I agree with Mary Ann on a lot of issues, but she is the author of her own PR problems. Sexism is a real problem in politics, but her problems can’t be chalked up to just sexism. She is gratitously antagonistic and even by the standards of politicians she’s unusually adamant about making herself the center of the story, which is really saying something. Her personality is basically the polar opposite, in a lot of ways, of Nancy McFarlane, who was an amazing mayor.
But she’s good on the issues, so I find her to be the best realistic option on the ballot and would prefer she be reelected.
Unfortunately, accepting employment with Barnhill didn’t help her cause either. People were already raising concerns about her “being in the pockets of greedy developers,” and that job fed right into that narrative. Not saying it’s fair or right (it’s not), but it certainly didn’t help.
I think she’s definitely losing the PR battle when it comes to the dissolution of the CACs. I’ve seen many publications like the N&O, Indy, etc. voicing their opinions on it and almost all are against her on that one.
Which is so silly because the CACs did NOTHING but stifle and delay progress. There seems to be this unrelenting hatred for her (at least on the Raleigh subreddit) and a false label of “anti-poor” … when she’s actually done more than any previous Mayor to push for more affordable housing. It’s infuriating how misinformed the general public seems to be about her.
There’s no virtue signal that NIMBYs won’t use to advance their own agenda. NIMBYism from the privileged always rears its head in the name of the poor, or the environment, or some other cause that makes them look virtuous.
Didn’t they try to raise their salary to support this idea, then it came with a bunch of backlash about raising their own salary? I think the idea is if you pay people more, you can allow all income classes to afford to take one of these leadership jobs. These seem like minimum wage jobs at best, but I could be wrong
That was it. And she did wear tennis shoes all the time. Cannon lead an really interesting life - I think her husband had been in the foreign service, but they’d lived all over the world, so her little, all stone house on Brooks Ave. was like a mini-world museum. She had no backyard, the house sat right up against our neighbors property line, and looked into our yard. She called the city on us once, before she was mayor, because the backyard was so wild. The OG Karen, lol.
In fairness, dissolving the CACs was done secretly and quickly. Which in my personal opinion I liked (I even wrote the Indy and got my comments criticized by LivableRaleigh, one of my life accomplishments), but it was pretty sudden.
However, every council member at the time except Cox and Branch voted to remove the CACs - and yet Jonathan Melton is loved by everyone (it seems) and got endorsed by the party. I think it really boils down to some sexism, where being passionate and speaking up is seen as “antagonistic” and “self-centered”, as well as overall PR problems on a number of issues, which might stem from the mayor being the face of the council.
I’ll likely have the opportunity to meet Terrance Ruth soon. Any (non-antagonistic) questions I should ask? I think asking about density/legalizing housing is my main goal.
I like MAB, but in my opinion they dropped the ball on the CACs. They had their problems, but the council unilaterally eliminated a path for interaction with local government and never really replaced it. It is not surprising that they are criticized for that.
They should have done the hard work of figuring out an alternative first, then gotten rid of them.
There are condos on Creedmoor Road (near Glenwood Ave.) and the circle is named Isabella Cannon Way (Rd?). Met her several times at City Hall. She was sweet, feisty and tough as nails. One of my favorite mayors.
There are plenty of ways to interact with the city and they did expand other avenues. The CAC channel was a deeply flawed one and at some point it needed to happen.
I would want to know Ruth’s takes on housing and how to help the situation in Raleigh with direct examples and realistic improvements that can be done in a 2-year term.
MAB seems (from my POV) to be hitting the housing issue head on, which is great, while Ruth seems soft on it and seems to be saying public engagement needs to be improved as a top priority. Now that’s great and all but reads like a deflection from real priorities in Raleigh, IMO.
I’d actually like to know his perspective on community engagement. The only way I could support bringing the CACs back is if they’re augmented with options for people that can’t physically be at meetings (schedules, health, etc).
Also, I hope no developers donate to his campaign because wouldn’t that put him in the pocket of the developers? (btw, I’m rolling my eyes typing this. I really don’t understand that criticism.)
Exactly, wile the idea of CAC’s sound great, in reality they represent a very narrow slice of the community, made up mostly of retired folks (not that there is anything wrong with that, just that they have way more time for these type of things) meeting on a random Tuesday night for 1+ hours. The bulk of the community residents, with jobs, kids, and life in general, does either do not have the time, or even know about these CAC meetings, Or maybe they feel generally neutral about such things (and don’t bother showing up)
So the CAC’s end up being a megaphone for the NIMBY crowd. And that’s why they started the entire “Recall Baldwin” nonsense.That plus the ‘extending the term for an extra year’, even though that was because Covid delayed the census numbers. MAB still gets blamed for it.
There’s also the disinformation. In some of the meetings I went to the ‘leadership’ figures would spout clearly wrong and misleading information to their unwitting members. Just as social media companies are criticized for disinformation on their platforms, I imagine the city didn’t want to be associated, let alone sponsor and organize, these any longer. There are other channels where this kind of behavior can be countered with facts more easily.
I was able to meet Terrance Ruth tonight - some thoughts for those interested.
He’s a really nice guy, very charismatic and very smart. He talked about how we have so many universities in the area and yet the city barely uses data or technology in their decisions. He’s a big proponent of “smart governance”. Some of what he said sounded to me like Strong Towns, such as their site’s description of local government:
We work to elevate local government to be the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place.
He brought up both the CAC disbandment and the delayed election, but when I pushed a bit on the CACs, he admitted their faults. He explicitly said that the model of community engagement Raleigh had with the CACs and continues to have with city council, rezonings, etc. is too meeting-centric. He doesn’t think there should be a centralized “department of community engagement”, but rather that every part of the city, from planning to housing and so on, should put community engagement first. If he were to win, though, he wouldn’t just disband the department, he would use it. He wants to take the weight off the citizens to show up and make their voice heard, and put it to the city to go and find out what people think, which is a model he’s been trying to emulate with his campaign.
However, he seems a bit idealistic. While he fully admits the CAC’s problems, he thinks they could have been reformed. Everything I’ve read about the CACs seems pretty clear that it was either the status quo or completely start over. “Smart governance” sounds good but doesn’t seem fool-proof - I think most people prefer face to face engagement. Above all, though, he wants to restore the residents’ trust in the city by being a mayor who is both known by the city and who knows the city. And I just don’t know if this city’s animosity and apathy can be cured by one man.
Some practical things: he’ll be updating his website in September or so from a focus on “who he is” to the issues he’s been hearing about while meeting residents. I assume that will include the answers to the ADU/missing middle question, as well as the others on that site, though he’s trying to run a very unifying campaign. It’s going to be pretty hard to give specific answers without angering someone. Based on his focus on engagement, I also think he would consider a “dtraleigh community” meeting, if that was something people were interested in - tonight’s meeting was very small.