Max Nofziger should withdraw from his ill-considered bid for mayor. He owes at least this to the city
of Austin, to its citizens, and especially to his longtime supporters.
Nofziger’s election to the City Council is still one of the great symbolic acts
on the part of the people of Austin — electing someone with passion,
conviction, and a dedication to their principles regardless of the fact that he
was a street-corner flower vendor. Unfortunately, Nofziger failed to act on
this mandate, turning in three largely uninspired turns during his terms.
Nofziger seemed neither an ideological leader nor an effective political
navigator. Although a voice for the environment and a strong neighborhood
supporter, he lacked the political skills to get much done. Certainly, there
were crucial issues that he championed, especially relating to air and water
quality, but a successful politician needs to be able to achieve consensus and
push agenda, and Nofziger didn’t really do either.
Nofziger loved the symbolic act, and this was both his strength and weakness.
A warm and decent man, Nofziger was not just a politician, but served as an
effective community symbol. This affection for symbols could backfire. Although
always expressing love and support for the Austin music scene (and helping to
establish both the music commission and music commissioner position), he
saddled it with the hideously Chamber of Commerce-sounding “Live Music Capital
of the World” moniker (Branson, Missouri well deserves that hyped and hollow
title). Nofziger was in favor of alternative transportation, but instead of
leading the fight for bike-friendly streets, early on he voted to take
inner-city bike money and give it to Gary Bradley’s veloway. Instead of
mounting a sustained, intelligent bike-way campaign over the years, toward the
end of his tenure he promoted the controversial and expensive Pedestrian
Coordinator. Transportation is a key issue; this was too little and too late.
As Nofziger was getting ready to retire, the Chronicle asked if we
could hold a joint interview with him and retiring councilmember Brigid Shea.
Although they shared many philosophies, they differed seriously on some issues,
and Nofziger declined the joint interview. This, among other things, does not
evidence mature political leadership qualities.
But even if Nofziger had been the best councilmember ever, he should not now
be running for mayor. Nofziger was elected as the people’s candidate — an act
of defiance against career politicians and city hall insiders. Having neither
found a role nor accomplished much in either the private or the public sector,
he now returns to the best-paying job he has ever had: elected office. This
makes him nothing more and nothing less than a career politician, and one
counting more on his personality than his accomplishments.
When Nofziger left the Council, he said he was planning to take three years
off and then run for mayor. Having not been sufficiently courted by the Watson
camp, according to Wednesday’s Statesman, and because he can’t think of
anything else to do, Nofziger is running for mayor after one year. He misses
making policy, he says.
His two big issues are campaign finance reform and the electric utility,
according to what he said on Kevin Connor’s 107.1 KGSR morning radio show. In
the Statesman, Nofziger expresses no real differences with Watson except
he thought he was wrong not to condemn the council for inaction on campaign
finance reform. This seems an awfully small sliver on which to mount a
political campaign. Especially one designed to split the
progressive/environmental/liberal vote with Kirk Watson and force a runoff
race.
If Nofziger had a stronger record, or a more specific and unique platform,
just turning this into a three-way race would be no problem. But he has become
a career politician, noted more for personal warmth, honesty, and considerable
charm, than for philosophy or accomplishment. The Chronicle has
supported Nofziger in the past, because he has a good heart, shares many of our
positions, and has been an important symbol in our recent political history. In
this race he is trying to play the spoiler, by offering not a different
philosophy but a different personality. By running for office now, the 1997
mayoral candidate Max Nofziger is everything that street-corner flower vendor
and people’s candidate Max Nofziger was elected to the Austin City Council to
protest.
Townes Van Zandt was one
of the great Texas voices (to simply call him a songwriter doesn’t begin to
give credit), who, with Guy Clark on the one hand and Willie Nelson and Billy
Joe Shaver on the other, have profoundly influenced not only the succeeding
generations of Texas songwriters but songwriters everywhere. In performance,
Van Zandt could be absolutely transcendent, almost eerily evocative. To
consider his material morbid is to miss its aching beauty and unreasonable
compassion; Van Zandt really had faith in people, and his songs are infused
with humanity. His recent death is a great loss. In this issue Lee Nichols and
Ed Ward talk about Van Zandt.
The Austin Chronicle Music
Poll ballot is running this issue; be sure to vote! This is the one time of
year where the music critics are silenced and the readers express themselves.
This, of course, means news of the Austin Music Awards show is imminent — more
on that later.
It’s only two months until
the South By Southwest onslaught begins, but already this year is shaping up to
be one of the best ever. Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro and I work
especially closely on the Film Festival and Conference (with executive producer
Nancy Schafer), and we have a number of exciting programs to announce: Director
Sarah Kelly and producer Rana Joy Glickman, along with Quentin Tarantino and
Robert Rodriguez, will present an Austin Film Society benefit screening of
Full Tilt Boogie, a documentary on the making of From Dusk
Till Dawn. Steven Soderbergh is presenting two new films,
Schizopolis and Gray’s Anatomy. There will be four film programs
celebrating the 25th anniversary of the distribution company Women Make
Movies, and Twister star Bill Paxton will present the world premiere
of Traveler, on which he was both producer and actor. More on the
conference, films, panels, and panelists later.
Although Nancy Schafer has no official Chronicle job, in her capacity
as the Film Festival and Conference producer, she harasses Barbaro and me
daily. At one point we entertained the thought of chronicling her adventures as
kind of an ongoing serial in this column but decided to pass. Here are her Top
Eight films of the year, which we offer for no apparent reason: 1.
Fargo; 2. Trainspotting ; 3. Lone Star; 4. Breaking the
Waves; 5. Secrets and Lies; 6. Shine; 7. The English
Patient; 8. Manny & Lo. n
This article appears in January 10 • 1997 and January 10 • 1997 (Cover).