking to bring gigabit service to Lawrence. They are proposing download and upload service that are at gigabit speeds. City officials have said the upload speed is important because that may be critical to attracting more entrepreneurial uses of the high-speed service.

Debra Schmidt, system manager for WOW’s Lawrence operations, said upgrades to the upload speeds are possible in 2015. She said the company is reviewing that issue, but she said it was too early to say whether a change in the service would be made.

• While I was talking to Schmidt I also asked her about some television changes on WOW’s cable network. I know many of you have noticed that KSNT, the NBC affiliate out of Topeka, is no longer on the cable system. Schmidt confirmed that KSNT was dropped after WOW could not reach an agreement with the broadcaster on appropriate re-broadcast fees that were to be paid to KSNT. Schmidt said there are no plans to bring back KSNT. Instead, WOW subscribers can get their NBC programming through KSHB, which is the NBC affiliate in Kansas City. For years, the local cable system has carried both Kansas City and Topeka-based network affiliates. But slowly, the Topeka affiliates have been dropped as the issue of re-broadcast fees has become more challenging for cable systems. Currently, WIBW, the CBS affiliate, is the only Topeka station still on the WOW network. WOW is required by law to carry the Kansas City network affiliates because Lawrence is considered part of the Kansas City television market.

Schmidt also confirmed that 6News, the cable news broadcast produced by WOW, is also going through some changes. WOW has discontinued the standard 10 p.m. Sunday evening news broadcast. It has been replaced with a weather segment and The Drive sports program.

“We are in the process of evaluation our news/weather/sports delivery as we plan for expanded coverage Monday thru Fridays,” Schmidt said in an email.