Will the next mayor please step forward?

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Still, ideas seem to be lacking in this election. The candidates seem to agree on almost everything: the city needs to court new businesses, rebuild infrastructure and be more transparent. They all agree that the consolidation of Springfield’s railroads should happen on 10th Street instead of Third Street. Better promotion of tourism, especially based on Abraham Lincoln, seems to be a cornerstone of every candidate’s campaign. In general, each of them has promised “a new way of doing things” at city hall.

The closest any candidates have come to visionary ideas are Stocks-Smith’s promise at a Feb. 4 Citizens Club forum to heal the racial, geographic and economic divides that plague Springfield, while McCarty has proposed a video game night to create positive relationships between Springfield Police and local young people. McCarty also wants the city to continue buying up abandoned properties on the east side, demolishing the vacant buildings and turning the property over to community groups for green space, gardens or new homes.

Those ideas are a start, but more and bigger ideas are needed to both distinguish the candidates and transform the city. The term “building on our strengths” has been used often in this campaign, but what about fixing our weaknesses? The downtown area, for example, suffered greatly when Rod Blagojevich as governor moved thousands of state jobs to Chicago, and the situation is getting worse under Gov. Pat Quinn. Dozens of empty storefronts and office spaces scar the face of downtown, even while a TIF district offers tax incentives for development. A mayoral candidate with a plan to revitalize the downtown with more apartments, restaurants, art galleries and shops might get some attention, but none has stepped forward so far. Coffey told Illinois Times that more funding for the convention center would drive tourism and in turn prompt more businesses to open downtown, but there is only so much tourism can do.

“It will enhance the downtown, it will bring more people there, more tax revenue to the people of Springfield, and when you do that, people will then buy up those buildings,” Coffey says. “They’ll put new businesses in. What government has to do is help attract people to Springfield and then let the private sector do the rest.”

Plans to increase tourism are certainly useful, but it must be convenient for tourists to navigate the city if we expect them to stay. Beefing up public transportation in Springfield, especially to the Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport, would make tourism here more attractive, ease traffic congestion and help mitigate the geographic and economic barriers that divide the city.

For another example, candidates touting openness and transparency in the mayoral race could take those ideas a step further and make all of city government open to pubic view. Providing citizens with instant online access to more records and databases would foster public trust in government while helping expose the kind of inefficiencies and redundancies so often railed against. These are the types of ideas that could truly set a candidate apart while moving toward a real transformation of the city.

While this campaign may not be exciting based on the candidates, the election itself may offer some interesting dynamics as the city tests a new nomination process. This election will be the first under a 2007 state law that allows four candidates in municipal primary elections to advance to the general election, instead of the usual two. The law, which took effect after Springfield’s 2007 mayoral election, was intended to eliminate the primary election if fewer than five candidates, including write-ins, ran for a single office. However, municipalities across the state are interpreting the law’s unclear language to mean that four candidates for a given office can advance beyond the primary. The four candidates who get the most votes in the primary will advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Based on the candidates’ endorsements, name recognition and campaign cash, it seems likely that Mike Coffey, Mike Farmer, Mike Houston and Sheila Stocks-Smith will advance to the general election. It's difficult to tell for sure, however, because Frank Kunz, Mario Ingoglia and William McCarty are each running heavy grassroots campaigns with lower visibility. Even though candidates in municipal elections don’t officially run on a partisan platform, the new system may also lead to a splitting of the vote in the general election. If three Republicans and one Democrat are nominated in the primary, for example, the Republicans may split their party’s vote three ways in the general election, while the lone Democrat could enjoy the support of that party’s entire voting bloc.

Kent Redfield at UIS notes that a candidate won’t necessarily have to get a majority of the vote to win the general election, which means candidates can tailor their message to more specific audiences. A candidate could win the general election with just 26 percent of the vote, for example, provided the rest of the vote was divided equally among the other three candidates.

“You’re playing to your base, but normally when you get to the general election, you have to broaden your appeal,” Redfield says. “Now, you don’t need to get 50 percent, and you really don’t need to broaden your base as much. … Certainly the strategic considerations have changed. You can appeal to a narrower base and still become mayor.”

That may actually help explain why big ideas have been so scarce in this election so far. The candidates may simply be playing it safe to avoid controversy because strategies to win in this new election environment are untested, Redfield says. Proposing a big idea can be a risk because opponents may see it as a chance to attack, but as soon as the primary election shows one candidate to be in the lead, he or she will become a target for the other three candidates anyway.

“Everybody will gang up on the front-runner,” says Dr. Ron Michaelson, former head of the Illinois State Board of Elections. “You’d better believe the other three candidates would concentrate on the number one person. It’s not unusual. We see that at all levels.”

No matter what happens, the outcome of this election will determine Springfield’s path even beyond the end of the next mayor’s term. As Abraham Lincoln said to Congress in 1862, “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.

As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”

Contact Patrick Yeagle at pyeagle@illinoistimes.com.

For information on voting, call the Election Office of the Sangamon County Clerk at 753- 6740 or visit www.sangamoncountyclerk.com.