Handicapping the City Council Appointment
By
{Disclaimer – I’ve applied for the City Council seat. My application is here.}
The application process to fill Holly Jones’ seat on the Asheville City Council has brought a lot of interesting folks out of the woodwork and into the political process. Many who wouldn’t necessarily have publicly campaigned for the job decided that they’re willing to serve out the 11 months of the term. Three different sources have tried to poll Ashevillains about who they’d prefer, but two of these polls closed after a short period of time. Tim Peck had a range voting system up, but it’s gone now. Mtn. Xpress used SurveyMonkey only to learn that only 100 respondents are allowed per survey (unless you want to dump some money into it). The Asheville Citizen-Times has a survey, but the question isn’t about preference, it’s about who’s “qualified” for the job. Go have a look.
Tim Peck posted this demographic breakdown at his site:
32 men.
15 women.
41 whites.
2 African-Americans.
1 Hispanic.
3 race unknown.
8 are 18-35 years old.
34 are 36-64 years old.
4 are 65 years or older.
1 age unknown.
At tomorrow’s City Council meeting, and indeterminate number of candidates will be invited to come in for an interview in a public meeting on Dec. 9th. Jan Davis today suggested that 4-6 candidates may be interviewed. The winning candidate will need four votes in a Council without Jones. Â While I imagine they’ll seek unanimity, I can imagine a 4-2 breakdown carrying the day. Those majorities are likely to be composed of either Mumpower, Russell, Davis, and Bellamy or Newman, Cape, Davis, and Bellamy.
Sylvia Farrington is rumored to be a favorite of Mayor Terry Bellamy.  Ms. Farrington has a very impressive resume, and her community involvement has been extensive.  She’s a sure bet to get through to the interview round and the odds-on fave to win the seat.
Ed Hay brings City Council experience to the table.  He was on Council from 1995-99 and has a centrist, community-minded reputation preceeding him.  Ed is the second sure-thing to get to the interview round and the next likeliest candidate to receive the appointment.
Abigail Emison, the 28 year old Director of Business Development for BUILDERadius, Inc., led the Mtn. X poll and is leading the “most qualified” voting at AC-T. Â Methinks homegirl has a good email list and some folks who are willing to advocate for her. Â In this unusual method of selection, it’s unknown how much public opinion will play into Council’s decisions. Â But it can’t hurt to get noticed in a field of 47 candidates. Â
Carolina Stompers are incredulous about the references I listed on my resume. Â Holly Jones, Amy Sawyer, Charles Thomas, and Michael Muller are all vouching for me, and this drives the hotheaded Stompers up a wall and gives me a little free publicity. Â I’ve got good relationships with many of the current Council members, and while I’m hopeful they’ll invite me in for an interview based on my references and essay responses, I’m certainly not a front-runner to win.
Jenny Bowen, a much-loved Hooligan herself, has an outside chance of getting an interview slot due to her community involvement and great reputation.
Bryan Freeborn, who would have been appointed to the seat under the previously used method, certainly has the experience to do the job. Â However, his chances of getting an interview are almost nil.
Jake Quinn has incredible budgetary experience, though it’s uncertain as to whether his community activism will work for him or against him.
Cecil Bothwell is, of course, a favorite of mine.  His big, sweeping, visionary ideas might play very well with voters in the next election cycle, but I don’t think they’ll get him an interview in the appointment process.
There are too many candidates to do a comprehensive review in a meager blog post, but it’s certainly worth your time to review the candidates’ applications. So many candidates are people who might not consider running for the seat in a standard campaign, and it’s inspiring to see them in the mix. Which candidates do you favor, and which do you think have a shot?
12 Comments
December 1st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Gordon: You left out Keller. He’s a lock for an interview because of Russell & Mumpower.
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December 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
It is hard to say who will get an interview other than who ever the Mayor favors. I agree with you Gordon on the slim chance of myself getting and interview. Mostly because they know who I am and my record. Also, no matter what Jan Davis says, this app process was created because they do not want me back on council. Still scratching my head on what possessed me to even put an application in.
