Mayor Dad
For many years and multiple terms, my father was the mayor of the
small farming community where I grew up (and my grandfather before him,
but on the opposite side of the family). Our town wasn't anywhere near
the size of Estes Park, and this position certainly didn't define him,
but it wasn't an inconsequential role during the time he served - He was
mayor when the town essentially doubled in size overnight because of
the laborers (and their families) required to build a major coal-fired
power plant, he was mayor the night a young man ritualistically killed
six of his neighbors over the course of a terrifying three hours and
wasn't captured until the following morning, which, even before the era
of cable television and 24 hour news cycles, kept him on the phone all
through the night with national news outlets when he kept begging for
his family to be allowed some minutes to sleep (he wasn't provided a
PIO). So while our current and former Estes Park mayors deal or dealt
with similar challenges, tragedy and recovery from natural disasters,
they don't exactly hold a monopoly on leadership.
Whether
my father wished for it or not (I doubt if he cares, but he's not a
"share your feelings" guy), there was never a possibility of me carrying
on this aspect of the family legacy, at least not in the same
location: He exited a successful agri-conglomerate at just the right
time, the power plant that brought in so many construction families back
then now runs on a skeleton crew, surrounding farms are getting larger,
and a formerly bustling downtown business district much, much smaller.
I was so proud of him when, two years ago, our former mayor tried to convince him over the phone I wasn't cut out for public service. He is too gentle a man to raise his voice or be anything other than polite, but he called me immediately after that conversation, and told me in no uncertain terms to run, and even more, offered to pay for some additional newspaper advertisement. What our former mayor doesn't understand, again because my father is not outspoken, and doesn't walk around wearing his mayorship on his sleeve, is that there is, or should be, an unspoken fraternity of now and former public servants, an agreement not violate the code of encouraging qualified (or unqualified, or who you or anyone else views as unqualified) people to run for public office. As the fairly successful (and certainly more interesting than our former mayor) Mark Cuban said, "I'm the one guy who says don't force the stupid people to be quiet - I want to know who the morons are." (The other thing our former mayor doesn't understand, because my parents are not ostentatious, is that, regardless of how much money he made as a mid-level manager back east, my father, through hard work and good investments, made more, and has more. Way more. Not bragging, just warning folks there are a bunch of avenues to go down with feigned moral superiority when you judge me or tell me why your dad is better than my dad, but class discrimination is not one of them.)
This election, our former mayor is up to the same old tricks, trying to bully people into not running, and then attempting to silence public comment when the public attends meetings. Unlike me, my father is very much a conciliator, he doesn't like raised voices, but he never, to my knowledge, tried to stanch them. Our former mayor can say, "Oh, but there are rules to how a meeting is run, you have to speak during the times we allot for you" but who are we kidding - this is not the U.N. or the operating theater, this is still a small community where people used to know each other, and work through problems by allowing citizens a voice and a vote on issues that impacted them, not a workshop for setting up elaborate "prisoner's dilemma" games where mutually contradictory statements ("We can stop at any time, go/no go" or "If we turn this down, we'll never get grants again/We're now on the hook for $1.6 million, so how can we say no") get spun into circulation all at the same time.
For our former mayor to brag in February to the paper about how mail-in ballots were the only way to go, and then midstream March try to rally board members to his proposal that a cheaper walk-in vote was actually better, is disingenuous, duplicitous, and demonstrative of pettiness and poor leadership. If this was really about saving money, he could graciously step down and open up spots to all three candidates. This is about power, and tightly clutching it when it is well past time to hand the arrows to more qualified archers. If our former mayor believes otherwise, he can always talk directly to me about it (it's pretty clear to him where I live, or should be, since he constantly trespasses on family property), rather than attempt to purge any unpleasantness from his few remaining brain cells, and patroninze or humiliate my father.
Until our former mayor's commitment (either to honest, actually transparent government, or to an institution, your call), I am running in every single election, not to spite him, but because our hospital board clearly needs a voice that is not being pulled by strings and projected through clenched teeth. Even better, I am running harboring no illusion that I will get elected during his however-long dark reign, but also not laboring under the delusion that the small number of votes I get in my losing efforts somehow make me unqualified. Sorry, but 2 or 200 votes don't define me as a "loser" any more than a larger minority of votes from a minority of registered voters somehow justifies a team mandate to trample. Prior to 1920, no woman (except in Wyoming, and a scattering of other progressive or underpopulated states) won any House or Senate election. Were all women thus a priori losers, unfit to govern? (I love the construct about giving a woman sperm and watching her make a baby, or giving a woman a house and watching her make it a home, or giving a woman crap and preparing for the guaranteed shi*storm to follow.)
