A truly remarkable performance from ‘It was exhaustion, it was sadness, it was fatigue’: America’s mayors call it quits by Lisa Kashinsky of Politico. She is living and reporting from some hallucinatory cocoon.
Jenny Durkan survived death threats as a federal prosecutor before becoming the first woman in nearly a century to lead the city of Seattle. Two-plus years into her first term as mayor, Durkan — the daughter of one of Washington state’s most powerful political players — was laying the groundwork for a reelection bid and thinking about her political future.
Then Covid-19 arrived.
Washington state was hit first and hit hard. There was no playbook and little help from the feds. Running a city, already a marathon in the best of times, suddenly felt to Durkan like running an Ironman — at a sprint. Ten months, several pandemic surges and an unexpected summer of protests over police brutality later, Durkan decided not to seek a second term after all.
“When you’re in the cauldron, making those tough decisions, it becomes much more clear,” Durkan said. “I could either do the job they elected me to do or run to keep the job. But I couldn’t do both.”
So we have a nepotistic insider having worked within government all her life complaining about just hard it is to govern when there are challenges and how much even more hard it is to simultaneously govern and to run for office at the same. Despite tens of thousands of her political peers doing just that.
Durkan is far from the only mayor calling it quits after an exhausting year navigating the front lines of an unprecedented confluence of crises that touched nearly every aspect of human life. Across the country, mayors in cities big and small, urban and rural, are giving up — for now — on their political careers. In the process, they’re shaking up the municipal landscape, creating a brain drain in city halls and upsetting the political pipeline all over America.
A brain drain? Kashinsky really claimed that? Is she actually a political reporter? There are some very bright politicians but there are some profoundly ordinary politicians and then there are those, such as Durkan, who are intellectually credentialed and simply cannot govern effectively. Who cannot serve the commonweal but instead pander to small ideological groups at the margin.
Kashinsky positions this primarily as exhaustion from dealing with Covid-19 but it is not hard to read between the lines and see that there is something more fundamental going on.
She uses six current mayors as her main sources. Omitting those who were already planning to retire, the basis for the article consists of talks with:
Jenny Durkan (Mayor of Seattle, Washington, D, 74% increase in violent crime, 18% cut in police budget, 260 police officer departures, JD actively supported police defunding movement, did little to contain violent George Floyd riots, strong support of masking)
Keisha Lance Bottoms (Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, D, 58% increase in violet crime, 20% (400 officers) below intended police department headcount, KLB passively supported police defunding efforts, did little to contain violent George Floyd riots, bad relationships with neighboring jurisdictions who could have helped, strong supporter of strict lockdowns)
Michelle De La Isla (Mayor of Topeka, Kansas, D, 34% increase in violent crime, MDLI passively supported police defunding efforts, had protests but no riots, vocal proponent of lockdowns)
Joseph Curtatone (Mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts, D, Unknown increase, JC actively supported police defunding movement, had protests but no riots, supported economic contraction to achieve lockdowns)
Grover Robinson (Mayor of Pensacola, Florida, R, Unknown increase, GR position on defunding unclear, aggressive [blocking traffic] but peaceful George Floyd protests, strong advocate for lockdowns)
Joyce Warshaw (Mayor Dodge City, Kansas, R, More than 12% increase in violent crime, JW position on defunding unclear, violent George Floyd riots, strong supporter of lockdowns)
Source: Crime statistics.
Patterns? Two Democratic mayors in two largely Democratic states. Two Democrats in two largely Republican states. Two Republicans in two largely Republican states. Apparently no unexpected Republican mayoral withdrawals in Republican states, making this seem possibly more of a Democratic policy portfolio issue rather than a Covid issue.
Three women and three men. Four Democrats and two Republicans.
Four of the retiring mayors were advocates for police defunding. Three had violent George Floyd riots and three had George Floyd protests. All six were strong supporters of the CDC advice for masks, lockdowns and economic contractions.
The first two anchor Mayors for the article are Jenny Durkan (Mayor of Seattle, Washington, D) and Keisha Lance Bottoms (Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, D).
