Jim Penniman-Morin and I are locked in a good-natured battle over who first said that government should be boring.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure that Jim cares but that would make for a poor analogy so I’m going with my version of this story.
Jim is a member of the Cedar Park city council and is running to succeed Corbin van Arsdale as mayor. I scrolled back through Jim’s social media to see if I could pinpoint when he first uttered that sentiment but could find very little. Unless he said it at a campaign event, I only know for certain that he said it during a Cedar Park Chamber candidate forum in 2021.
Wait. Might have been in 2020. Who knows? The last two or three covid-afflicted years sort of blur together (and, for that, we should demand a mulligan — just not over the boring government thing).
On Oct. 2, 2019, I published a column under the headline “Council meetings are supposed to be boring.” I re-upped that message in July of 2021. So, I contend that I said it before Jim did … but, my search on the Google Machine shows that neither of us can claim we said it first because people have been pushing that narrative for a very long time.
Certain people want to see state or local government engulfed in a flaming, three-ring circus, full of partisan sound and fury but signifying very little in the way of public policy, if anything at all. When they get their way, the sane ones in the crowd remind the rest of us that government is SUPPOSED to be boring.
I bring this up because the very same people who prompted those commentaries, and Jim’s campaign tag line, marched into the Cedar Park City Hall right at the deadline last week and filed for seats on May city council ballot.
As of Friday, these candidates are challenging each and every seat on the Cedar Park council.
As I noted to the friend who alerted me to the last-minute filings, after uttering an expletive-laden diatribe, “Wait, didn’t those guys get their [heads] handed to them last time?”
Narrator: “They did, indeed, get their [heads] handed to them the last time.”
I know the narrator is correct because I just looked up the results from 2020 and 2021 when this particular cabal was sent packing by 2-1 margins. In 2020, Heather Jefts beat Dorian Chavez with 60% of the vote. In 2021, Penniman-Morin beat him with 62% of the vote. That same election saw Ann Duffy and Kevin Harris win their respective races against Claudia Chavez and Collin Klein with more than 63% of the vote.
Election watchers consider 2-1 victories to be landslides.
The only wild card here is Tim Kelly. He signed up to challenge Jefts and has yet to actually lose an election, though it’s worth noting that his only victory, which ushered in our late, great unpleasantness, was a slim 52% win in 2019.
The recent drubbing his friends have taken at the polls is a sure repudiation of the policies (such as they were and what there were of them) Kelly and his ilk espoused.
It seems that, given a choice, the electorate prefers a government that is boring to one that routinely flashes in the national spotlight, is featured prominently on right-wing hate radio, and in which sitting members shout down fellow members, invite armed partisans to meetings and use social media to belittle and threaten common citizens.
We prefer a government that builds roads and fosters economic development — you know, boring stuff — to one that invites partisan mudslinging and self-aggrandizement.
In other words, voters seem to prefer a government that is boring to one that is constantly embroiled in controversy.
That’s worth remembering when the campaign turns ugly, which it will.
But, don’t let the sure-to-come nasty campaign keep you from the polls. Boring government is a government worth fighting for.
The Ragged Edge 