May 4 Election Wrap-up

Place 1: He's Still Number Two

You've got to hand it to Kirk Mitchell. For better or worse, he comes in swinging, he goes down swinging. On Monday morning, the physically exhausted candidate still had enough punch to not only denounce the man who had hammered him at the polls two days earlier, but to find fault with the local rags that covered the bitter race between the two former allies. "I'm not happy-go-lucky about it," Mitchell said of his bruising loss to City Council incumbent Daryl Slusher. "I'm kind of pissed."

Mitchell's mood on Monday had shifted dramatically from his conciliatory pose at Los Comales restaurant Saturday night. With News 8 television cameras rolling, he raised his glass in a toast to Slusher while supporters chanted good-naturedly, "We're No. 2!" Still, it's understandable why Mitchell was feeling out of sorts. Not only had he let his business and personal affairs slide during the grueling run for City Council, he had bet the farm on his campaign -- $39,000 of his own money, as of the last week of April. But neither the risky investment nor an unrelenting attack strategy got Mitchell what he wanted. "I wanted to get into a run-off," he said, "and I thought I would."

Instead, Slusher maintained a comfortable lead over Mitchell throughout the tallying process, capturing nearly 55% of the vote in the five-way race. Mitchell's take topped out at almost 27%. "That's a pretty good showing for a first-time city council candidate running against an incumbent," Mitchell said. "It was a damn close race, and as someone pointed out to me last night, I got almost as many votes as Beverly." (That's Council Member Griffith, who mustered only 29% in a dismal re-election bid, and opted out of a run-off with top vote-getter Betty Dunkerley.)

"We knew [Mitchell] would get between 25 and 35%," said Mitchell consultant Mike Blizzard. "Obviously we had hoped it would be closer to 35." Blizzard noted his disappointment in the non-campaigns of the other three Place 1 opponents -- Craig Barrett, Vincent Aldridge, and Jennifer Gale. A serious run by either Barrett or Aldridge might have siphoned some Slusher votes and created a slimmer margin between the two top vote-getters. Mitchell picked up his strongest support east of I-35, but nevertheless lagged behind Slusher in all sectors of the city.

Slusher, meanwhile, had targeted the Central City -- traditionally his strongest voting bloc -- where he collected his highest percentages. Still, the area's 13% turnout was light. David Butts, a volunteer consultant for Slusher, theorized that the campaign's divisiveness, pitting an environmental candidate against an environmental incumbent, either confused people or turned them off altogether. Those who did vote sided with Slusher for a number of reasons, Butts said. "Sure, there's some people mad at Daryl, but you can't read into this. I don't think [Mitchell] did a good job of convincing people that Daryl had stepped away from his roots." Additionally, he said, Mitchell's barrage of negative TV ads was likely least effective in Central City because the area is historically immune to any type of political advertising on television.

If anything, says Slusher, Mitchell's attack mailers and ads might have unwittingly helped the Slusher campaign. "We actually had a mail piece ready to go negative at the end, but I instinctively made the decision not to do that, and it was the right decision because, in the end, people rejected [Mitchell's] negative campaigning."

Mitchell's attack began with a lawsuit to try and force Slusher off the ballot, claiming he violated campaign finance laws in his petition drive to secure enough signatures to overcome the city's term limit rules. Former Mayor Bruce Todd assisted Slusher in the petition effort by paying registered voters $1 for their signature. Slusher's acceptance of the paid signatures violated the $100 campaign contribution cap, Mitchell charged. He lost the case in court, but he remains convinced Slusher broke the law. "Daryl is guilty as hell," Mitchell says, adding that local newspapers are in error for not pursuing the story. It's a story, Mitchell believes, that Slusher would cover if he were still a muckraking journalist at the Chronicle. Slusher responded with surprise and a chuckle: "He said that?"

Someday, maybe, Slusher and Mitchell might rekindle their friendship. Stranger things have happened. Who would have believed, after all, that Todd and Slusher -- onetime political foes -- would ever become allies? The former mayor dropped in at Threadgill's Saturday night to congratulate both Slusher and Mayor Pro Tem Jackie Goodman on their re-election victories. Todd offered his take on the Slusher-Mitchell contest. "This was sort of a nasty race, it was a tough race, and it was one where [Slusher] carried off with, you know, sort of the dignity of a statesman. Being in office means you can't always follow your constituency right down the line. You've got to exercise some tough votes based on the information."