Norfolk Elects

(Pssst!)

What About 

Those Pesky Floods?

             In the Norfolk, VA, municipal elections on May 3, I voted with my fellow citizens in two out of three contests.

McClellan

            In my home Ward 6 I voted for an innovative outsider, Andrea McClellan, to replace incumbent Barclay Winn on City Council. I came to that decision after I took an online preference test on a range of local issues. My preferences put me over 60% in line with Ms. McClellan, who unseated Winn and also defeated the third-place candidate, Warren Stewart, an educator.

            For school board in Ward 6 I had the choice between Noelle Gabriel, an incumbent, and Carter Smith, a business consultant. Gabriel has a day job as a pediatrician in a local children’s hospital. Where she finds the time to practice children's’ medicine, serve on the school board, and raise a family, too, is beyond me, but I voted for her, and she won over her opponent, 

Gabriel

business consultant Carter Smith, who seemed abrasive in his public comments and had no significant experience with education.

            But the main event of the night was the contest for mayor, an office vacated by the man who’s held it for 22 years. Until 2006 his office was appointed by City Council, but in 2008 Norfolk held its first mayoral election, which Fraim won by a large majority, becoming the city’s first elected mayor.

            As I understand local history, giving voters the choice of mayor was another step in the slow process of Norfolk’s liberalization from an oligarchy to something like a limited republican form of government where the oligarchs give up some small fraction of their power to assure social order.

            That era of transition from liberal oligarchy to limited populism, which Mayor Fraim oversaw, is over. Other, more diverse forces are in play now.

Alexander

            Replacing Mayor Fraim is Kenny Alexander, a Norfolk native, presently a Virginia state senator, and not only the first new mayor in 22 years but the first African-American mayor in Norfolk history.

            I voted for Andy Protogyro on the basis of a televised candidates’ debate. I thought Protogyro, who presently sits on Council, seemed better prepared to be mayor than Alexander or Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe. Obviously, half of Norfolk disagreed with me.

            Half of Norfolk, it turns out, is 28%, which is twice the turn-out which reelected Fraim in 2014.

            Nevertheless, I’m happy with the peoples’ choice. It seems right to me, a positive step forward in Norfolk’s evolving image of itself as an international city, yet still American Southern to the bone.

            But what about sea-level rise? What about the human contribution to climate change? Will the incoming Mayor Alexander sacrifice his roots to the rising seas?

            Now that these candidates have been elected, maybe they’ll talk more about those less popular matters.

             

Election Day in Norfolk

Who Will the People Choose?

            Tuesday, May 3, is election day in Norfolk, VA. We’re voting for mayor, city council, and school board. All are significant. Paul Fraim has been Norfolk Mayor for 22 years, as long as I’ve lived here. Now he’s calling it quits. He wants to go back to private life.

Mayor Frain

            Three candidates are running to replace Fraim. As I ponder who to vote for, I ask myself: Which one do I think is most qualified to be the chief executive of a city I want to live in?

            On City Council, a long-time incumbent, solidly in the pro-business camp, is defending his Superward 6 seat against two challengers who wish to change the status quo, though not in the exact same ways. I live in Superward 6, so this conceivably matters to me.

           Finally, two candidates are running in Ward 6 for one seat on the school board. One is an incumbent, a pediatrician. The other is a successful local businessman who has three kids in Norfolk public schools. This is Norfolk’s first school board election. Previously, City Council appointed school board members. Many of Norfolk’s schools are on the state’s endangered species list, so who’s on the school board also matters.

            Most of the debate I’ve tuned into is about economic development. Creating the conditions to attract successful corporations to Norfolk is a priority. Improving Norfolk’s schools to provide a skilled work force for those corporations is part of that picture.

            But as everyone knows, Norfolk is second only to New Orleans as the East Coast city most vulnerable to rising seas caused by climate change. Yet climate change has hardly been mentioned by any of these candidates. Nor has the media asked much about it.

            How, I wonder, do these candidates expect to attract new business to Norfolk without a comprehensive plan, which does not now exist, on how to mitigate this basic threat to the city’s very existence?

            Perhaps it’s an Alice-in-Wonderland election. Perhaps the competing emperors have no clothes.

            But on the outside chance it’s serious, my curiosity is peaked. Who will we, the people of Norfolk, elect to lead us? How will my fellow citizens in this, my adopted city, vote?