Phil Bandy |
The final vote in Eagle Tuesday was a vote for a general continuation of city policy, and a vote for a conventional choice. What’s noteworthy is how close the unruly opposition got – shy just 153 votes of 4,557 cast (which is why even commenting on this Tuesday night was too problematic).
Phil Bandy, who won the mayoralty in the runoff, is the conventional choice, and he was endorsed by a string of business organizations and also by a number of independents, such as the Idaho Statesman. He has city council experience and has been a planning and zoning commissioner, and serves on the Ada County Air Quality Board, among other things; he was even president of his homeowners association. He has worked for quite a few years as a mid-level manager in several Idaho state departments. He is said to have a fairly smooth and cooperative working style and approach, a large part of what the Statesman, for one, found appealing.
His opponent, Saundra McDavid, has been in Eagle fewer years, has never been elected to office or served on the kind of boards and commissions he has. An attorney, she and her husband have run a newish business near downtown called the Rib Shack (we’ve lunched there, and had pretty good BBQ eats) which itself has been occasionally controversial in town. McDavid led a slate of candidates – the two council members were elected last month – but otherwise is apparently new to politics and struck some observers as having rough edges. In a guest op in the Statesman, she noted that “Some have criticized me for my passion on this issue, calling me stubborn and uncompromising” – and yes, “some” have.
Eagle is a suburban city, politically and culturally conservative (relatively, a closer match overall to Bandy than to McDavid) and with loads of new residents, not especially easy for an outsider to ride into. And yet McDavid came within 153 votes of becoming mayor. How did that happen?
There’s no mystery in town; everyone there knows: “Growth.”
Eagle has grown wildly in recent years, moving from 2,000 or so a couple of decades ago to well upwards of 20,000, and probably approaching 25,000. McDavid probably spoke for a lot of people in Eagle (the majority?) when she also told the Statesman, “My family and I chose to live in Eagle because we loved the small-town feel, open spaces and beautiful views. My husband and I wanted to raise our children in a place they would feel safe and in a city they would be proud to call home. As a mother and a member of this community, I still want the same things.”
So McDavid’s slate, Preserve Eagle, is aimed simply at very-slow growth, or maybe none. The sense a number of Eagle people had was that it would throw roadblocks in the way of fast growth, however it could. Which the current city government – including Bandy – has not done.
There is a counter-argument that also recognizes the issues of growth: Eagle cannot expect to stem the tide by itself. Much of the heat around growth at the moment has to do with massive residential growth north of town, which the city has been taking step to annex. But what’s the alternative to city acceptance of the projects through annexation? Ada County has allowed them to be built, and they evidently will be; the only question is under whose jurisdiction.
Bandy does not seem likely to blithely allow any and every proposal through the gates; there’s a more judicious sense to him than that. And he acknowledges McDavid’s campaign struck a very real nerve: “Her platform … and superficial discussions of the issues really resonated with a lot of people.”
Still, had she won, that might have amounted to a useful revolution, in some ways. She might have been a lonely, and sometimes ineffectual, voice against the tide of growth. But it would have been a voice, and not many local government people in Southwest Idaho do have that kind of voice anymore.
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