We’re keeping yesterday morning’s great article at the top of the site. (There are newer posts below.)
Sorry, the Fizz is so late today. Erica and I are both out of town for the holidays (Louisiana and New York, respectively). But today’s edition of Morning Fizz was worth the wait.
We asked veteran Portland city hall and politics reporter Zach Dundas to give some advice to Seattle Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn.
Why would we ask a political reporter from Portland to give advice to our mayor-elect? Because of a one-term, hippie-dippy, grassroots insurgent Portland mayor named Tom Potter, that’s why.
From Portland, A Cautionary Tale for Mike McGinn
By Zach Dundas
You know, we’re awfully busy down here in Portland. A new light-rail line opens about every 15 minutes. We’re all required to run our own backyard micro-farms—some neighbors of mine keep goats, which I reckon is a big f-you to the urban chicken crowd. And I, personally, am totally exhausted from mixing vegan hummus for all the transgender-friendly Solstice parties. But we do take time out, from all this living simply so others may simply live, to tune in to what’s up in Seattle. And when y’all elected Mike McGinn—a certified with-the-program 21st-century green urbanist so simpatico, he could practically be a Portlander, especially given the beard—we nodded in approval and vicarious pride.
And then we shivered with just the slightest twinge of foreboding.
Former anti-Establishment Portland Mayor Tom Potter rides into office in 2004 (and out in 2008.)
Granted, there are many aspects of Seattle politics we Willamette Valley outlanders do not, will never and would not care to understand. (This viaduct thing—can you please just deal?) But from here, the remarkable Mike McGinn story bears some potentially distressing resemblance to a saga we lived not long ago.
Dark-horse progressive mayoral candidate runs a cuddly up-with-people campaign against well-funded, allegedly business-friendly Establishment candidates? And wins with the backing of the city’s activist class and a heartwarming pan-ethnic coalition? And follows up his victory by holding marathon relays with the Talking Stick (known, in McGinn’s case, as “town halls”) and dispatching the Touchy-Feely Team (“transition ambassadors”)? Only to unearth the most vague, anodyne and predictable sentiments? (People want the mayor-elect to “listen.” The mayor-elect wants to “listen.”) All this, at the exact moment when the formative administration needs to transition out of visionary-idealist-outsider mode and begin wrenching the rusty sprockets of municipal governance?
Egad, the Portlander thinks. This could be Tom Potter all over again. And Seattle, that would not be a good thing.
Election Night 2004 was, as you may recall, not a particular eve of good cheer for the progressive minded, but Portland lefties did find solace in the victory of ex-police chief Tom Potter in the city’s mayoral race. A year before, a city councilman named Jim Francesconi seemed like a lock for the top job, a prospect that inspired no enthusiasm outside the Francesconi family. A man cursed by an extraordinarily maladroit public persona (his cackling, maniacal laugh became a local anti-sensation), Francesconi jumped into the race for the open seat early. Leveraging his incumbent’s connections, he looked to bully off any competitors by wrapping up the big-money donors, business grandees and major property owners. This tactic basically worked. Francesoni piled up a huge war chest and a bunch of top-tier potential candidates took a pass.
In another year, that might have done it, but Francesconi proved to be the Greg Nickels of his place and time. Seattle had a snowstorm; America, circa late 2003, had George W. Bush. Portlanders were pissed off and in search of a face to punch. In this climate, Francesconi’s skillful heist of the front-runner’s mantel turned out to be the worst move ever. Despite his long career as a respectable (if middling) liberal Democrat, an impression of Francesconi as a venal, regressive inside dealer took root. His coziness with downtown development interests and a sect of grouchy old-line business types solidified this view, which gave rise to a general desire for a Not Jim candidate.
Into the breech: Tom Potter, a well-liked police chief from approximately one million years before (or the early ‘90s, which in terms of Portland electorate turnover amounts to the same thing). Potter ran a campaign that—at least from Jim Francesconi’s perspective—must have been one of the most infuriating in the history of local politics. He piously refused donations above $25 in the primary and $100 in the general, the better to make Francesconi look like a gold-digger. Other than that, Potter’s campaign was about…not much. The grandfatherly ex-cop—his lefty goodie-goodie cred established when, back in his uniform days, he marched in the local gay pride parade—tooled around town on his recumbent bike and said soothing things about “listening to the children” and empowering the neighborhoods.
Just as McGinn took advantage of some residual Obama Nation energy in his win, Potter hitched himself to the youthful progressive star of the moment, landing on Howard Dean’s second “Dean Dozen” endorsement list. (Obama himself was on the first.) During at least one public forum I attended as a reporter, Potter equated supporting Francesconi with voting for Bush—tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but fighting words at the time. Shallow it may have been, but Potter’s shtick played brilliantly. With his opponent all too clearly defined in the public mind, he became a blank slate for every frustrated progressive in town. Which is to say every progressive in town. Outspent 7-to-1, Potter trounced Francesconi in November.
Then…okay, so it didn’t go well. Tom Potter ended up a one-term mayor. By late in his tenure, one local paper dubbed him “the fifth wheel” on Portland’s five-member city council. Potter himself stormed out of one council meeting when he found himself a minority of one, exiting the stunned room with the stirring declaration “I am irrelevant!”
Give the man credit—he was right. Voters had already resoundingly shit-canned his signature effort to overhaul the city’s charter; his council colleagues and city staff had long since stopped listening to him, even as he “listened to the children.” And by that point, just three years into his four-year term, Potter had already decided not to run for re-election. For his last trick, Potter endorsed a rookie candidate in the race to replace him. That guy ended up with less than 40 percent of the vote in a race with two serious candidates. Well, one and a half.
