Given how long it’s been since the election I’m guessing that most readers already know how the District 6 race (far northwest Austin) turned out. Incumbent Mackenzie Kelly lost to challenger Krista Laine by less than 1,000 votes, 51% to 49%.
I’m just going to come right out and say it. I am personally disappointed in the way this race turned out. I know that will make some readers suspicious given that the defeated incumbent, Mackenzie Kelly, is a Republican and that, among other things, I criticized national Democrats in my previous post election article. Nonetheless, I am going to plough ahead.
A big part of my dismay here is the fact that we are talking about Democrats versus Republicans in a City Council race. By the design of the City Charter, Council races are nonpartisan. There are no primaries, and candidates are not listed by party on the ballot. From what I can tell this race was decided almost exclusively based on the fact that Kelly is a Republican and not on her actual performance in office. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first a little history.
There has probably always been some party influence in Council elections. I know that has certainly been the case in the almost five decades that I have lived in Austin (since 1976). One core way the partisan element of municipal politics played out was/is through Democratic clubs, who endorse in local elections. Candidates would sometimes also reveal their party affiliations at various campaign events for various reasons.
I myself participated in this system although I sometimes chafed against the influence of the Democratic clubs, many of whom had/have overlapping memberships. In my view these clubs also made/make it difficult for candidates not part of the Democratic insider establishment to break through. At the same time, I don’t blame people or groups for wanting to have the most influence they can in elections. That’s part of the deal.
The system that resulted, however, means that a candidate sees many of the same citizens night after night and has to appeal for their votes, and endorsements, repeatedly in slightly different venues. During my years on that circuit I felt like my time could have been better spent walking door-to-door or going to other events where I could meet and talk to voters. I tried to do as much of that as possible, but I still went to the Democratic clubs, taking up many evenings during campaigns. Otherwise I risked losing these endorsements, which would cost me votes and potentially the election, in heavily Democratic Austin. I often thought about challenging this system by not participating in the Democratic club forums, but I never actually took that route.
The Nationalization of Local Politics
The Democratic clubs survive. In fact I believe there are more now. In my view they are part, but only part, of how party influence on local elections has gotten a lot worse in recent years. Another aspect of that is tied to what I call a nationalization of local politics. Among other factors, I see this as connected to a variety of factors including: an increase in the local population, and the decline of reading. Both of those factors have led to voters being less informed on many issues, particularly local ones, which seldom get national publicity and aren’t discussed near as much on social media. At the same time, as we all know, partisan differences in both national and local politics have hardened in recent years — although they have always existed.
The lack of knowledge about local issues, combined with the increased partisan divide, has resulted in many voters just picking which candidate they think is on their partisan team. The two main teams of course are Democrats and Republicans. Sometimes in heavily Democratic Austin the choices are among competing Democrats.
November Municipal Elections
Another major contributor to the increase of partisan influence in municipal elections was moving City elections to November of even numbered years, to coincide with presidential and statewide elections. That was done in the same 2012 elections where the 10-1 single member district system was approved, which then went into effect beginning in 2015. Prior to that Austin municipal elections were held in May, which is the case in most of Texas. Switching to November was, in my view, based largely on simplistic thinking about race. The argument was that more people of color vote in November elections, so we should have local elections then. Of course more people of all races and ethnicities vote in November elections. That was a lesser used argument.
Switching City elections to November was, in my view, based largely on simplistic thinking about race.
While having more people, of any race, vote is an important and worthwhile goal, it is also a sound principle to have elections in which voters focus on local issues and local candidates — as opposed to those candidates all being at the bottom of an exhaustingly long list of national and state candidates. It should also be clear that that all registered voters of any race have an equal opportunity to vote in any election, regardless of what month the election is held.
An important counter argument to holding municipal elections in November is that holding those elections in May served Austin very well, from a governance standpoint. There was extensive public participation, albeit a lower voter turnout. May elections gave a chance for a concentration on, and broad discussion of, local issues and local decisions. When voters went to the polls for May elections, the ballot was all local candidates and local issues. A voter did not have to vote on pages of national, state and county offices before getting to municipal candidates.
Especially during the latter years of May elections, Austin was widely thought of as a well governed City. That claim is seldom, if ever, advanced nowadays — even by those governing Austin.
Especially during the latter years of May elections, Austin was widely thought of as a well governed City. That claim is seldom, if ever, advanced nowadays — even by those governing Austin. It’s not just because municipal elections were switched to November, but that is a definite factor.
