Also read the interview with the other School Board candidate for this position, Scott Heinze.

“My father was a fisher man, my mother was a vender. How did I get to be at the University of Puget Sound as a distinguished professor?” Dexter Gordon asked me in our interview.

I sat down with Dexter (to talk about just this) at the Forza coffee near 21st and Pearl. It was a [Monday] evening, and the place was almost empty when I walked in. Gordon was waiting for me in one of the comfy chairs, wearing a suit jacket over his campaign T-shirt. Unfortunately, I had to move him to a less comfortable location in order to be sure my recording device would pick up everything, but he was good humored about it, and when properly arranged at the back of the café the recording worked perfectly.

Meeting with Dexter one-on-one was interesting because of all the candidates I interviewed he came across most differently in a private setting. This is not to say that he seemed like a different person, in both public and private he has always been kind, confident, and funny, but when I’ve seen Gordon in front of a crowd his voice boomed and he spoke with a drive and a purpose. He has a Jamaican accent, and it is incorporated perfectly into the cadence of his speech, holding your attention as his voice booms across the room. Gordon has taught public speaking classes, and knows how to send a clear message to his audience.

At Forza Gordon was not giving me a campaign speech. He relaxed, he was soft-spoken, he let his mind wander a bit more and found the point of what he was saying while telling me his stories, rather than speaking with the intent mission of the campaign.

The only moment when he slipped up, and fell into campaign mode, was when he asked that question. “My father was a fisher man, my mother was a vender. How did I get to be at the University of Puget Sound as a distinguished professor?”

I’ve heard him ask it rhetorically to crowds, and he always gives the same answer “Public education.” Sure, this is nice when you’re running for school board, and he does have great experiences from public education that changed his life, but while I sat across from Gordon he told me a much broader story, with many more details, that gave me a much better idea of how he ended up where he is today. Our time was limited, so I never got the full story of how he came here to Washington, started up his family, or was hired by the University of Puget Sound (UPS), but I did learn a lot about his character, and how he views the world.

Gordon was born and raised in Jamaica, as part of a very large family (he was number 7 of 14! With two more half siblings born after his mother passed).

“It was a household where politics, religion, culture, sports, always right at the competitive edge. Because you’ve got to find a competitive edge, whether who could eat the fastest, who could sing the best, who could do the most tricks. That’s when I found my sister could put her tongue at the top of her nose, found out one sister could wiggle her ear. Oh, we did it all.”

This natural competitiveness was fostered by his family, and it was one of two experiences in his early childhood that shaped his future.

“I was in public school, in grade 5, when Phyllis Jennings grabbed me by the hand – and she was not gentle – and she said ‘You have something, and you are going to shape up’” Phyllis Jennings was his 5th grade teacher – and Dexter used her as the example of how a teacher should make a difference in a child’s life. She was not willing to watch him fail. “That was part of my first memory of an awakening and I started shaping up from there.”

But his natural competitiveness also played a role.

“I remember that before that, I think there were 66 children in our class, and Ina Fulga* and I tied for 33rd, and she said I copied from her work! That was one motivation, because as I came to be aware of myself, I am a very competitive person. And so once Ina Fulga said that, I knew that was the last time I was going to share company at that level. From that point on the lowest I ever performed in any class was 4th. I was always struggling for 1st or 2nd.”

Gordon really loved his public education in Jamaica, and he wasn’t shy of saying that Jamaica on the whole took public education more seriously than many school districts here in America. Because Jamaica is part of the British school system, they label levels differently, and I won’t lie when I say I didn’t really understand them all. But the “O” level was the end of high school, and according to Gordon, the content learned in “O” level was like going through community college, rather than just high school.

“Especially towards the end of high school, your life is about school… In the British system, when you get from O level, the way teachers talk about O level you know that your life is going to end if you don’t pass it… In Jamaica high schools, the principle comes through every class that’s preparing for O levels you get that stern lecture, and you are scared,” he chuckled while he said this, “I’m telling you, you are scared. The pressure is so immense.”

Gordon appreciates that his pubic education demanded so much of him. He appreciates that his elementary teacher called him out on not doing well enough, and that the culture of his high school didn’t allow for drop outs or incompletes. He liked that his principal took the time to visit each class and prepare them for their future. This could be because Gordon was competitive by nature, and the teachers were challenging him to do better. Even though he did end up incredibly busy, that didn’t mean he didn’t have any fun. Any average day looked like:

“When I was in high school I was doing A work on subjects, and school ended at 3:15, and then I had soccer or cricket practice, and that would take me to 6:30, and then it took at least 2 hours to get home, because I had to walk about 3 miles to the train station, take the train 15 miles, and then we may or may not get a ride – what we call a robo, a taxi that picks up to it’s full – to go the last three miles home. Most times it was running or walking… Towards the end of high school it was midnight before I was done with my math and my Spanish homework.” I asked him if everyone’s commute to and from school was similar, and while he said yes he chuckled as he qualified it a bit, “you’re not rushing home, there were things to talk about after practice, with your friends”

This was pretty much the end to the “public education” story. This was the foundation of his education and experience that set him up for his future. I would like to contend, though, that he learned just as much in the next few years of life when he shared a universal experience: entering the real world.