So what happened? How did Tom Potter go from underdog hero to borderline joke? There are huge political differences between Seattle and Portland—and, presumably, between an ex-police chief with a wafer-thin policy portfolio and an accomplished super-wonk like McGinn. All the same, Potter’s flameout provides several object lessons in how not to run a reformist administration. Let us review.
1. “Listening” is fine, but it’s not your job. Everyone wants their new reformist mayor to give plenty of face time and hear their plight. And that’s nice, but Seattleites better hope these all-comers town halls don’t form a major part of McGinn’s governing strategy. McGinn just got hired to run a complex municipal apparatus and, hopefully, set some progressive action in motion—not run the world’s biggest charrette.
After his decent start, Potter let his administration devolve into a talking shop. Specifically, he made something called “The Visioning Project” his top priority. The Visioning Project was a laborious effort to gather public comment about…stuff. What did Portlanders want their city to look like in 20 years? How could we engage minority and immigrant groups? Et cetera. There was nothing wrong with the Visioning Project, besides its George Orwell-unapproved use of “vision” as a verb and the fact that it sucked all the oxygen out of Potter’s administration. It was obvious from early on that the thing wouldn’t lead to actual policy, so the other members of the council (and much of the public) tuned out. Meanwhile, Potter was so preoccupied with his brainchild, he didn’t bother to do much else. Game over, man!
2. You are not a crusading outsider any more. McGinn may have taken on the entrenched local machine and kicked off a new era in local politics and all that, and that’s terrific. But he—and, perhaps more importantly, his staff—must realize that they run shit now, and they have to behave in a suitably hardheaded manner. I was covering city hall when Potter took over, and I remember the messianic glimmer in the eyes of the mayor’s team, many of whom were new to the palace. (Sounding familiar?)
Early in his term, Potter got into a spat with the FBI when he pulled the city out of the Bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force over civil rights and oversight concerns. Righteous enough—but you would have thought, from the contact high everyone in Potter’s office was on, that the man had single-handedly stopped McCarthyism. “He just stood up to the FBI,” I remember one staffer telling a visiting constituent. “He will stand up for you!” Someone needed to tell these people there were no violins to cue.
3. You want to be mayor for four years, not 15 minutes. Potter’s stature eroded so completely by the end of his term, it was hard to remember that he seemed like a pretty good mayor for the first few months. He shook up the city budget process (I hear McGinn is set on doing the same—Beth Goldberg over veteran budget man Dwight Dively); he took a direct hand in running all the city departments; he did some good things on transparency; fired some bureaucrats who needed firing and seemed to have the council on his side. Unfortunately, there was no second act—largely because of Potter’s own attraction to gauzy and low-impact pondering.
When I interviewed him a few months into his term, I asked him what issues he intended to focus on over the next year. I was expecting something about bureaucracy reform or a new ordinance or whatever, but Potter’s mind was elsewhere. “An earthquake on the scale of the one that caused the South Pacific tsunami would devastate Portland,” he said, “…and also, obviously, schools are important…” At the time, I was like, well, yeah. Looking back, it’s more like, well, duh. Potter gave the impression of a man who wanted to do three or four specific things as mayor, did them, then found himself wondering what to do with the next three and a half years.
4. Don’t raise an issue unless you can do something about it and people care. Potter’s whole “listen to the children” deal led him to spend a lot of time talking about the local public schools. He moved his office’s operations to a downtrodden high school for a week, and invited aggrieved kids to testify before council. The problem, which Potter never seemed to grasp, was that city council doesn’t run the public schools. The school board does. (I hear one of McGinn’s top three campaign pledges was to fix the Seattle schools, which, even I know, are not run by city hall.)
In the absence of any concrete policy proposals or a mandate to make them, Potter’s schools focus became emblematic of his mayoralty—lots of talk, no action. At the same time, Potter in action was almost as ineffectual as Potter in thought: His misbegotten attempt to rewrite the city charter—an issue of zero interest to the public and anathema to his council colleagues—drained the last of his political capital.
5. The mayor’s most important constituency is also the smallest one. Specifically, the council. Portland’s city council is structured completely differently than Seattle’s—there are just five members counting the mayor, for starters. But it’s the same in any representative chamber: You need a majority to get anything done. That’s how a bill becomes a law. Potter, perhaps channeling his inner police chief, never seemed to get this Schoolhouse Rock-level principle of politics. If he had set out to alienate his four council colleagues, he could scarcely have done a more complete job. (I hear McGinn is going to have his hands full with aspirational and powerful city council member Tim Burgess. Watch that.)
McGinn will need to build allies on the council. Potter pissed off his most important ally, the council’s wonkiest (and most McGinn-like) member, with his unplugged style. “Voters got exactly what he advertised: a citizen mayor who’s not terribly interested in politics,” said former Potter council ally, council member Erik Sten. His cop-like distaste for backtalk and, eventually, his declaration of his own irrelevance dissuaded the other three from paying him much mind.
I doubt that the Ballad of Tom Potter is in frequent rotation around McGinn’s transition office. From afar, your new mayor looks like he’s making many of the right moves; the light rail initiative sounds like it will have solid support. But the unraveling of Portland’s most recent progressive-outsider mayor makes one truth plain that McGinn and his people should keep in mind: If you really want to change the system, getting elected is the easy part.
Zach Dundas is a Portland freelance journalist who used to cover City Hall for Willamette Week. He now writes for Monocle, Good and various other publications. His first book, The Renegade Sportsman, will be published this spring by Riverhead Books.
