If you haven’t heard, the three challengers to the Lacey City council, including Ron Lawson, Cynthia Pratt, and Andy Ryder, all won their elections. Its fairly rare that three incumbents including the mayor*, deputy mayor, and the senior most member of city council are voted out…Not squeaked by, or a questionable loss, but clearly voted out by margins approaching 10%. In the case of city council position #4, an incumbent loss by almost 20% is in political terms, amazing.
Indeed, Lacey fire fighters worked very hard to help the winners and undoubtedly have learned a whole new set of skills that will be honed and prepared for future elections. And there is celebration that Lacey City Council members who delighted in throwing our department and fire fighters under the bus at every possible turn are now beating us to the unemployment line. However, as a dreaded “union”, we can’t take all the credit.
You see, groups don’t vote, people vote, and it became very clear to us that political soil of Lacey was fertile ground for change. We were able to physically touch every door in the city, call every registered voter, and make every debate or community meeting that wasn’t kept secret. And as much as we would like to say we changed opinions, we found that more often than not, citizens were going to vote for the challengers anyway. Only rarely did we have to debate or discuss the issues, but most of the voters we found all had their own reasons in addition to the fire department slander campaign, to vote for the challengers. It was very apparent that the efforts of the fire fighters had a significant impact, but it was far from an uphill battle; the citizens of Lacey are more than just annoyed at what’s going on in their city.
Themes that the citizens told us about were concerns included the apparent lack of city council transparency, the concerns about special interest control, cronyism, and the general concern that honesty and integrity in certain elected officials was in question before the elections ever took place. It is our honest belief that if the citizen’s of Lacey are not satisfied or observe some sort of change in how business is done in Lacey City Hall, then its clear that this political blood letting that occurred on November 3, is simply a warm up. And we say that out of sincerity because we’re getting the message too. You will see all sorts of change in the fire district regardless of the city’s plans, that in the future leave as little doubt as possible that the fire fighters absolutely are doing their best job for the citizens. We get it! Our boss is the citizen, and that’s the way it is and the way it always will be.
When you hear outgoing mayor Graeme Sackrison say, “I think primarily it’s a message that the firefighters union is a powerful organization with a lot of time and energy to campaign.” Then we’re saying he doesn’t get it. Voters in his city got to see everything he did right, everything he did wrong, and had access to both positive and negative election information. The citizens made a decision, not the union, that Sackrison, Darby, and Burgman no longer represent them. I sincerely hope the other city council incumbents are listening.
Congratulations to Ron Lawson, Cynthia Pratt, and Andy Ryder for all of their hard work, their family’s efforts, and the phenomenal outpouring of community support. We hope you do the community proud and work hard to support public safety, small business, and progressive and responsible growth.
* Lacey doesn’t elect a mayor; the city council appoints council members to the position of mayor and deputy mayor.