“I went to work straight after high school. I had expected to get a job in a government office, and instead I ended up on the wharf, and it was a very interesting job because I walked into this job and the people in the office – these are people who are not… Not… Well, it’s kind of a rough set up… There’s a lot of rough and tumbling, tough guys. Here was I, a young kid out of high school, walking into this office declaring that I was a Christian, and the guys in the office said we’ll give you two weeks to give up. That’s tough. So that was my introduction to the world of work.”

He stayed at the wharf for a couple of months before being able to move onto somewhere else. “As it turns up, I was wrongly placed. Did I ever feel wrongly placed!”

Next he worked in the “clock of courts” (which in America would be called the DA’s office). “That was one of my passions, law. I actually began to learn law, and eventually started prosecuting what we call simple, petty cases, what petty sessions court. I moved up to where I was presenting cases in court.”

“I learned it in the system, and in fact it was an interesting thing because at the time I planned and hoped to go to law school. The head judge at the time identified about five of us. She said, her name was resident magistrate Madge Morgan*… She said, that she wanted to talk to the law school… She proposed to the law school that they accept us, five of us, in the law program based on our experience working in the courts. And they said no. We had to matriculate through the traditional pattern of getting A levels, which is part of the British system.

“[Madge Morgan] was mad, and I was disappointed, and I think that’s when I turned away from law… The reason she was hopping mad and we were disappointed and turned away… is that we were the ones who trained the graduates from the law school how to do the actual work in the courts. And so, it was infuriating.”

Vialle never sent me a picture, so I borrowed this campaign one from the internet.

Karen Vialle was introduced to me as a “bulldog,” her supporters have called her efficient and tough, and the TNT endorsed here whole-heartedly as a “a force of nature. Her qualifications are almost over the top.” There’s no denying she is experienced in policy and budget issues (if you doubt me I’ll send you her 20 minute answer to “Tell me about yourself”), and she’s familiar with Tacoma schools because she has taught as a substitute teacher in them for 9 years. Heck, she’s taught every grade level. And on top of it all, she’s the only candidate raising money in her race, allowing her to print doorbell cards and send out mailers to voters.

Now, don’t get confused, this is not an endorsement or intended as support. This is just my way of explaining Vialle having conquered 53% of the vote in a four way primary.

However, when I interviewed Vialle the primary election hadn’t happened yet. At the time I knew very little about her other than the fact that she had once been mayor and had recently been compared to a bulldog.

I don’t really have a mental image of a bulldog floating in my head (having no real experience with them), so I let Wikipedia do the talking. There I learned that according to the American Kennel Club (AKC) a Bulldog’s, “disposition should be equable and kind, resolute and courageous (not vicious or aggressive), and demeanor should be pacific and dignified.”

Vialle met me at Cutter’s Point on 6^th and Orchard. I’m not sure if she exemplifies all of the adjectives above, but she was definitely friendly, and after ordering coffee we sat down to chat. Another adjective that strikes me when I think of Vialle is practical. I never remember exactly what she wears (I’ve seen her in everything from a suit to doorbelling clothes) but it has always seems to be pants, a jacket, her shirt tucked in, and comfortable shoes. These first impressions did not answer the bulldog question, but throughout the interview I kept it in mind.

The first part of the answer to this mystery came when I asked her when the first time she knew she was different. There was hardly a pause at all before Vialle said, “Probably when I was a social justice enforcer in my fourth grade class.” I think I laughed, because the image that came to my head was a lot more like what you’d see on TV than in real life, and it all seemed much too serious for a fourth grader. Vialle explained the situation:

“I guess that’s the best way I can put it… I never grew up with any kind of racial prejudice, thank god, on the part of both sides of my family… And we had an African American family move into our neighborhood, and there was a lot of, I’d call them rednecks now, even though ‘they shoudda known better,’ as my dad said. So when school started (they moved in in the summer) my dad told me, ‘If there’s any trouble, you take care of it.’ Well, sure enough there was. One of these kids—and she was a bully! She was a big girl, a lot bigger than me. And she probably still remembers what happened–she called, you know, used the inappropriate word, and made Jolene cry. And I said, ‘Take it back,’ and she said, ‘I don’t have to,’ and I said ‘Take it back or I’m going to hit you.’ And she didn’t believe me, so she wound up with a bloody nose and a split lip.

