BIKE: bicycleaustin.info city council endorsements

[Patrick Goetz]

The City Council Candidate endorsements listed on the bicycleaustin.info 
web page are as follows:

   Place 1: Steven Adams
   Place 3: Margot Clarke
   Place 4: Jennifer Gale

Perhaps I should have been paying more attention to this; unfortunately 
I wasn't.

Steven Adams?  Did no one involved in this decision bother to attend a 
single Place 1 candidates' forum?  This is not dissimilar from a Jewish 
organization passing over David Ben-Gurion in order to endorse Heinrich 
Himmler.  Not to mention an embarrassment to the entire bicycling 
politics community.

At Lee Leffingwell's victory party last night I enjoyed the distinct 
embarrassment of having Lee ask me why *bicyclists* chose to endorse 
Steven Adams for place 1.  Anyone who knows Lee knows that he will be a 
dead-on advocate for bicycling and pedestrian issues, and anyone who's 
been to even one candidates' forum knows that Steven Adams was a joke 
candidate, running on the Republican "we need to cut taxes and waste in 
order to make Austin affordable again" ticket with no clear ideas of how 
this might be accomplished other than to reduce the (apparently) high 
levels of civic expenditures on public art.  You can be sure that Steven 
Adams would regard bike facilities as another form of government waste; 
money that should be spent on expanding free roads for "real" 
Austinites.  This is a candidate who thought that Envision Central Texas 
  was a dumb idea and that the results were not representative of what 
people actually think.

I explained to Lee that any candidate who hadn't filled out the emailed 
survey was automatically disqualified, but I could sense from our 
discussion that he wasn't entirely convinced that this was a good enough 
reason not to get an endorsement; in any case, we left it at that.  I 
trust that -- being a good guy -- Lee will continue to advocate for 
bicyclists despite this slap in the face.  FULL DISCLOSURE: Lee is also 
a strong supporter of public transportation, has promised to take the 
CAMPO board by the balls in order to push for more central Austin 
representation, and (a clear sign of intelligence and an open mind) is a 
supporter of monorail and similar "quality" grade-separated mass transit 
solutions; i.e. I have other reasons for supporting Lee.

There are three issues here:

First, despite MBJ's carping, it seems clear that bicycleaustin.info is 
being seen as the official voice of the bicycling politics community. 
Since I disagree with all of these endorsements, stringently in the case 
of Place 1, I have some issues with these endorsements being seen as 
representing my views as a bicyclist.  Usually endorsements are selected 
by having interested constituents vote, and I don't recall being asked 
to vote on these.  So, 2 options:  Next time I would either like to see 
a disclaimer suggesting that these endorsements are the views of MBJ and 
don't represent a plurality, let alone majority, of bicycling activists, 
or the process for making these endorsements needs to be handled with a 
bit more input from other bicyclists, say for example the people in the 
trenches who are going to be taking the heat for stabbing a 
bicycle-friendly candidate in the back for no good reason other than he 
didn't have time to fill out a survey.

Second is the question of how important an emailed survey should 
actually be.  A similar issue came up at the DANA candidates' forum, as 
Betty Dunkerley was unable to attend because one of her parents had died 
a couple of days earlier, and she was out of town.  The point was made 
that DANA couldn't rightly endorse Betty, as she hadn't shown up at the 
forum.  After much discussion, it was decided that Betty's record on 
downtown issues speaks for itself, and she got the DANA endorsement 
anyway.  Let's recall that Lee's wife committed suicide a couple of 
weeks ago and there was some question as to whether or not he would even 
continue to run.  I think this might be an acceptable excuse for not 
returning the survey.  Moreover, however, is it really a good idea for a 
smaller interest group (bicycle advocacy) to even have such a policy? 
Candidates are bombarded by such requests and have limited time and 
money.  Is it really reasonable for us to expect each candidate to take 
the time to fill out such a survey, or even see it in the flood of mail 
that pours into campaign offices prior to an election?  Wouldn't it be 
better for each of us who care to show up at some larger candidates' 
forums, ask questions, and then pool our information in order to make an 
intelligent endorsement?  Sorry to argue for a rational policy on a list 
where some members routinely suggest that bike lanes are a bad idea and 
that Hays county law enforcement officials universally qualify for 
beautification in preparation for sainthood, but, hey, I'm feeling that 
crazy feeling today.

Finally, there is the usual question of pragmatism vs. being pedantic 
and looking like an idiot.  Endorsements of people like Steven Adams and 
Jennifer Gale just make bicycling advocates look like idiots.  Jennifer 
Gale can fill out all the surveys she likes.  At the DANA forum, she 
showed up a half an hour after all the other candidates had already left 
and then threw a tantrum afterwords because they wouldn't let her 
interrupt the organization's endorsement process with a speech.  Again, 
a single actual discussion with this person indicates, at least to me, 
that she is a few turnips short of a full bushel in the mental health 
department. Making such an endorsement turns the political clout of 
bicyclists into some kind of lampoon of an actual voice in the process. 
  Perhaps this alone is adequate proof that reliance on a single survey 
is a very bad idea indeed.