The vast amounts of attention this year dedicated to the Presidential race (serving America since Late November 2006!) I fear has distracted some attention away from the more minor races going on around the country. While this is probably reasonable, the media frenzy of “Decision ’08” should not let us forget the dozen or so other boxes we might have to check in May and November. Among these for locals is the competition for the noble and storied office of Eugene mayor. There are quite a few candidates running, including one current mayor, one former mayor and even a University student, for a while anyway. But the primary race, the so-called punditry seems to think, is between former Mayor Jim Torrey and incumbent Kitty Piercy.
Eugene’s mayoral office could be likened in terms of governmental structure to that of the captain of a pirate ship. That is to say, they don’t have overwhelming, if any, control over their crew. For the most part, the day-to-day operations of the city government’s executive are carried out by a city manager, whom we might think of as the helmsman of our municipal Black Pearl. Most policy decisions are made by the city council, which asks for the mayor’s opinion when they need to break a tie.
Between not administering the basic functions of the city and not deciding what those basic functions will be, you may be asking what I asked: What exactly does the mayor do? Well, apparently she answers questions from elementary schoolers on her Web site about whether or not she once had chicken pox. Besides this undoubtedly awesome responsibility, the Eugene mayor also presides over all council meetings and can veto any decision they make, absent of a two-thirds majority of the council. The mayor is also an important policy leader, setting the tone and building consensus around a political agenda.
For the past four years, Eugene’s mayor has been so-called “liberal Democrat” Kitty Piercy. She is best known, apparently, for voting down a brilliantly expensive and environmentally outrageous proposal for a massive new parkway in West Eugene called, suitably, the West Eugene Parkway. In a world of $3.57 gas, this wouldn’t be such a big deal other than the fact that most Eugenians democratically supported the measure somewhere in the vicinity of three times.
But the most interesting candidate in this race is probably former Mayor Jim Torrey. Once a Republican candidate for State Senate, Torrey recently retooled himself as an Independent – no doubt realizing that it’s going to be hard to win an election in Eugene as a registered Republican. Rather than run as a Republican, Torrey would like us to think of him as a “moderate with real fiscal concerns,” according to the Emerald’s article on this subject.
His candidacy has already made news by pledging to spend ungodly amounts of money on the race (supposedly, according to Register-Guard reports, nearly a quarter-million dollars), and for insisting on vigorous debates as the most important forum for election politics, so long as, apparently, those debates don’t include questions from the audience that haven’t been pre-reviewed by the candidates.
And any Eugenian who ever leaves the West University neighborhood has surely seen his signs around, all decked-out in Oregon Ducks colors (I try to avoid doing so if I can, but you know, the Saturday Market and Sweet Life are always tempting). Torrey, a moderate ex-Republican candidate, has also done a beautiful job of plastering “Yes, Eugene, We Can!” on his campaign signs, most annoyingly co-opting a popular campaign mantra from progressive presidential candidate Barack Obama. Yes, Eugene, we can expand the urban growth boundary and scale back protections for the environment! It somehow doesn’t have the ring to it that the promise of health care for every American does, but I commend the effort.
Yes, I expect to hear much more about the mayoral election in the near to distant future, and I hope everyone will spare a little of their political attention away from the presidential pundit-orgy to think about the future of our local environment as well.
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