Some folks might be surprised that I’m endorsing Brenda Josephson and Debra Schnabel for Haines Borough Assembly.
Neither of them, after all, share my politics. Neither is progressive, or even liberal, at least in the popular definition of those terms. I have my reasons for supporting these two. Here they are:
- Experience is the most important attribute of an elected leader. When I was elected, a lifelong resident told me, “You’ll need to serve a few terms. It takes that long just to figure things out.” She was right. I learned several lessons in three years on the assembly, including that successful leadership requires different types of expertise. They include expertise in the history of the community, expertise in how local government works and how it fails, and expertise in how to bring the public and other leaders around to supporting worthwhile ideas. No one is born with such expertise. Acquiring it takes time, observation and trial and error. Josephson and Schnabel are the two candidates who, by serving for years in elected office, possess some.
- Neither Josephson nor Schnabel are monolithic in their views. As an assembly member in the 1990s, Schnabel proposed borough purchase of timber rights to prevent a Lutak Inlet clearcut. Josephson opposed the new, steel wave barrier in the harbor and told me recently she regrets she hadn’t grasped the scope of four acres of paved parking there.
- Progressives once again failed to recruit from their ranks knowledgeable, longtime residents to serve on the assembly. I’d rather vote for candidates whose views and political philosophy align more closely to my own, but those folks aren’t on the ballot this time. Until the town’s progressive faction can find some standard-bearers, people of our political persuasion will spend hours writing letters and testifying at public meetings, frustrated. Many progressives who hang around borough meetings claim they’re unelectable. That’s hooey. Ray Menaker was branded a Communist by many people in Haines, yet he was re-elected to the assembly/school board for decades.
- I’ve worked with Schnabel and Josephson and I’ve found them to be forthright, even when I disagreed with them or what they were trying to do. Schnabel failed as manager because she led instead of followed in her job as the town’s administrator. Josephson lost her last election largely because she mishandled the public relations side of firing Schnabel, though the firing was inevitable. Both Schnabel and Josephson do their own homework, which is vitally important in serving on the assembly. Both are at places in their lives where they have time to devote to that.
- I’m old enough to have abandoned a messianic view of politics and politicians. If you’re looking for a perfect person to show you the way, find one and marry them and good luck with that. Politics is not archery. There’s rarely a bull’s-eye. It’s more like horseshoes or hand-grenades. Getting close to the target is often the best we should expect.