It’s official.  The first round of tryouts is over and none of my top picks made it into the top 8 (for the record, they were Julio Quan and Jim Merritt). There were few surprises (Spoiler Alert: Ryan Mello and Rick Talbert have been slated to fill the positions from day 1). But then again, no matter who had been selected charges of cronyism were inevitable.

Even before Julie Anderson, Marilyn Strickland and Victoria Woodards had won their respective races there were those encouraging me to tryout for one of their seats.  I declined because:

1)  My lack of experience makes me unqualified to fill those positions.

2)  I’m a married man now, which – like it or not – makes politics more difficult (notice that neither Julie, Victoria or Marilyn have “taken the plunge” yet – although Strickland’s time is coming).  Politics takes time and money – I now want to be a homeowner and am thus focusing my efforts elsewhere.

3)  And FINALLY – I would be unbelievably self-conscious and timid if I was appointed to any elected office because I would not be able to speak with the authority that comes from being backed by the people.

Which leads me to my greater point – we need some sort of charter amendment forbidding those appointed to hold elected office to run to retain that seat.  These people are place holders who should be selected specifically because they lack grand political ambitions.  They should be wonks, not hacks.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve known Ryan Mello for years.  He works hard, holds to a progressive agenda, and would be an outstanding city/county councilman or state legislator.  (I don’t know Rick Talbert so I’ll leave him out of this.)  Nevertheless, the appointment process dilutes the democratic process into an insider’s game.  There’s no way it can be done fairly without compromising the credibility of the system.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 11:25 am and is filed under Local News, Tacoma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.