The Fairly New Tradition of Council Members Endorsing Each Other
OK, I’m still working up to discussing the District 6 race, but I want to add in one more factor that, in my view, has degraded municipal elections. That is the practice of Council Members endorsing in each other’s races. Until fairly recently Council Members and the Mayor refrained from endorsing in each other’s races. There were still slates of candidates endorsed by various groups. Candidates often shared volunteers and campaign consultants. But, they did not publicly endorse each other.
I’m sure this seems quaint or overly genteel to some who were not in Austin during those years or not alive or old enough to participate then; or even to people not in the groups I just listed. It might even seem hypocritical since it was often obvious who was on who’s side.
Nonetheless I think this tradition had some important merits. For one thing, it lessened the impact on governance of Council Members being angry with each other over previous elections. It prevented Council Members and the Mayor from constantly angling for each other’s endorsement in the next election. The practice also left more for voters to figure out on their own. The system wasn’t perfect, but in my view it was much preferable to the current situation. By the way, from the best I can recall the leaders in bringing this change were Council Member Mike Martinez and Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who were also the Council leaders in putting the 10-1 system and November elections on the ballot, in November 2012. Following them Mayor Steve Adler and his team of consultants were also big proponents of November elections.
Oh Yeah, The District 6 Race
So what does this all have to do with the District 6 race on the November 5 ballot? Well, let’s see. A good place to start is examining the record of the defeated incumbent Mackenzie Kelly. That examination will, surprise, include some of my personal views and observations. Kelly sometimes did things that I did not like, such as getting her picture taken with Greg Abbott or Ted Cruz. That was unsettling to me, but I was willing to overlook it and instead judge Kelly based on how she performed as a Council Member.
There, I thought she did very well, although I disagreed with her on some issues. Nonetheless, I saw her work hard to find common ground with her Democratic colleagues and she did. For instance she won passage of more than 40 policy initiatives over four years. I also saw her work tirelessly as a public safety advocate, especially to support our police, when some members of our Council are obviously not supportive of the police. I also saw that she was supportive of all City departments and did her best to support them — instead of being opposed to the whole concept of sound governance — as I believe many Republicans of our era sometimes are. I also saw Kelly side with the forces trying to protect Austin neighborhoods — such as her vote against the HOME initiative. I also heard widespread praise of the constituent service provided by her office.
I was not the only Democrat who was impressed with Kelly’s performance in office. During the campaign a group of “Democrats for Mackenzie Kelly” sent out a letter supporting her. Signers included a long list of prominent neighborhood advocates plus Save Our Springs leader Bill Bunch and legendary local Democratic political consultant David Butts.
They wrote: “Over the last several years, the Austin City Council has removed vital protections for our neighborhoods and families with dire consequences for our homes and our natural environment, especially our open spaces, creeks, and trees. Although couched as progressive housing and transportation policies, this regressive free market deregulation will replace existing housing with more expensive incompatible development, congested streets, loss of tree canopy, increased impervious cover, and rising property taxes.
Councilmember Kelly, the District 6 officeholder, was one of two council members — the other being a strong Democrat — who had the courage to say no to this Reagan-esque deregulatory trickle-down philosophy.
This attack on the very people who helped make Austin the progressive democratic heart of Texas will be especially harmful to lower-income and vulnerable neighborhoods. . . she has earned our support in her re-election campaign.”
Not everyone agreed with my view of Kelly or that of the Democrats who signed the “Democrats for Mackenzie Kelly” letter. For instance I know people who didn’t like Kelly’s habit of voting no each week on a string of Council agenda items with which she had philosophical disagreements. There were also people who disagreed with her votes on particular items, or her stance on varying issues. Those are all rational arguments for voting against Kelly or for her opponent. It’s pretty clear though that those type of actual City issues were not why Kelly lost.
Kelly’s victorious opponent, Krista Laine did launch some buckshot type criticisms of what she saw as Kelly’s record, for instance criticizing the incumbent for “911 response times, deployment of limited public safety resources, police morale & retention.” This is surface level policy discussion at best. It could more accurately be called intentionally misleading. For instance Laine tried to blame Kelly for policy failures on public safety that happened before Kelly arrived; and Laine failed to mention that Kelly was working to clean up a mess largely created by Laine’s Democratic allies on previous Councils. At least, however, this was something of a discussion about policy.
It wasn’t policy disagreements, however, that felled Kelly. Ultimately her record in office didn’t matter very much, if at all. Instead Laine based her campaign on endorsements from four of Kelly’s Council colleagues and the fact that Kelly is a Republican.