I know Keisha Lance Bottoms' story. She has been a comprehensive failure with nothing to show for her three years in the Mayor's office other than continued corruption investigations, rapidly rising murder rates, rapidly rising homelessness, a dramatic increase in police officer resignations or retirement, a trail of executive orders overturned for being illegal, an incapacity to control non-residents entering residential neighborhoods to keep people awake with street car racing in the early hours of the morning, etc. She is a black mayor in a black majority city, with a black majority city council, with a black majority police force. And she has let the city go to hell in a hand basket.
A surprising move for one of the Democratic Party’s biggest rising stars.
The Democrats are in deep trouble if she is one of their biggest rising stars. Fortunately, that is not the case. Kashinsky is one of those Ben Rhodes reporters who "literally know nothing". She is simply parroting what she has heard about all the Atlanta Mayors who are always characterized as "rising stars" in the Democratic Party no matter how many corruption indictments trail them.
It is worth remembering, Lance Bottoms dropped away from leading the city through Covid-19 and George Floyd protests in order to focus on doing the Washington, D.C. Sunday TV talk shows during the Biden Administration transition, hoping to land a Cabinet position. For all her conniving and positioning and lobbying, she was only offered the Ambassadorship of the Bahamas.
Lance Bottoms botched the anemic George Floyd protests in Atlanta while firing police officers willy-nilly without investigation whenever they defended themselves from attack.
Jenny Durkan I only know from the news reports of the crime disaster which has been Seattle, Washington.
Six unexpected retirements from mayors who supported Covid-19 policies which materially harmed the economic prospects of most people, four of whom also supported police defunding, three of whom had violent protests and property destruction associated with the George Floyd riots.
These six candidates do not seem like leaders looking out for the well-being of their constituents. The problem has not been Covid-19 and George Floyd protests. The problem is that the mayors did not respond in a fashion consistent with the expectations of voters and mayors who delivered much worse outcomes than should have been reasonably expected.
These are not the best and the brightest. These are not rising stars. This is not a brain drain.
This is ineffective mayors suffering the electoral consequences of having enacted bad policies with bad outcomes for most of their law-abiding and productive residents. Kashinsky has grasped the wrong end of the stick.
And she has made it worse for these mayors by making them appear as self-regarding fragile emos with no sense of responsibility but a deep reservoir of victimhood.
- "There was no playbook and little help from the feds. Running a city, already a marathon in the best of times, suddenly felt to Durkan like running an Ironman — at a sprint. Ten months, several pandemic surges and an unexpected summer of protests over police brutality later, Durkan decided not to seek a second term after all."
- In an interview, Lance Bottoms said the last year had drained her and left her wanting to move on to something else. What, exactly, she does not yet know.
The days after Floyd’s death, in particular, were a ”perfect storm of disappointment,” as people took to the streets of Atlanta and some demonstrations turned violent, Lance Bottoms said. “It was exhaustion, it was sadness, it was fatigue. I mean there’s so many words that I could use, none of them probably strong enough to really capture the last 18 months. But it was, I can say personally, it felt like a very low point.”
- Michelle De La Isla, the Democratic mayor of Topeka, Kan., felt those emotions twice over — as her city’s leader and as a congressional candidate running a campaign she began pre-Covid.
“It was ugly,” De La Isla said. “It was very ugly.”
Four months after losing her bid for Congress, De La Isla, Topeka’s first Latina and single-mother mayor, announced she wouldn’t seek a second term.
“Covid had a big impact in my decision to not run for mayor again,” De La Isla said. “You really cannot wholeheartedly focus on recovery while you’re running for office. You have to be fully present and make sure that your head is in the game.”
These people were dealing with the ordinary crises that mayors deal with - economic downturns, health emergencies, crime, drugs, weather disasters, the need for partisan negotiations and agreement, infrastructure improvement or replacement. It is clear from their words and deeds that these mayors were not up to the minimum expectations of voters and are therefore cutting their losses and resigning.
This is not something bad that happened to them. This is their failure to serve their constituents.
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