Last night was another big Mayoral debate, this one including the newly announced (but not filed) Maria Cabrera and finally showing up Dennis Williams. This debate was sponsored by the Complexities of Color Coalition, the Metropolitan Urban League Young Professionals, Interdenominational Ministers Action Council, Delaware Young Democrats Minority Caucus and Delaware Black and held at Ezion Fair church in Southbridge. This was really well attended and the audience was definitely there to be engaged. The NJ provides a bunch of the highlights of the evening, but I want to focus on some campaign themes emerging and a different cattle call at the end.
The questions were focused on Public Safety, Education, Economic Development — questions pretty high on the list for everyone engaged in this Mayor’s race. What separated the candidates was mostly how well they engaged with the concerns of the people of the room, the quality of solutions proposed (where solutions were proposed) and experience claims. As you can imagine from an almost 2 hour debate, there was a great deal said and Williams came to belligerently defend whatever record he claims to have. In doing that, he took potshots at Theo Gregory and the City Council, which led to the only seriously heated exchanges in the event. When Williams can’t defend his record, he defers to another time, with some implication that another venue, another audience will understand. Williams does get to some of the issues that City Council has — controlling the purse is in their power and they’ve been less than effective at wielding that power. Williams wants you to know that Council block his initiatives — which isn’t exactly true — but they aren’t especially good at pushing their own priorities. See the Wilmington Public Safety Strategies Commission report — they couldn’t get the WPD to revise a budget to implement items in this plan and then there is the theater of “accountability” where the Chief gets grilled on progress, the Chief provides little information and the Council pretends to be tough. At the end of the day, nothing changes, which is pretty ineffective “accountability”.
One thing that I noticed from a number of the of the candidates (Cabrera, Gregory, Griffiths, Kelly) was an insistence in creating a new policing plan and implementing that. This is typical Wilmington behavior — where if you don’t do it, then it doesn’t happen. Only Marshall and Young mentioned the WPSSC report as a place to start — and seriously, this is a city with no money, so why wouldn’t start with something that already provides a solid roadmap to improving the organization? Everyone wants to take credit for a plan, but not for actually getting anything done on that plan.
On Public Safety, everyone made the right noises on Community Policing, with Kelly making the point that these folks need to stay in communities and raising the possibility of recreating the police substations in neighborhoods. It is clear that multiple definitions of Community Policing were in play. Most talked about police accountability for effective changes in their areas. In response to a veiled question about the Jeremy McDole shooting, Williams made the point that due process has to run its course before deciding what has to happen with the officers who shot him. Gregory noted that the city should not be afraid to call in the Feds when there are major issues like this and called on his experience as a Federal prosecutor (!) that will facilitate this. Young talked about better and more frequent training for officers as well as effective community policing as a preventative measure, as well as the deployment of cameras that might get you better data on the incident faster. Griffiths also made this point re: cameras. Kelley also chimed in on better training and making sure that officers are a long-term presence in communities. Most of the rest also talked about due process, with Cabrera talking about accountability and and not allowing mistakes.
For Economic Development, the Mayor rattled off a bunch of stats that probably aren’t true (I know the claim of the 350M in capital investment in the city is not his to claim, for certain — many of the projects he counts were in the pipeline under the Baker Admin). Most of the other candidates used this question to say that the city isn’t doing enough to help small and minority owned business in the City. Gregory claimed credit for the current status of the Minority Business Loan fund (which is largely unused) and suggested that the Strategic Fund (grants not loans) be made available to small and minority owned businesses. Young recounted a recent meeting with minority small business owners in the city, who had no idea about the programs and support offered by the city — recommending a much broader outreach and also recommending a business startup approach that streamlines the process of licencing and inspections in the City. Kelley pointed out that considering how much the City spends, it is remarkable that the City hasn’t used its spending power to get contractors and vendors to subcontract to City small businesses. Purzycki said that economic development has been his job at the Riverfront and that was when the audience let him know that the Riverfront was not a model that interested them.
