The six-person field – that’s two times three – of City Council candidates running for Austin’s traditional minority seats met Downtown Tuesday, in the early opening of the May campaign. Eliza May, Mike Martinez, and Hector Uribe, vying for Danny Thomas’ Place 2 seat, and Sheryl Cole, DeWayne Lofton, and Darrell Pierce, campaigning for Raul Alvarez’s Place 6 position, fielded questions mainly pertinent to the event’s primary sponsor, the Small Business Group, at member Paul Silver‘s Fourth Street restaurant, 219 West. (The location prompted some good-humored interplay with Silver, prominent in the anti-smoking-ordinance fight – all the candidates backpedaled, saying the voters had spoken.) Pierce, owner of a consultant management group, touted his experience on city commissions, while attorney Cole described her work with Austin’s Urban League, and Lofton his ongoing work with the Bond Advisory Committee, among other qualifications.
In Place 2, May opened with her presidential position with the Greater Austin Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, while Uribe cited his work as a former state representative, and Martinez his 13 years with the fire department. The African-American and Latino candidates reached consensus on most matters, including business incentives (more should go toward small business), bond prioritization (quality of life measures, like a central library, don’t exclude tax-base boosting measures, like the Downtown-favored Waller Creek Tunnel project), and homelessness’ effect on Downtown business (all supported more comprehensive social services, with Martinez and Lofton proposing a nondowntown “one-stop” campus to address those needs).
Questions posed from one candidate to another proved a bit livelier. Cole asked Lofton for his feelings about the bond process; Lofton returned that softball by asking for Cole’s position on the location of AMD‘s new campus – after a comic deadpan, Cole said frankly, “I do not support any more building over the [Edwards] Aquifer.” Pierce also questioned Cole on how to attract jobs to Austin; she urged a city, county, and college coalition to attract more manufacturing jobs for young people. May answered Martinez’s query on the next council’s largest priority by turning the question back onto him – she said it was renegotiation of fire and police contracts, which will consume the majority of next year’s budget (as union president, Martinez bargained the current firefighter’s contract). Martinez described the contract as providing a “good return on investment,” and said the council needs a member who can see eye-to-eye with safety employees and tell them, “We’ve taken care of you.” There was intriguing unanimity on one looming question: All said they would oppose the proposed “open government” charter amendment, reciting a chorus of “inefficient, expensive, overreaching, unrepresentative,” finally punctuated by Eliza May, “It’s just bad, bad public policy.”
This article appears in February 10 • 2006.