“And I, of course, got sent to the office, because it was an inappropriate response, but I still remember my mom coming up to school, and laying into our principal, who she had gone to school with. His first name was Clarence, and all I could hear was ‘Yes, Clarence, Karen needs to be punished, but more than that, our society is changing, and people need to be treated equal and children don’t need to come to school and listen to that. Now I expect you to take care of it.’ And that was my mother. I mean, she did that. And so that’s when I first really realized that I did the right thing. I mean, I got in trouble for hitting, you know, but I mean my mom and dad both said that you did the right thing.”

And then, offhand, she added:

“Also, I was good in math, and girls weren’t supposed to be.”

In retrospect, the first story is an amusing anecdote not just because it represents Vialle’s first experience as an activist, but also because it shows her perspective now as a teacher looking back on her time as a student. There were several instances later in the interview when she grew passionate and used a “bad word” like “sucks,” and it was always followed “I hate that term, I tell the kids at school ‘don’t say that!’” and I found it to be an enduring view of vocabulary reserved for elementary school teachers (which Vialle primarily is). In a similar vein, hearing her using words like “inappropriate response” and “diversity” and “prejudice” sound very adult in a story about an elementary school squabble. Vialle’s conversation consistently juxtaposed complex policy terms and a child’s world where saying “sucks” gets you yelled at.

To be honest, though, Vialle’s offhand comment about being the only girl good at math was a much more honest moment. The first story could have been part of her campaign, that one moment revealed a struggle she had lived through, and a lot of the activism she would take on later.

But to continue with the story: the fact that Vialle was good at math and had conviction for standing up for what she thought was right, created a powerhouse combination that set her on her career path. Her 20 minute answer to “Tell me about yourself” was pretty much a long-form resume, and while I don’t want to repeat it step for step there are interesting points along the way.

After graduate school she returned to her undergrad Alma matter and taught political science at the University of Puget Sound. This was one of her first experiences as an adult, dealing with being a non-traditional women. “When I went to UPS I was one of the first women to teach there in the non—what they called non-female, you know, it wasn’t a foreign language and they had home-economics then and English—to teach outside of that box.”

Soon after that Vialle was the first women hired by the state budget office to work as a program analyst at OFM. She started in ‘72, and was promoted to assistant director in February of 73. Her explanation of what that experience was:

“The legislature was considering a bill upstairs and it was really important and our legislative person had not been doing what he was supposed to… [Someone she knew] called ‘get over here, I want this bill out of here and it’s about to not!’ So I went up and I testified and thought ‘oh, man I’m going to be in trouble,’ and when I came down and Wally said, ‘Oh, man from now on as of right now you’re handling all of our legislative stuff.’ And then about a month later we got all these bills out, it was amazing.”

Vialle took on a tough role at OFM, dealing with a tight budget and budget cuts, and took the job and responsibility of helping to balance the budget very seriously. “We were a real budget and management agency under Dan Evans. You saw us show us you knew your job might be in jeopardy, including department heads. I’d tell ‘em, I’d say ‘You know If I were you I’d get my stuff cleaned up or you’re going to be over there—and the Governor said to tell you—peddling your resume at 5 o’clock in the afternoon down on 11th and capitol. Now, you can either talk to me and get it together or you can talk to [the Governor}.’”

From there she did a lot of budget work and made connections to powerful folk in state government who helped her get other positions where she was able to further expand her knowledge of budgets and policy. To sum up the rest:

"And then we adopted our first child, so I went home. Then I went back to teaching part time at UPS and got involved in community activities, I was on Urban Policy Committee and when my kids got old enough we adopted another child a year and a half later, so you know I got into the PTA, preschool and all of that, and then in 1987 there was a city council seat on the west side of Tacoma and a lot of people in the community convinced me that I needed to run, and so I did and got into that, and then got elected mayor.”

This is a different moment in her life where two seemingly different worlds are brought together. Vialle had returned home to be a mother, but instead of falling back into the traditional role of managing the household she once again resorted to her passion for politics and policy.

I asked Vialle about what it was like to be a woman mayor who was willing to be different, do a lot of things first, and be good at math. The traits that Vialle had that helped her get that far—being tough, efficient, and determined—made her time as mayor interesting:

“When I was mayor it was harder because I got picked on much more by people who were looking for you to stub your toe… and if you were strong you were regarded as being kind of a witch [this was clearly a euphemism, Vialle says euphemisms fantastically], you know, and if you’d been a male you would have received accolades.”

“It was an acceptance that you had to do better, and prove yourself, and I was willing to do that and show them, ‘Hey, I’m just as good as you are.’ If I have to work harder, and if I did that and show that I’m just as good as them, then it was going to make it easier for somebody else who came behind me… I kinda look back and think, ‘Hey, it was worth all that, to be a part of opening doors.’”

While she served as mayor from 1990-1994, Vialle lost her re- lection campaign. I don’t know what the political issues of the time were, but she was the only person I interviewed this year who had run for election before, and it was interesting to get her perspective on what it’s like to experience having lost (which is an experience most candidates share).

