Two Governors and an Election

Okay–no big post today. Today is fingernail-biting/pundit-watching/whatever-happens-it’s- finally-over day. There will be time to chew over the results later.

A friend sent me an email with a small medallion attached; it said “Stay calm and trust Nate Silver.” Good advice–if not for the nagging concerns raised by the widespread efforts at voter suppression and intimidation. I can’t help contrasting two governors: Andrew Cuomo in New York, and Rick Scott in Florida. In the wake of storm Sandy, Cuomo has issued an executive order allowing New Yorkers to vote at any polling place. They just need to submit an affidavit that they are registered, and that the storm damaged their usual voting site. In contrast, Florida Governor Rick Scott has “purged” voter rolls of thousands of properly registered citizens, mostly minorities, and closed down early voting sites.

I hope the response to Scott and the others, like Ohio Secretary of State Husted, is a greater determination to exercise the franchise they are trying so hard to deny to the “wrong kind” of voters.

We’ll know later tonight.

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New York, New York

My husband and I are city people, so when one of our sons moved to Manhattan, we increased the frequency of our trips to the Big Apple.

We just got home from one such trip, a long weekend in New York, and I continue to marvel at what that city has done and is doing. My son’s very spiffy apartment building is located in a neighborhood adjacent to the Hudson Yards redevelopment project–a rapidly developing part of town that prudent people avoided 15 years ago. The High Line park–a favorite walking route these days–used to be an abandoned elevated rail line. The city took an eyesore and made it into an amenity so desirable it has reportedly spurred two billion dollars of adjacent redevelopment. Despite the city’s lack of alleys, city streets and sidewalks were clean and free of garbage. Bikes were everywhere, and more are coming: the city plans to roll out the first ten thousand bicycles of a planned bike-sharing program in a couple of months. Small pocket parks are everywhere, and the ones we saw were meticulously maintained.

When I was in city hall in Indianapolis, back in the late 1970s, then-Mayor Hudnut used to say we wanted to be “a city that works.” Clearly–with all its challenges–New York is a city that works. If we are honest, it works a lot better than Indianapolis does these days.

New York’s crime rate is lower than ours. Its ability to maintain public spaces should shame us–a few years ago, the Mayor wanted to get rid of small parks that were “too hard” or “too costly” to care for, and a walk on the downtown canal is a depressing reminder that this administration doesn’t understand the importance of maintenance. The canal is one of Indianapolis’ most important amenities, and it’s being allowed to fall apart.

Public transportation? New York has buses and taxis and subways, and isn’t resting on its laurels: a new subway station is going in a couple of blocks from our son’s apartment. In Indianapolis, we can’t even manage decent bus service.

When a city is safe and well-managed and convenient, people want to visit. When it isn’t–when it is a hassle to get from one place to another, when crime rates are worrisome, when public amenities are neglected–all the SuperBowls we can host won’t make us a favorite destination.

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New York, New York

When I told a coworker that I was coming to New York for the weekend, he shuddered. He hasn’t ever been there, he said, but he hates big cities.

I LOVE big cities. And therein lies a political challenge for those who would be mayor. We talk about the need for our candidates to demonstrate a vision for the city, but we have very different ideas about what sort of vision we’re looking for.

The virtues of urban life that seem so off-putting to many people–and so appealing to me–are multiple: the diversity of the people (and the tolerance for difference that is a necessary consequence), the multiple thriving arts scenes, the great public transportation, and the endless choices of everything–neighborhoods, retail establishments, food.

With all of this, of course, comes a certain anonymity, which delights some people and deeply troubles others. The virtues of community, which are accessed more easily in smaller cities and towns, have to be actively created in larger cities. And the mix of people–diverse in beliefs and attitudes as well as religion, skin color, national origin and the like–creates a culture that celebrates messages and behaviors that would be upsetting or shocking in smaller venues. (For example, we were able to get tickets to Book of Mormon–a smash hit–only because my nephew “knows people.” We loved it, but I imagine its irreverent message about all religion–not just Mormonism–would be received differently in more pious venues.)

What is our vision for Indianapolis? I doubt there is much consensus. Even people in my downtown neighborhood are divided about the virtues of urbanism; some still want the big lawns and low densities of suburban life, just closer to the city’s core. They fail to recognize that supporting the amenities they do want requires the urban characteristics they don’t.

We are in the middle of electing a new mayor and council. Ideally, we would evaluate all the candidates on two separate measures: their visions, and their capacities to achieve those visions. The best elections, from the standpoint of us voters, would offer us equally qualified candidates with competing visions. My colleague could vote for the person whose vision of Indianapolis is pastoral; I could vote for the candidate promising more urbanism. Unfortunately, we rarely get that sort of choice, and this election is no exception.

For mayor, we get to choose between a feckless incumbent whose management skills are invisible and whose vision of urbanism is a faux Chinatown, and a candidate with demonstrated management skills whose vision–better education, public safety and economic development–is solid, but hardly soaring.

Well–there’s always an occasional weekend in New York.

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