I’ve been around Haines politics for 40 years, for more than 30 years as a news reporter and for most of the last 10 years as an assemblyman and mayor. I’ve seen many local politicians come and go.
My friend Debra Schnabel, who has served as Haines Borough manager and as a member of the Haines City Council and Haines Borough Assembly, last fall put this question to ChatGPT: “In a community of 2,500, what are the chances of electing competent government officials?”
The computer said: “In a town of 2,500, you are unlikely to consistently elect people who are visionary statesmen, policy experts and excellent managers all at once. But you can absolutely elect honest, practical, cooperative, reasonably competent leaders who keep a community functioning well. That is often enough for successful local governance.”
“The strongest predictor is usually not intelligence alone, but whether the community rewards seriousness, transparency, compromise, long-term thinking and participation.”
Most interesting was the final sentence in the computer’s response: “Communities that tolerate gossip, factionalism, or personal vendettas tend to drive away the most capable potential candidates.”
Ouch. That last bit hurt. We are a most factional place, where assumptions, vendettas and character assassination too often take the place of objective consideration and discussion, and loyalty too often is to the thinking of one’s political “tribe.”
It’s long been my observation that our most competent citizens – and by that I mean people with their personal houses in order who’ve also achieved success in a career – won’t touch local politics with a 10-foot pole. Why would they? They’ve earned their comfort. Why surrender it?
Haines rarely, if ever, fields a roster of great candidates. Changing that would require us to change the culture of our town, which is difficult to do.
So here’s a shortcut for this election in a town where mean-spirited statements too often are made, where leaders married to their personal ideology too often disparage the citizenry or each other, creating a toxic meeting hall where few want to venture:
Vote for the candidates who seem to be the most decent and kind ones, the ones who might consider both sides of an issue without automatically clinging to what their friends think.
Haines rarely makes swift progress but an assembly led by welcoming, kind and thoughtful members — instead of angry ones — might not scare off the rest of the town from local politics.