“I think what it is, when you run for office—If you’re a bit of a control freak, and I tend to be a tad bit—is that it’s something you can’t control. But I came to grips with this when I lost… I look back on that… I’ve done that my whole life, and if I have done my absolute best, and this was my dad, if you have done your best… then don’t look back.”

“When I lost that election—really truly, I’m my toughest critic, my husband will tell you that—I looked back and I thought I did everything that I could do and the results were out of my hands.”

“It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, it hurt for a long time. Losing, as somebody said, sucks. It does. I hate that term, I tell the kids at school ’don’t say that!’… But on the other hand, I walked away knowing that I made a tremendous difference…And people have aid later ‘you should run for mayor again,’ and my philosophy on that is that if you’ve already done something, you can’t go back. Things have changed, the dynamics, and it’s time for someone else to do it. I was proud of being mayor of this city, I love this city.”

Now she’s up for election again. It doesn’t seem like a step down, or a step backwards, but rather a continuation of her story in life.

“You know it wasn’t a real easy decision to do that. I’d thought about it, intellectually it was, but then you go back and think… you know, campaigning is hard. It’s a strain on everybody, your family and it’s a big commitment. But every time I thought, you know, I make the decision all through the fall, and I see these kids struggling at school, at you know, lack of support from the board, and them being in total denial about what’s going on within the schools. I thought, you know, I’ve got one more shot at making a big difference, and that’s always driven me in my whole life.”

I have a lot of quotations from Vialle about making a difference driving her. She grew up in the civil rights area and was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and J.F.K. She protested against the Vietnamese war, and is incredibly passionate about supporting soldiers and veterans rights. She taught her children to be accepting of others, and they have in turn become “social justice enforcers” at their own schools, making sure that kids aren’t being bullied or put down because they’re different. She works hard subbing in elementary schools and doing her darndest to prepare young children for the future.

I’ll let you decide for yourself what sort of dog is the best comparison for Karen Vialle (you know, if you insist on not mixing metaphors). I certainly haven’t made up my mind yet on what sort of person (or canine) she is. Looking back, it’s amusing that at the time I interviewed her she said things like “Right now I’m about ready to jump out of my skin. Tuesday can’t get here soon enough!” but having looked over everything she said, I don’t want to end this on a political note (even though there’s a pretty good political monologue I have hanging about). I don’t think politics is the end all be all for this former mayor. I think she’s really doing it for the kids.

“You feel empowered every time you go into a class room and teach kids. Last time I felt empowered, oh my gosh… I guess I’ve always in my life felt empowered in the sense that you can make a difference. You don’t have to hold public office, you don’t have to be walking around with everyone walking around saying ‘Mayor’ and ‘your honor.’ …. For me I feel empowered when I am able to help someone, or I can speak out for something, or I can help a family find help at one of my schools, or when the kids will come up to you and say thank. I think to me empowerment is a state of mind.”




Fun facts about Karen Vialle:

Kim Golding planting a tree at a land conservancy in Australia.

The weekend before the primary elections I met Golding at 8:00 am at Forza on 12th and Union to interview her for this article. I really enjoyed our discussion. Golding shared her personal stories with me, her rather difficult struggles and how she eventually triumphed over them. I found it really compelling. The more I heard her talk, the more certain I became that she was exactly the sort of candidate (and current incumbent) who should have no problem making it through the primary. Before our interview even started I made the mistake of saying that I was in no rush to write this article, seeing how I was confident that it could wait for the general.

Silly, silly me.

Golding came in third in the primary, which is pretty much the closest thing you can get to a political upset when there are only two races on the ballot. The news was especially harsh when you consider that Golding was one of the two candidates (out of four) who bothered to actually campaign in her race. She lost by 65 votes to Kim Washington, who had pulled out of the election earlier, citing family reasons.

Needless to say, I was surprised. I thought about the race, and its results, a lot, but will spare you the majority of extreme political wonkiness that occurred between me and my fellow local politicos as we discussed the causation of Golding’s defeat.

What is more relevant to this article, however, is that the next weekend I sat down and transcribed Golding and my conversation (and yes, then I waited a very long time to write about it). As I was listening to what Golding had to say, I was again inspired by her story.

It started at a young age, when she was faced with challenges that many kids today still struggle with:

“When I was in first and second grade, I was starting to get bullied a lot and beat up at school. And you go home and you cry, and you tell your mom you had a bad day at school, and your mom gives you these really interesting suggestions on how to deal with it, and it never seems like something I would want to do, and if I went back and tried what she said, it would only make things worse.”

“That was in one situation, and then I get into a different school in a different place and an entirely different state, and again I struggled, I had trouble fitting in… It was the beginning of experiences that were similar but in different places. By the time I got into high school I was kind of used to being different.”