All of the candidates were also asked about a plan to create a more viable and livable downtown for young people — a city that doesn’t shut down at 5PM. Both Kelley and Gregory talked about the astonishing disconnect between the City’s Cultural Affairs office and its artist community. Gregory also talked about a “regressive parking scheme” downtown and doing a better job of marketing the city. Purzycki talke about adding more amenties to the city that young people would be interested in. Young discussed how budding creative spaces in the city get little support and how hard it was for young entrepreneurs to create businesses in the city.
Education proved to be squishier — mainly because the Mayor doesn’t have much say in the process. Young and others called for the City to have a seat at the table and discussed developing an Education Resource Center to help parents sort through choices and issues. Williams noted that he already has someone in his office working on Education (but no one sees her — and she doesn’t have a seat at the table because no one from the 9th floor joins the active parent groups to get there). Gregory continues to trot out Moyer as an accomplishment — even though on his watch this school was on a death spiral almost from the day it opened. Marshall clearly did not know what WEIC does (even though constituents of his worked hard to convince him to get involved with the education discussion in the city.) Purzycki noted that the city needs a high school, which got him the best applause of the night.
This debate felt like the real start of the campaign as well as it’s first moment for candidates to review their confidence in strategies. This Cattle Call is going to be based on who should think about leaving the race:
Who’s Competitive:
Eugene Young — he has been connecting well with voters in multiple venues — doorsteps, house parties, business events, debates — and the connection shows. It also shows that how well his policy team is helping him focus on changing the status quo as well as on better ideas. He is very strong on the kind of partnerships needed to move forward — and unlike the usual Wilmingtonians, is not going to need to develop his own silo to govern in. He will be reaching out to everyone who could help.
Kevin Kelley — Kevin is also working very hard meeting voters everywhere. Last night, though, he did not connect with this audience as he typically can. He was in way better command of ideas and information but somehow seemed off of his game. Still — while I think Kevin was at the top of voter lists this fall, he is not now.
Who Needs to Rethink Their Strategy:
Mike Purzycki — he walked away as damaged goods from this debate. While he clearly is going to spend alot of money, he is going to need some people outside of the 8th to vote for him. Last night, he was occasionally dismissive of plans and ideas and had a difficult time connecting with the audience. For better or worse, Purzyki was the poster child of the long-simmering resentment in the city of prioritizing the Riverfront and Downtown development over the rest of the City. It is hard to underestimate how deep this resentment is. Rumor has it that Purzycki has the support of Charles Potter — which won’t make his 8th District base especially happy and I doubt that Potter can paper over this Riverfront problem. Especially since Potter (as a City Councilman) is complicit in this problem.
Theo Gregory — basically, I get that he is running because it is “his turn”. And his own approach to this debate showed that. He wanted to lay claim to some city accomplishments as City Council ones (while accomplishing very little on Council). Claiming Moyer as a success is simply incredible. Claims for plans, accountability and being on message don’t substitute for a discussion of HOW when asked, even though he took others to task in the debate for not answering questions.
Who Needs to Drop Out:
Dennis Williams — seriously. No lessons learned at all from the first campaign or 4 years of governing. Belligerence ≠ policy knowledge. While he apologized for overpromising on the crime issue 4 years ago, he proceeded to try to convince people that things in the city are better than we think.
Bob Marshall — seriously, again. His solutions are to talk about how he was able to get money to get stuff done in the city. Which has nothing to do with being Mayor (ask Dennis Williams). His solutions are largely about throwing money at various issues — which can be fine for those things that need money, but there is much abut the administration of the city that won’t get more money and will need someone to make tough choices.
Norm Griffiths — Griffiths is a gentleman and a smart guy, but it is pretty clear that he has been out of the city’s loop for awhile and also clear that he hasn’t done much work to think of solid governing policy. I don’t know why he wants to be Mayor. He spent more time agreeing with people on the stage and little time differentiating himself.
Maria Cabrera — yes, she just got in. But she’s a barrelful of extensive lectures on the problems of the city (yes we know those already) and light on genuine solutions. One of the things that she needs to be accountable for is taking over the L&I committee and still not moving on some of the big issues that need to be dealt with. Maria is a perfectly nice woman, but lecturing people is not a good fig leaf for thin substance.
So I probably missed some discussions — I’ve been working on this post on and off all day. So what did I miss? And What do you think?