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December 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Thanks, Elderberry. I imagine you’re right.
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December 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Gordon, In a field of 47 applicants and the make up of Council it is hard to place bets on who will get an interview. I doubt that I will get an interview simply because they know my record. I would say that 80% of these folks are more qualified on paper than anyone on council, as well as, my self. The only problem with them is that they outside of 3 or 4 none of them have ever been on a ballot. We just elected a president that was on paper the least qualified candidate.
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December 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Gordon & all –
First thanks for the kind words –
I guess we’ll just have to see who gets called tomorrow, right?
Nevertheless this whole process has caused me to think long & hard about city council and the next 11 months.
I just posted some comments to the forum over at the Mountain Xpress – but it pretty dead over there [zzzzzzzzz...] so just to share some ideas I am reposting my words over here.
I have previously considered running for City Council, but after intimately working on some campaigns I got nervous & intimidated – not for any lack of desire to work for and serve in the position – but due to the stress of campaigning. The process to campaign is overwhelming & exhausting, requiring a vast support structure and hardy personal means in order to have the time and capability to fund raise the average $15K (according to Jan Davis) that is spent to acquire a campaign seat. As a young (currently part-time) professional netting less than $25K a year, raising $15K for a council seat sounds like a Don Quixote task of fighting windmills. Despite whatever natural gift I may have for policy & service, and even as an active citizen who has great outreach in the community, there are socio-economic barriers that exist making
politics a very difficult game to get into.
Not that there aren’t other ways of going about getting ideas and face/name recognition out there, but as I said it requires intensely developed organization and a lot of time. I totally respected the ideals of Lindsey Simerly’s run for council two years ago – and I know all too well after working intimately on local and national campaigns how difficult it is to organize the necessary infrastructure needed to run with any chance of winning.
Some people are calling the application process un-democratic, but I see the process as a creative (& with any luck successful) experiment in local representation. Council could have spent less time and just straight appointed Sylvia Farrington or Jake Quinn, as has happened in the past when seats become vacant late into a term. [The issue with Bryan Freeborn may be personal, so I don't even begin to assume comment on that situation.] Instead, Council chose to make the process transparent and allow the entire populous to share their observations and visions for Asheville’s present and future. This has created an opportunity for many people to share their thoughtful insights & ideas for civic representation, people who in normal circumstances may not be able to consider such ideals or be able to find the means necessary to ‘break into politics’.
Many qualified people have applied, and I do not envy Council’s task of deliberating who has the best grasp on our current situations and who can work with them in envisioning & establishing our future.
Whatever may happen, the process of applying has forced me to think about the community issues as documented by the Faces of Asheville project in a very creative problem-solving manner.
What details can be altered or influenced that affect the whole macrocosmic process?
And how can we as a community activate ourselves into taking more personal control of our local environment and economic structure?
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December 1st, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Focusing on the issue of budgets and economy:
Asheville’s budget & situation is not necessarily that different from many other cities all over America. The entire US market is starting to shift focus. Obviously ‘balancing our budget’ is easy rhetoric, but perhaps the real long-term solutions involve considering:
1) How do you keep the money that is coming into your city STAYING in your city?
— Ashevile is a tourist destination and will [hopefully] remain as one. When you have a nice home that you care for and take pride in, you want to invite people to come and visit. It encourages us to take care of our historic values and appeal to the asethic of community. But when tourist money comes in, how do you keep it in your community rather than letting it trickle back out? Community currency is one train of thought that many amongst us have considered, but again this is a part of our economic infrastructure that must be examined and solutions need to be applied quickly. Its difficult to believe that during our times of high-progress few considered how to keep the coffer full for those ultimately to come rainy days.
2) How to create a secondary work-force economy not reliant on tourism?