Council Member-Elect Krista Laine – photo from her campaign webpage
Here’s one way that worked. A core strategy of Laine was to ask Kelly at forums if any of her colleagues had endorsed her. Kelly would say no and sometimes explain that she believed that was because she raised tough issues. Laine would then point out that she herself had the endorsement of four of Kelly’s colleagues: that being Vanessa Fuentes, Chito Vela, Paige Ellis and Zo Qadri. Laine’s website also featured endorsements from several Democratic members of the local state legislative delegation: John Bucy, James Talarico, Vikki Goodwin, and Sarah Eckhardt.
Revealing that Kelly didn’t have the endorsement of any of her fellow Council Members was evidently supposed to infer that Kelly was unable to work well with her colleagues. The 40 policy initiatives for which she managed to win majority support belie this insinuation. This tactic instead just illustrated that Kelly is a Republican. Because of that, none of the Democrats on the Council were ever going to endorse her.
Then there were the Democratic clubs, none of which — of course — endorsed Kelly. She was automatically disqualified from consideration due to being a Republican. Most endorsed Laine and then did mailers and other communications touting their endorsees. Additionally, some Democratic operatives posted social media attacks on Kelly, mainly pointing out that she is a Republican, rather than disputing her record.
It was all aimed at making sure Democratic voters — who operatives knew would turn out en masse for a November election — knew that Kelly was a Republican. It worked.
Thousands of Democrats showed up at the polls November 5 to vote in the presidential election, many not knowing anything about Mackenzie Kelly except that she is a Republican. Kelly lost by 716 votes, or about a 2% margin. She will leave the Council in January.
Blue Cities and the Partisan Divide
In closing I just want to tie up some of the points I made above concerning Republicans and Democrats and city government. Another reason that Kelly’s defeat bothers me is that national and partisan politics are damaging not just local politics, but also the competence of local government. Both parties are to blame, although most Republicans prefer to blame Democratic governance in major cities.
In my view national Republicans have long played a major role in the problems that plague local governments. There’s not room for a complete list here, but here are a few examples involving economics, poverty and the distribution of wealth. For instance Republicans have blocked, and will continue to block, any efforts Democrats bring forward to address wage scales, poverty or the distribution of wealth. They have also cut or eliminated many social programs that once provided funds to local governments to help the poor. In other cases Republicans have prevented these programs from keeping up with inflation. Not only does the Republican approach exacerbate and continue poverty, but in many cases poverty leads to crime, with local governments bearing the burden of fighting and combatting that crime.
In my view national Republicans have long played a major role in the problems that plague local governments.
Then there’s homelessness and the related mental health crisis. Republican hero Ronald Reagan helped create the modern homelessness crisis with his defunding of mental institutions. Then both Republicans and Democrats failed to provide a national approach to the homelessness crisis, leaving the problem for individual cities to deal with. I could go on, but I wanted to make clear that I believe that Republicans bear considerable responsibility for the problems in Democratically run cities.
At the same time I believe that there is some truth to Republican charges that Democratic governance in American cities has failed. Austin is among those cities, specifically in the last 10 years since the 10-1 system went into effect. I have documented many of those local failures before, without putting it into a partisan context.
At the same time I believe that there is some truth to Republican charges that Democratic governance in American cities has failed.
For a quick review, Mayor Steve Adler (now former mayor) and Council Members Greg Casar and Delia Garza, Democrats all, led the way in debilitating a very strong and competent City government in the name of their far left ideology. They did a whole lot of damage, but their two most famous, visible, and lasting initiatives were repealing the limits on where homeless people could camp and defunding the police.
Their attempt to help the homeless by letting them camp virtually anywhere was a disaster and was eventually overturned by voters, although lasting damage was done. Also, the homeless population is much larger now than when the Casar-Adler-Garza crew started trying to help.
Their defunding of the police was reversed by the state legislature, but led directly to the police staffing shortage that continues to plague Austin.
From left to right : Greg Casar announcing defunding of the police; Delia Garza in a screenshot from her Council years; and Steve Adler when he was Mayor of Austin.
Democratic voters responded by promoting Casar to Congress and Garza to County Attorney. Both won reelection on November 5, Garza with no opposition in either the Democratic primary or the general election.
So, it might somehow be good for the Travis County Democratic Party, to have all Democrats on the Council, but I don’t see how it is necessarily good for the City of Austin. For one thing, as the Austin American-Statesman pointed out in endorsing Kelly, she provided a dissenting voice and raised issues that would otherwise not have come up.
I will wait and give Council Member-Elect Laine a chance to see how she does, but so far it seems like her biggest qualification is not being a Republican.
(Readers can find a report on Mayor’s races and the other Council races here.)
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