Then later, she faced a difficult home life and economic situation:

“I struggled as a young teenager when my parents’ marriage was falling apart. I was taking a lot of blame for it. There was beatings, and there was emotional abuse, and put-downs, and telling you that you’re never going to amount to anything, and all you’re going to be is ‘blankedy blank’. My parents were in a frustrated place because they couldn’t do what other parents in the area may be able to do, and they’d tell you so. So it set up this hopeless environment of you’re never going to make it and you’re not going to graduate from college.”

And she tried to do what many kids try to do in similar situations:

“When I was 15 my grandmother tried to adopt me, and my parents said absolutely not… This happened kind of as a result of me just walking out one day. I just started planning my move, I started moving my personal belongings out, that meant something to me, one by one, and taking them to friend’s house and leaving them there. Then one day it was like this is the day I’m not going to stay, and I left.”

“Then my high school found out that I wasn’t living anywhere legally and I had no one legally responsible for me, because I was in limbo, and they were saying, ‘we can’t let you be here’. I had a wonderful teacher who went to the principal’s office with me and said, ‘this is an A, B student who wants to be here. There are C, D, F students out in the park that you try to drag back into class who don’t want to be in school, and you’re trying to kick out the A, B student, where’s the sense in that?’ And the school decided to look the other way and let me continue.”

“So I’ve gone through stuff that make me seriously appreciate a lot of the challenges that young people still have in today’s world. When people talk about struggling students and the dropout rate and the problems with kids who fall behind in school and decide that they have no chance of getting caught up, and why bother, and just need to be working and making money because no one’s taking care of them, it’s really real to me… I’ve gone through stuff that really connects to those kids, and they stay in mind when people talk about how bad the dropout rate is, or whatever. I’m always thinking I know what that’s like and it’s not just numbers to me and it’s not just like I’m watching TV and seeing things happen for the first time. I’ve lived some of what these kids go through.”

Sure, this is a highly edited and rearranged transcription of the story, but the words and the story are completely Golding’s, and after hearing it there is no doubt that she’s not only passionate about education, but also about the real world struggles facing Tacoma’s students.

Golding had a second story that I also found compelling, about how she got involved with the PTA, and took on leadership roles within her community. As Golding says:

“I have this fun story about how we would get the PTA to … the PTA had newsletters…”

“I’d sit and read the summaries of meetings that [the PTA] had, meetings that they’re going to have, activities across the school. And I’m like, ‘It’s the same people all the time. I always see the same people.’ I was just kind of showing up the school to pick up the kid, leaving, feeling like I’m coming and going without really knowing what was going on, other than the newsletter.”

“But that whole idea that it was always the same names. I kinda kidded myself and thought, ‘I need to infiltrate, I need to get in there, and change that.’ So it wasn’t just to get me into that PTA group and get to know people and have a roll for myself, but also to change that culture to more reaching out and finding new people to bring in.”

“I thought I knew what it was like to be an outsider looking in, and I needed to get in and pull some of those outsiders in, and that was my role I took on is to kinda change it… What I really liked doing was finding the parents who were just standing in the hallway waiting for the class to get out, and striking up a conversation telling them about the PTA and what we did, and wouldn’t they like to be involved with this project, like a book swap or a carnival, the book sale, or you know. So I helped grow that PTA, and infiltrated in the process.”

“When I was involved with city PTA for the first time, I could kind of see where it was dwindling in participation and enthusiasm. It kind of had a cloud over it, in that, this is how it is and this is just how it’s going to be. Having had some very positive experiences in the elementary school PTA settings, I kind of knew what it might take to turn it around. So, on my own as a secretary of the city-wide PTA, I was kind of regularly calling up the individual school PTA leaders and check in with them and say ‘There’s a meeting coming up, I’d really like to see you there. While you have me on the phone, is there anything you think you need to know, or want to know about how to deal with a problem or whatever.’ And it’s funny, because you’d get the really quick response of ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve got it handled, and thanks for letting us know about the meeting, I’m not sure if anyone’s going to be there.’ And then you’d find about two or three minutes later, ‘Oh, I guess I do have something I could ask about.’ and it would turn into like a half an hour conversation.”

“It was a huge investment of my time, but by the time I was elected president of that council we suddenly had regular members, and people who were willing to take on leadership roles at the city level, and people who understood what it was about, and how they were supporting each other, and supporting the city wide PTA and the individual ones by having this umbrella over all of them as a resource. People who’ve done it before, and can tell you what they’ve done to raise money or something you may not have tried before. That was kind of a project I took on on my own… there was no label to it, nobody saying you need to help us make it happen, but I just saw the value in restoring… But I felt really good after serving as president … and turning it over to the next group of leader so that they had something really good to work with.”

I think this was also in Australia. Either way, she's feeding a swan!

