Letter to the Editor: The Taylor Machine Must Be Defeated

by John Smith

I view the Taylor Machine as an existential threat to effective, vibrant Democracy in this town. This Machine must be defeated. So, what is to be done? I believe it is essential to do two things, 1) Implement odd-year elections for all local elections and, 2) Implement non-partisan elections locally. The way to do this is to pass an amendment to the City Charter by collecting enough signatures to bring it to a popular vote. The precedent for this is Proposal A that cancelled the Core Spaces deal in 2018. I am making this appeal, because I believe no matter what happens after August 2, 2022 it is a huge mistake to put this off, or to rely on the City Council to make this happen. 

Citizen involvement is the key to winning on these issues.  

We did see an effort to implement non-partisan between 2018-2020 that was vetoed by Mayor Taylor. This shows in my mind two things: 1) Taylor feared if this question was placed before voters in a November election, it would likely pass, and, 2) it would be bad for Taylor’s Machine after having passed measures to move to even year & four year terms. 

I believe two measures should be placed before voters:

• Change to odd-year elections
• Change to non-partisan elections 

The change to odd-year elections leaves the current partisan elections in place, but does have the advantage of countering a point Taylor’s people made when opposing the effort to switch to non-partisan. That is, some people are hoodwinked into thinking party affiliation in Ann Arbor politics provides any useful information when deciding whom to vote for. 

Taylor is a Neo-Liberal corporatist. Corporatists really have no party affiliation, because they are fundamentally opportunistic. So, moving to odd-year only local elections takes away Taylor’s main argument for opposing non-partisan and eliminates the straight ticket voters who are really deciding on national- and state-level issues and candidates. 

I believe it is the straight ticket voters who make the even-year November elections uncontested in Ann Arbor. The straight ticket voters will only have local candidates to select from in odd years and will not be much of a force. The disadvantage of only having odd-year elections is that the August Primary will still most likely decide the winning candidate in November. I would point out that Anne Bannister won her election to Council in an odd year and was defeated by a word salad, phony “Progressive” in an even-year election that brought out a lot of people interested in the Presidential race that year. 

Get ready for this to happen every two or four years from here on out if we can’t change the election environment to something more equitable. Practically every town in Michigan has local non-partisan elections in odd years. Non-partisan elections in November could allow Ranked Choice Voting to be used which would improve the chances of Mayors being elected who are consensus builders rather than Taylor type machine operators.  The only Black Mayor (Al Wheeler) ever elected in Ann Arbor was elected by Ranked Choice Voting and lost when it was taken away.

This is something practical and I think it was a huge mistake to not have organized a Proposal A type campaign after Taylor vetoed the proposal to go to non-partisan elections since Taylor was advertising his fundamental contempt for voters. 

No matter what happens on August 2nd, this is a practical way to engage and energize the people who will be most harmed by Taylor’s Machine.