—- We simply need to create non-tourist based jobs in Asheville. In doing so, we have to consider several factors such as what services do we need to create or encourage both in government and in the private sectors. We also need to look at what public-awareness & eco-techno-green idustry intiatives are going to be handed down from the Obama-Biden administration. There will be federal funds funneling down and Asheville city needs to have lobbyists in Raleigh looking out for our needs. But we have to be aware of what we can sustain in this region, we certainly don’t want to risk the sprawl patterns of central Georiga. We currently have a surplus of water at the Mills River plant, but that is because so many factories went belly-up over the past decade. Factories take a lot of water & resources to run and we have to make conscious effort to recruit industry that works within our social needs and efforts. We won’t be able to sustain an entire new auto-industry, but perhaps there are eco-components we can manufacture here at a lower. In referencing the issue of water, the county and the city need to come to near-immediate terms with the state over the unjust Sulivan Acts – which rob the city of it’s power, resources, and funds.
3) How do you cut government spending while creating new jobs and infrastructure?
—- We are in the midst of a significant shift towards localism & creating community infrastructure. Boosting the private sector comes by building necessary city infrastructure so that people can spend less (whether that be with time, money, or effort) on getting to and from work, having affordable safe work-force housing, and by intiaiting living wage standards throughout the city. If you promote community services as new business opportunities in the private sector then the city can cut funding and redirect it to the infrastructure necessary to sustain community. It is very circular – we just need to get into the cycle. These next eleven months can be used effectively during trend of convergence by connecting individual, private, public, and government efforts. That would be my plan were I given the opportunity to represent & serve.
Cetainly there are new taxes and old taxes that can be examined as well as number juggling that must occor – but what I am attempting is instating a pragmatic and philisophical long-term plan for Asheville’s economy.
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December 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Freeborn: Just say you did it for the lulz.
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December 1st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Hey! Maybe Abigail Emison IS the most qualified!! Gordon accuses “Methinks homegirl has a good email list and some folks who are willing to advocate for her.” Maybe she’s just the most qualified! She sure looks that way to me…
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December 1st, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Thanks Hooligans for your continued attention to this matter. Time grows very short, with Council set to make its short list next Tuesday. Over at Mountain Xpress, we’re offering up two ways to consider the crop of applicants: We’ve got the applications in their entirety and summaries we compiled based on those documents.
The applications are long and in-depth. The summaries are a quick hit. Between the two, we hope local voters can navigate the options and let Council know what they think — regardless of the fact that there’s no public vote to fill the seat.
See the applications and summaries here (and in Wednesday’s Xpress): http://www.mountainx.com/news/2008/h147_hats_in_the_ring_h1
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December 1st, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Just a quick correction — Ed Hay served on City Council from 1995 – 2001 not to 1999.
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December 2nd, 2008 at 7:33 am
Thanks, RHS.
GirlMakesArt, you sound like one of those strong advocates. Further, the question of who’s the most “qualified” is like asking people to choose a baseball player based on batting average alone. Was Bellamy most qualified? Cape? Mumpower? I think there’s more than on-paper qualifications that make up the strength of any candidate. Anyway – I was complimenting Abigail and her supporters for getting out there and shaking things up.
Jon, thanks for the update.
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December 2nd, 2008 at 4:20 pm
In an attempt to get some further information out of the citizen-times poll, I took the results and summed to get an aggregate count for each candidate. This means that “qualified” gets a 1, “very qualified” gets a 2, and “most qualified” gets a 3, but “least qualified” gets a -3, and “not very qualified” gets a -2. I didn’t want to count anything as 0 (meaning that those votes wouldn’t count at all), so that’s how I came up with this scoring. (Also, I wanted to have the not-qualified votes offset the qualified votes, so that’s why there are negative values instead of some net positive value, which wouldn’t convey as much meaning).
The top 10 are:
+15 – Abigail Emison
-20 – Ed Hay
-42 – Sylvia Farrington
-42 – Catherine Alter
-66 – Kelly Miller
-69 – Anthony Coxie
-70 – Esther Manheimer
-76 – Philip Hardin
-78 – Cecil Bothwell
-79 – Jason Rector
How likely is it that a majority of those picked by council for interviews will be out of that list?
I can post the rest of the results if anyone cares. The bottom three are Bill Branyon (-165), Brian Woods (-169), and Dana Bierce (-185)
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