Again, this story is edited and re-arranged by me (and really needs even more editing), but with a little work, Golding could use it to show everyone how being bullied and having a troubled life as a youth inspired her to create the most inclusive PTA in the city. She could talk about finding her voice (which she did talk to me about some) by working hard to bring people together to support the community and children in need, so that other kids don’t have to go through what she went through. From a campaign messaging point of view, she could tie all of this into the anti-bullying work she did as a PTA leader and a Tacoma School Board member. That could have been her thing. (Anti-bullying is very popular right now, and can really be stretched out to include a lot of other key issues. From a campaign point of view, that’s huge).

I suppose my point of all of this, is that while I knew nothing about her when I walked into the interview, I really liked her when I left. I really enjoyed hearing her story, and kept thinking that she should be a real contender.

But you know that thing about hindsight. That clarity thing. That thing about how when you have it, it’s easy to see how things didn’t go the way you expected. Yeah, hindsight changes everything; and through its lens I re-listened to my conversation with Golding, and while transcribing it I bolded two parts that immediately stood out to me. The first, when I asked her to tell me about herself:

“And really a lot of what I do comes from that entire experience, but in the process of going through that and becoming the person I am, you also find out it’s not about you.”

The second, when I asked what it is like to be judged as a candidate:

“And they [everyone] don’t know me. And I feel bad because sometimes you go to a candidate forum or you answer questions for a reporter, and sometimes they’re just not getting to know you because the questions aren’t right. They’re asking about things that don’t show how you can shine in the community or how you’ve made a difference or how you still can. People are asking about what matters to them but it just doesn’t give you the opportunity to show, you know, something positive about you. I’ve felt really disappointed walking away from something like that. Where you’re just going, wow, if they’d only asked me about this, or if they only knew this, if I had a chance to spend 20 minutes on this topic instead of only the two minutes they gave me to answer the question. They’d get to understand a lot better where my passions are at, where my drive comes from, or what it is I know I can do based on what I have done.”

I remember quite clearly hearing Golding say these two things when I interviewed her. I remember that they contradicted each other, and that it bugged me. I remember thinking that as a candidate it is your responsibility to create your message and get it out to the people, and that if you’re failing to do that it is your fault.

Golding had spent the entire interview telling me a really powerful personal story, and then at the end she complained that no one else had come to hear to listen to it. I don’t know if she could have possibly beaten Karen Vialle in the general (Karen got 53% of the primary vote, she’s a campaign machine), but the reason that she didn’t get the chance was because she was not telling people about herself.

Near the end of the interview Golding had told me:

“I recognize that people don’t really get much of a chance to get to know me. I don’t put up walls, but I simply don’t have the time to spend with people to give them that chance. You’re getting quite a window open here! Because most people don’t get to see that or have those conversations.”

I’m glad I sought out the chance to have those conversations with Golding, and I’m glad that I made it easy for her to talk for twenty minutes about whatever she wanted. However, future candidates, let this be a lesson to you. You can’t wait for others to seek you out. You can’t rely on reporters or folks in charge of candidate forum to set you up to talk about whatever you want. You have to create the message you want to tell people, and then you have to go and get it out there. You have to take responsibility for your own messaging, and not let anyone hear anything else. If you don’t, no matter how great a potential candidate you are or how compelling of a personal story you have, you’re not going to stand a chance.

Fun facts about Kim Golding:

Scott Heinze with his Children

When Scott Heinze says, “It’s not differences that drive us apart, it’s really commonality and appreciation of differences that bring us together,” there is a passion to his words that forbid them from being cheesy.

As a child he played a lot of sports: basketball, baseball, football. When he talks about his leadership style now he compares it to how sports teams work together. “Having been on a lot of sports teams, that idea of organizationally building teams, community building teams, you don’t want everyone who has the same skill set or thinks the same way. That’s not the most effective team. If you can bring together people who have different thoughts and experiences you’re going to be really well rounded.”

Now Heinze strives to be a team builder in his role as a servant leader – something he is focusing on both in his graduate studies and in life – and explained to me that, “as a servant leader I was being involved in my community, trying to encourage others to have a vested interest In their community.” He sets an example for his children by always thinking about “How do you give back, how do you get involved, how do you make a difference?”

I had never heard of Gonzaga’s leadership program, or it’s jargony terms like “operators,” “conceptualizers,” or “servant leadership” before I met with Scott Heinze. To be completely unfair, I had never bothered putting much stalk in leadership programs, and did not expect to care about any of these terms when Heinze first described them to me.

Then again, I had met Heinze on his campaign trail before, and there was plenty to this interview that was not what I expected.

Heinze showed up to the meeting wearing running shorts, a hoodie and a baseball cap, and when he sat down he relaxed back into his seat, completely casual. I had only seen him before at speaking engagements—strictly business casual apparel with that stuffy networking vibe. This was different. The Scott Heinze before me was a guy taking time out of his (busy) Saturday schedule to have a chat about how he lives his life.

The fact is, Heinze lives his life like a policy wonk. This translates to a person who simply knows a lot of things and feels compelled to give incredibly thorough, well thought out, and oftentimes long answers. So, during particularly long answers to questions his voice can create that soft lull we’re all familiar with from lectures of history or science.

