Allow me to think aloud on the very difficult choice in the Little Rock mayor's race.
We're all friends here. Mostly. Or substantially. Somewhat. This is an exercise I intend to be cathartic even as I hope it serves public dialogue.
I'll begin with the truth: Most of the time I'm thinking I prefer either Baker Kurrus or Frank Scott. And, for all the time I'm thinking that, I'm figuring it's a generational preference that I ought to try to transcend.
That's because the third compelling candidate, Warwick Sabin, offers the strongest generational change, the strongest vision and the most widely informed policies.
I know and accept where I lean instinctively, but I try to be introspective about that instinct, you see. I try to step outside myself, you see. I walk around in a mayor-race fog, you see.
Baker Kurrus is my age, 64. I've lived an adult life in this city parallel to his. I've contemporaneously watched him serve diligently on the ever-embattled, ever-challenging Little Rock School Board, and run a major local enterprise, and do a heroic stint as acting superintendent of the schools.
I saw him get ousted as superintendent by the Hutchinson administration because he made too much sense with the notion that you can't revive the regular Little Rock public schools while you mercilessly build a charter school system to compete with it.
Now let me tell you about Frank Scott. And let me do so in the context of what is merely the story of my Little Rock life and his Little Rock life and our Little Rock life--race, the story of black and white, of violence, of hate, of neglect, of malignancy, of division.
Scott is a significantly competent and talented black man who spouts promises of bringing unity to the city and shows a style, sensibility and versatility to give credence to the promise.
He comes from the black neighborhood, where he still lives. He works in bank offices. He preaches. At 35, he's a former state highway commissioner. There aren't many of those at age 35.
I'd love for the black candidate in this new-age mayor's race to triumph and become a successful mayor. Scott could do it.
All that said, let me tell you that the candidate I know best among the top tier is the other one ... Sabin, and that I dislike none of what I know. I admire all of it.
I got onto this story of a New York City west-side import when he was a standout student at the U of A in Fayetteville. I followed him admirably as he was the press aide to Marion Berry, and a very good columnist and blog originator for the Arkansas Times, and publisher of the Oxford American, and chief officer of an innovation hub, whatever that is, and which I never knew, even as he offered patiently time and again to show me.
Sabin has the notion that Little Rock's leadership is stagnant, as is the city, and that he's the candidate to break the inertia, engage new and latent local talent, and begin to fashion a more modern Little Rock.
So, there it is: Kurrus is the candidate precisely for me. Scott is the candidate precisely for the issue of my time. Sabin is the candidate who talks of somebody else's Little Rock--that somebody else being today's children of millennials, as a millennial mom explained to me the other day.
I could choose the confident familiarity of Kurrus, or a healer of my city's wounds in Scott, or the more thoroughly informed candidate--Sabin--who most ably imparts a vision that a responsible citizen needs to encourage even if his own aging vision is starting to fail him.
I've shared these thoughts with groups--social media followers and the LifeQuest class of retirees--and received valuable feedback.
My analysis is sound, but a broad stroke, I was told. But there's scant issue difference between these candidates. The big difference is on 30 Crossing, but that's been developed thoroughly and holds more metaphorical than actual value.
Please stop talking of Scott only in terms of his being black, a white millennial lawyer and mother pleaded.
I think that reveals the same generational divide. To come up in Little Rock when and as I did is to see race in everything, dominating every problem, for the very simple reason that it is there, and that it does so.
At LifeQuest, a college professor seconded my generational assessment of the race but said it was incomplete. He said the other and equal issue is establishment vs. a new day--Kurrus and Scott the establishment candidates and Sabin the change agent.
I could easily tell you why I favor the candidate I favor. What I couldn't easily tell you is why I didn't vote for either of the others.
I'll get there, grudgingly.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 09/27/2018