Nothing is too strange for cities wooing Amazon's second headquarters

Business leaders in Tucson, Arizona, have tried to mail Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, a 21-foot cactus. The largest conference room in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, mayor’s office has been converted to a war room, with 50 volunteers poring over videos of Bezos.

In Philadelphia, hundreds of Wharton Business School students have a new fall semester assignment: Pitch the city to Amazon. And the mayor of Ottawa flew to Seattle last week to walk as close to Amazon’s headquarters as is publicly accessible.

“It’s like ‘The Amazing Race,’” said Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa. “You’ve got this cast of characters running toward