But don’t be fooled into boredom or nod off while he speaks! There is more behind this man than policy! I mean, sometimes you have to wade through several levels of policy, but eventually you break through.

For example, in his initial efforts to explain himself, his doctoral program’s jargon comes in. Heinze explained that there are operators and conceptualizers, he being the latter. “Conceptualizers often times will get in as a change agent and say and do things that feel very radical to the establishment.” I actually find this to be interesting stuff, but this excerpt is also a bit text booky:

“In a typical organizational chart you would have this person at the top, this very hierarchical, linear system, and the person at the top has all of the authority to make all of the decisions, and they push that down. Servant leadership really flattens the organization chart. It invites everyone to be in part of the decision making process and they feel empowered with what’s going on.”

Again, this is interesting to me, after all, leaders aren’t well-known for giving their power away; much less give it away to achieve results. However, when Heinze speaks he often starts by explaining definitions and situations (this is a very policy thing to do), and I feel a little detached by the whole thing. It is only after he has explained all the details that he tells you a story that shows you what they mean. For example:

During his time as an Assistant Director of Outreach at Kent Youth and Family Services, where the residents were primarily immigrant and political refugees, Heinze was the daily operations guy who oversaw a diverse group of staff members. His goal was to empower his staff, and he told them, “you know your residents and participants the best, because you see them on a daily basis.” He gave his staff the opportunity to have impact on services and programs. “And it really, in the staff, inspired them to come up with new and innovative ways to deliver programs, and so it became meaningful to them. If they had to work longer hours to do that they were included to because they’d become so invested in it.”

“That’s how you get meaningful results – you include all of the stake holders and you give them authentic voice and you listen to what they have to say and you assign them responsibility.” (I make this bold because of the great amounts of conviction this line was spoken with, and also because I believe this one sentence was more powerful then his entire, original definition of what it meant to be a servant leader).

Heinze sees servant leadership as the way to empower people to do more and to become invested in their community. It is entirely possible that his commitment to servant leadership comes from the servant leaders who have empowered him.

As mentioned earlier, Heinze played sports. When asked what his favorite was he swiftly and decisively stated “Baseball.” He played baseball up until college, when he got injured. “I was no longer able to play and complete, but still had that inner desire to compete but was no longer certain how to channel it.”

It was at this point where his high school coach invited him back onto the team as an assistant coach. His old coach, and good friend, allowed him to take ownership of part of the program. “Certain parts of the program that were just mine, that I could just take and run and do what I wanted.”

“I didn’t understand it at the time, but in retrospect now I understand what an incredible act of servant leadership it was for him to give up control and authority of a part of his program that he worked hard to build. And it’s interesting too, I find myself as I get older, I turned 39 in June, of kind of bench marking the people who have been influential in my life, and going back to where they were at my age. So he was about 39 when he gave me that opportunity. So it’s just interesting to go back and think about it… and I use that to inform how I try to be.”

While Heinze provided many examples of how he lives his life now as a servant leader, his coach was one of the first people to empower him the way he seeks to empower others.

“It was such a selfish act [from my coach]. It didn’t require a whole lot of him other than a fundamental decision that he saw in me something he could trust and nature and mentor, and it did wonders for me in that I in turn create that relationship with the players I was coaching.”

As Heinze said about training activists during his work with the American Diabetes Association, “It was incredibly empowering because we did a lot around training… that transfer of knowledge and of experience and skill set was great… It was humbling and empowering to be able to create this multiplying effect and now 300 people have gone to the hill (in Washington DC), and will go back to their individual communities across the country to continue to do what they had just done.”

Heinze’s coach had empowered him to take on more responsibility, and helped him become a leader. In turn, Heinze is now able to take his skills and confidence, and train other people to be leaders in their own communities. This is what he is talking about when he speaks about servant leadership, and what he wants to bring to the Tacoma School Board.

All of Heinze’s experience within policy (he has worked for Congressman Adam Smith and Governor Gregiore) did not show him what it was like to be a politician, “I just assumed having been on the policy side that if I ever ran I would, you know, just instinctively know what to do on the campaign side – and that wasn’t the case.” Policy workers are, for the most part, behind the scenes providing support. As a politician you are the one in the open whose ideas are being judged. “For me there was this incredible feeling of vulnerability, of being exposed.”

How does he deal with that pressure?

“I’ve tried to run my campaign how I try to live my life – it’s open and transparent… This is who I am, this is how I live my life, this is how I envision serving as an elected official. And If that resonates with people, if they feel like they can trust me and they want me in that position then they can vote for me. And if they don’t then they won’t. But I’m going to be authentic to myself… It’s just me on the phone. It’s just me when someone walks up and asks me a question.”

