The Park City Council race briefly surfaced to public view with last week’s candidate forum, half-filling the Santy. I know these are no Taylor Swift concert, but still. Seems voters are more interested than usual in a primary election for a ski town with plenty else going on.
For reporters, forums can be a cacophony of Q&A that tends to drone after a while, especially with eight people running for two open seats, each answering the same question in an eternity for the listener, a full minute. This can feel at times like a cattle car stuffed with piggy-backers. Boiled down, ditto is a short answer indeed.
How to fish out something truly cohesive and compelling? Don’t forget equal time for each candidate. Still, I see the writers from KPCW and The Park Record, my baby, managed better than I would have. I love going, and I learn a ton, but trying to cover the essence of the experience itself in a story is all but impossible.
Otherwise, though, the candidates are scattered across their private meet-’n’-greets, door knocking, and holding enough coffee meetings with town wags, sages and elders to burst a bladder before 10. Some start showing up at the council meetings they hope someday soon to lead. The math alone predicts when most will disappear again from the council chambers.
If a reporter is daunted or frustrated by candidate forums, try covering all that, the real campaign.
What we get when the candidates break the surface into public view is best behavior, which is fine. But frankly, you don’t really know anyone — not your spouse, your boss, roommate, colleague, best friend — until you’ve really pissed them off and they’ve seen you at your, um, lesser angel self.
These things are inevitable in all our important relationships. But for nearly all of us, that’s left to our imaginations with politicians from local councils and boards all the way to the presidency. Voting is a guessing game at root. To a large degree, we’re gambling.
Still, we also want to know our local candidates at their best, their basic positions, their approach to issues, their values and aspirations. We don’t need to understand all the ins and outs, just that they will do their homework and be able to explain their answers and ideas concisely and clearly, and that they can make tough decisions rather than be paralyzed by “complexity.”
Please. At root, city issues aren’t all that complex — explaining to the half of town that disagrees with anything an elected does is the hard part. Especially after months of campaigning as everyone’s friend. But that’s the nature of the beast. This is what the candidates signed up for, even if maybe they didn’t fully understand the fact.
I go because a candidate forum is chock full of clues about the roiling below the surface. Generally, the candidates are cordial, aiming for that good impression, uneasy smiles at the ready. The smooth sociopaths don’t begin to appear until a couple of levels up from municipal office, peaking in D.C. It’s all more wonderfully, humanly awkward here, Americana if set to music.
Nominally nonpartisan elections in our tiny towns make the cliques more subtle, as well. But I caught cues this time in the answers to the question, “What’s the worst decision the council has made?” Those who answered the redo vote to reject ranked-choice voting signaled something, and those who said voting for a nearly quadrupled amount from just the previous month to study what is looking like an expensive affordable-housing project at Clark Ranch signaled something else.
Whatever you think about those issues, a clear distinction among the candidates emerged right there. To me anyway, this goes to the core of differing calculations in logic, a shade of partisan feeling, and signals about where historical precedent matters and where it doesn’t, fiscal philosophy, and impatience with at least the tang of a do-nothing council and why that might be.
I imagine all this is bewildering to the mass of city residents who don’t follow how their community is governed in any detail. We already know by voting trends that more than half the eligible voters won’t bother, which might be a good thing. Of those left over, up to half will vote based on anything but the issues, mainly on their gut feeling about a candidate, influenced greatly by if they’ve met them or heard of them. Plenty will rely on the grapevine gossip from their friend circles. There’s your wisdom of the crowd at work. Lawn signs matter, too.
And often, I’d say fortunately, these elections will be decided at the margins by those who pay closer attention. That’s where candidate forums, voting guide questionnaires, profiles and regular coverage of the city begin to fit in.
There’s also another, sometimes spicier, source for evaluating candidates for local office. Those are the letters and other commentaries such as this one.
Close observers will readily see this race has more heat than two years ago, and flint and iron began striking sparks early — right after the redo to reject ranked-choice voting. Writers calling for peace and civility ignited something else with their own inflammatory wording. Perhaps that was unavoidable.
Is this a bad thing? You know, I don’t think so. At least not in the MAGA vs. anti-MAGA sense. A meta question here is how should an elected body best work together to achieve best outcomes? Get along to go along, all on the bus, consensus? Or disagree more emphatically, sometimes angrily, and then vote?
My personal tastes are more rough and tumble, let the sparks fly, settle the truth like Socrates. Then vote. Kindness can come in toxic varieties, re: office politics. I prefer democracy practiced fully in the open. Black eyes and bruised egos don’t bother me so much as the knife in the back, smiley passive aggression.
But I’m a journalist and pundit. I see that conflict provides greater public insight, as well as making for more interesting stories, and oh, we do get to know each other and an elected body a lot better that way.
Short of dysfunctional loathing, this is the prescription for healthy open debate and democratic decisions. Stubborn geniuses with all the answers need not apply. To me, the best candidates bring good hearts and a great sense of humor. They’ll need it in any case, along with keen ears.
Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.