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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Ok, I was all set to vote for Palmer for Chair but I'm working on my ballot this week and doing lots of reading and have started getting cold feet. I'm frustrated with Mendo and agree the Council needs fresh faces and I like the idea of new leadership. I think my political align pretty well with Palmer and I like her personally -- she has a great attitude and seems easy to work with and I could see that translating to a good leadership style.

But I'm suddenly getting nervous. Council Chair has a lot of power. It's a big job with a ton of logistics. Palmer has a great resume and I'm a huge fan of her advocacy. But she's never been in a role with this many moving parts, this level of logistics. I am stressed about it. ANC can be a challenging job but it's very small compared to Chair. Her day job has always been as more of a team player.

She also has proposals for changing the way the Council works. I don't disagree with her proposals (re-forming the education subcommittee and hiring on more staff to draft and review legislation) but that kind of change can be hard and she has no track record with it -- no track record with building teams (other than her campaign team, which is smaller than typical because she decided to do public funding) or building a program from the ground up. I have done those things and it is really challenging work.

It's hard to imagine voting for Mendo (though I've done it in the past so it's not THAT hard) but I'm just starting to wonder if Palmer's enthusiasm and style can overcome these deficits in experience. Can some of Palmers supporters make the argument in favor? I want to vote for her but I need to get past this reservation.

(please don't accuse me of being a Mendo plant -- I genuinely want to vote for Palmer and want to hear the best argument in her favor on the issue of experience and leadership ability, I have been angry with Mendo since the Council overturned Prop. 77)[/quote]

Being an effective advocate, as she has been as ANC, requires strong organization and leadership skills. If she has gotten results for her ANC, and it sounds like she has, it’s because she knows how to organize, engage, and be persuasive. In addition, she will have a staff as Council chair, and if she’s smart she’ll hire some experienced hands.

It’s true that this will be a leap for her, but that’s not an argument to keep someone in office who seems completely uninterested in representing and advocating for the people who elected him—in some cases actively working against their expressed interest (e.g. leading the effort to overturn the results of Initiative 77).

He also refuses to engage on development of the RFK site, which is highly time-sensitive given the likely end of Democratic congressional rule after the midterms (more here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/commanders-stadium-dc-norton-bowser-mendelson/); I’m no Bowser fan, but it seems clear that he’s the hold-up, and that’s absolutely disqualifying given the stakes.

He needs to go, and I’m confident that Erin Palmer is up to the job.[/quote]

ANC is basically high school student government. She’s going to be absolutely steam rollered by DC interest groups and will as a result focus on only the most inane virtue signaling stuff. [/quote]

This is precisely my fear. ANC to Council Chair is a huge leap. ANC is a part time job, and while it involves advocacy and navigating bureaucracy, it's nothing compared to the fully time role of Chair. I would feel so much more comfortable with her if she was running for member instead of chair, or if she could point to a high level leadership role either at work or within an advocacy organization as a credential.

I've worked in advocacy in a variety of DC orgs for years and I am extremely wary of people who spend years doing midlevel work within orgs and then suddenly want to run things. I've never seen it turn out well. There's a reason you generally want people who have had steadily advancing levels of responsibility so they don't have to figure out how to manage a big team with lots of moving parts all at once. Saying "well she'll hire a good staff" is exactly the kind of thing that makes me nervous. I would expect anyone I vote for to hire a good staff. It's not the staff I worry about -- they aren't in charge, nor should they be.

I really wish we had a better alternative here. I agree it's time to give Mendo a rest but Palmer feels like a recipe for disaster. And could also potentially set back progressive causes in DC if she turns out to be very ineffectual, because moderates like Bowser will point to her and say "see, these ideas don't work." I look at how Charles Allen has just become this kind of useless mouthpiece for progressive ideas but doesn't actually DO anything (and is now running unopposed, Ward 6 is such a joke at this point). That would be so much worse in a Chair. You can't just tweet about progressive values and call it a day as Chair.[/quote]

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