My background is fact finding, and the absolutely bedrock truth provided by the scientific method. I'm good at what I do. I get that day-to-day living and small-town government are more squirmy and relative and subjective, but what is becoming very clear is that I am a proofreader in a community that can't spell, and rather than accept this free gift, the people repeatedly behind the errors don't thank me and correct them, but instead huddle together with friends and laugh and plot how not to fix the things pointed out as objectively and provably wrong, passively-aggressively making excuses about having to first exhaust print runs or falling back on the apparently equivocal nature of pedophilia and racism. Mr. Holcomb is not leaving, it's just, inexplicably, 4,250 voters out of 4,500 left him.
It's a rich field, pointing out our local "leaders" foibles, and as of yesterday, there is apparently one less soldier willing to take up arms. So what do you do, except keep winking and typing and running like there's no tomorrow?
I was so proud of him when, two years ago, our former mayor tried to convince him over the phone I wasn't cut out for public service. He is too gentle a man to raise his voice or be anything other than polite, but he called me immediately after that conversation, and told me in no uncertain terms to run, and even more, offered to pay for some additional newspaper advertisement. What our former mayor doesn't understand, again because my father is not outspoken, and doesn't walk around wearing his mayorship on his sleeve, is that there is, or should be, an unspoken fraternity of now and former public servants, an agreement not violate the code of encouraging qualified (or unqualified, or who you or anyone else views as unqualified) people to run for public office. As the fairly successful (and certainly more interesting than our former mayor) Mark Cuban said, "I'm the one guy who says don't force the stupid people to be quiet - I want to know who the morons are." (The other thing our former mayor doesn't understand, because my parents are not ostentatious, is that, regardless of how much money he made as a mid-level manager back east, my father, through hard work and good investments, made more, and has more. Way more. Not bragging, just warning folks there are a bunch of avenues to go down with feigned moral superiority when you judge me or tell me why your dad is better than my dad, but class discrimination is not one of them.)
This election, our former mayor is up to the same old tricks, trying to bully people into not running, and then attempting to silence public comment when the public attends meetings. Unlike me, my father is very much a conciliator, he doesn't like raised voices, but he never, to my knowledge, tried to stanch them. Our former mayor can say, "Oh, but there are rules to how a meeting is run, you have to speak during the times we allot for you" but who are we kidding - this is not the U.N. or the operating theater, this is still a small community where people used to know each other, and work through problems by allowing citizens a voice and a vote on issues that impacted them, not a workshop for setting up elaborate "prisoner's dilemma" games where mutually contradictory statements ("We can stop at any time, go/no go" or "If we turn this down, we'll never get grants again/We're now on the hook for $1.6 million, so how can we say no") get spun into circulation all at the same time.
For our former mayor to brag in February to the paper about how mail-in ballots were the only way to go, and then midstream March try to rally board members to his proposal that a cheaper walk-in vote was actually better, is disingenuous, duplicitous, and demonstrative of pettiness and poor leadership. If this was really about saving money, he could graciously step down and open up spots to all three candidates. This is about power, and tightly clutching it when it is well past time to hand the arrows to more qualified archers. If our former mayor believes otherwise, he can always talk directly to me about it (it's pretty clear to him where I live, or should be, since he constantly trespasses on family property), rather than attempt to purge any unpleasantness from his few remaining brain cells, and patroninze or humiliate my father.
Until our former mayor's commitment (either to honest, actually transparent government, or to an institution, your call), I am running in every single election, not to spite him, but because our hospital board clearly needs a voice that is not being pulled by strings and projected through clenched teeth. Even better, I am running harboring no illusion that I will get elected during his however-long dark reign, but also not laboring under the delusion that the small number of votes I get in my losing efforts somehow make me unqualified. Sorry, but 2 or 200 votes don't define me as a "loser" any more than a larger minority of votes from a minority of registered voters somehow justifies a team mandate to trample. Prior to 1920, no woman (except in Wyoming, and a scattering of other progressive or underpopulated states) won any House or Senate election. Were all women thus a priori losers, unfit to govern? (I love the construct about giving a woman sperm and watching her make a baby, or giving a woman a house and watching her make it a home, or giving a woman crap and preparing for the guaranteed shi*storm to follow.)
My background is fact finding, and the absolutely bedrock truth provided by the scientific method. I'm good at what I do. I get that day-to-day living and small-town government are more squirmy and relative and subjective, but what is becoming very clear is that I am a proofreader in a community that can't spell, and rather than accept this free gift, the people repeatedly behind the errors don't thank me and correct them, but instead huddle together with friends and laugh and plot how not to fix the things pointed out as objectively and provably wrong, passively-aggressively making excuses about having to first exhaust print runs or falling back on the apparently equivocal nature of pedophilia and racism. Mr. Holcomb is not leaving, it's just, inexplicably, 4,250 voters out of 4,500 left him.
It's a rich field, pointing out our local "leaders" foibles, and as of yesterday, there is apparently one less soldier willing to take up arms. So what do you do, except keep winking and typing and running like there's no tomorrow?
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