City Hall Hustle: The Hustle Gets Mohawked

Bachelors 1, 2 and 3: Leffingwell, McCracken, Dunbar woo the Mohawk crowd. (Photo by John Anderson)

Josiah Ingalls takes the stage. (Photo by John Anderson)

The rhymes are still rattling down Red River. On Tuesday, April 21, the Chronicle hosted its inaugural mayoral forum, the Hustle for Mayor, at Mohawk. The event featured 30 minutes of Q&A moderated by the Hustle himself, audience questions, word-association games (Highlight: Lee Leffingwell's declaration that "hunker" = "bend over"), guest bartenders, and yes, a rhyme-off between candidates Leffingwell and Brewster McCracken. (Leffingwell: "She's all hat and no cattle/she ain't got no game/she goes by 'Carole'/'cause she can't keep up with her name/If you make her the leader of the council seven/she'll spend every meetin' shoutin', 'Yoo-hoo, Kevin!'" McCracken: "Hunker down ain't no walk in the clover – in fact, according to Lee, it means to bend over!")

Guest bartender Mike Martinez grabs a cold one for Chron scribe Lee Nichols. (Photo by John Anderson)

The event wasn't without controversy. As event organizer, the Hustle decided early on to invite Leffingwell and McCracken, candidates with long track records, viable candidacies, and simply put, some understanding of what it actually takes to run the city. (We also invited Carole Strayhorn to give her a well-earned grilling, but she didn't respond.) Ergo, the campaign manager of libertarian-esque real estate candidate David Buttross passed out fliers urging "Don't Be Hustled!" Josiah Ingalls "crashed the party" in person and was afforded a brief opportunity to speak.

An imperfect solution, yes – but the Hustle decided to lend the two viable, progressive candidates an opportunity to reach out to voters at length rather than spread the event a mile wide and an inch deep. (For Ingalls and Buttross boosters, our Hustle for Mayor interview series contains interviews with all the candidates who responded to us: austinchronicle.com/hustle.)

Until next election ...