Randi Shade‘s campaign manager Mark Nathan may have put it best. When the Place Three early voting results came in by phone, putting Shade over the top by an astonishing 34 points on 62%, he said, “It’s just a question of how much we win by ultimately.”
Before the results came in, no handicapper seemed prepared to say they knew that she’d win by so much, or at all. But at her election party at the Galaxy Cafe, Shade said she thought the media had under-estimated the breadth of her coalition, and that the Jennifer Kim campaign’s late swerve into negativity became a self-inflicted wound. “You don’t normally see incumbents attack a challenger in that way,” she said.
First order of business? Reaching out to the Kim supporters, then working on budget priorities in the midst of an economic downturn: what she called, “The need-to-haves, not the nice-to-haves.”
Down at the Kim party at the Penn Field Opal Divine’s, what was surprising was it still felt like a party: mainly because Kim was working hard to keep spirits up. She had called Shade early evening with her congratulations phone call, and now was talking to her staff, and saying that, whatever was said, she stood by her voting record and her actions on the council. The outgoing council member was pretty clear about what she was going to do next. “I’m taking my mother for Dim Sum for Mother’s Day.”
This article appears in May 9 • 2008.