“It’s so time intensive, but those most time intensive parts are probably the piece I like best about the campaign… those opportunities to doorbell, to sit and listen to people and hear their concerns, to answer questions they might have. That’s been the most rewarding part.”

Ten fun facts about Scott Heinze:
1. For the meeting he drank a short Americano with cream.
2. He is left handed.
3. His first job was at “The Dog’s Ear,” a T-shirt printing company in Spokane.
4. His favorite sport is baseball.
5. His favorite subject in school was current world affairs.
6. He lives in the Proctor District.
7. At the time of the interview, when asked if he had pets, he responded, “What, did my kids plant this question?” His children have been bothering him for pets. Since then, his son got a hamster for his 8th birthday.
8. The most exciting place he has ever been was at President Obama’s inauguration.
9. His parents were very protective and did not let him watch scary movies.
10. If he could give to just one charity it would be the one he is most active in: the American Diabetes Association.

The Melon is your election headquarters for Tacoma’s 2009 ballot.  We’re pleased to announce our complete set of interviews for every race in the entire city (well…with exception to the Port). Now you can look past the dry ballot statements and get a real flavor for our candidates by listening to our extensive, exclusive and dare I say, extreme candidate interviews. We’ve interviewed the Mayoral candidates, all of the City Council candidates and the School Board candidates.

Take the time to make the most educated choice come November by informing yourself:

ELECTION 2009 PAGE

You can thank us later

After learning a few weeks ago that the Tacoma School Board will finally start filming their meetings we were pleased to be able to set up a meeting with current School Board Member & Director for Resources for Education and Career Help (REACH) Kurt Miller.

Kurt was generous enough to sit down with us to discuss the decision to start filming, what that means, some of the current issues facing Tacoma Schools, as well as give us some information about the exciting new REACH center being built for Tacoma youth.  (Length – 42:04)

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Here’s the first hour of the 02.26.09 Tacoma School Board Meeting. The Melon will no longer be offering this service due to conflicts. We did, however, speak at this meeting to encourage the school board to film themselves. Below you’ll find footage of the meeting and our segment.

The Melon lobbies the school board for filming meetings:

Thanks for your support in this endeavour, hopefully the school board will implement video recorded sooner, rather than later as suggested by the board President.

You know, the more I visit the Tacoma School Board, the more I realize how ceremonial it really is. From the perspective of an outsider it’s nearly impossible to determine what indeed is actually going on – video camera or not (the School Board’s website isn’t exactly the most transparent service either.) Nevertheless, this is more or less what I was able to gather from Thursday’s meeting.

Imagine that the economy is in shambles and everyone agrees it’s going to get worse. The lines dividing Wall Street and Main Street are rapidly beginning to blur (artificially or otherwise.) Unemployment nationwide is steadily rising and we in the Pacific Northwest can hardly expect to be immune. In fact, historically national economic downturns have hit this region harder than most do to our inability to diversify our industries. During the most recent recession that followed (and preceded) September 11, 2001 – Oregon led the country with an unemployment rate of over 10% with Washington a close second. As of August unemployment statewide had only climbed to 6%, placing us still below the national average, though current trends suggest that we will breach the 7% marker by the end of the month.

Now imagine you’re on the Tacoma School Board, and you’ve just been informed by Governor/Candidate Gregoire that some cuts to public education are almost inevitable at the state level – leaving local governments with the unenviable task of asking the cash-strapped voters to makeup the difference via bonds and levies to renovate a few middle schools and a couple of high school football stadiums and soccer fields. The District’s analysts project the final bill at being somewhere around $300 million. Since Washington is one of only a few states that doesn’t have an income tax, the burden of paying for this particular upgrade will fall to middle-class homeowners who remain frightened by the economy and upset about a recent auditing scandal that found – among other things – some school board members in other districts of the state indulging on $52 a plate dinners using tax-payer money.

That’s exactly what the Tacoma School Board considered on Thursday, whether or not to raise the total tax rate on assessed property from $4.77/per $1000 to $4.80/per $1000. Or, in other words, while last year the average homeowner in Tacoma paid $1,173.42 in property taxes – should this bond measure pass – they’ll be paying $1,197.21: a difference of $23.79.

Does this plan make sense? Probably yes.

As Superintendent Jarvis pointed out, during times of economic decline Government often becomes the chief provider of jobs. With unemployment on the rise and the construction industry going into a slow decline, the School Board has a golden opportunity to put its tax dollars to work by reinvesting them back into the community from which they were gleaned. Simultaneously, as School Board president Jim Dugan pointed out, the decreasing demand for construction jobs in Pierce County will result in lower bids from willing contractors.

Now the only challenge will be pitching this idea to the voters. And because what the School Board is proposing is a capital bond, it is still bound by the supermajority requirements that 4204 broke on levies last election cycle.  That means 60% of the electorate or more must vote the measure up.

Related interview with President of the Tacoma Education Association Darrick Hartman:

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