iPOPA Schools You on "Expectations Game" and Greg Ballard's Thin Line Between Hero and Con Artist

People who follow politics know the most consistent foe for an elected official or candidate is the “expectations game.”

If expectations get set high, the best case scenario is an “as good as expected,” which means you can never actually “win.” If they get set low, you might hold your own with a seasoned opponent just by asking him, “Can I call ya, Joe?” winking, and uttering a complete sentence.

In other words, as paradoxical as this sounds, having people expect nothing from you is great. But here’s an iPOPA corollary. If done right, playing up a catastrophe that isn’t is just as valuable.

Think about it.

You go to a restaurant, and they say you can’t be seated for an hour. But the next thing you know, your little chimichanga-shaped beeper is lighting up 30 minutes later. Or your auto mechanic says, “This will cost $600,” but when the works gets done, it’s only $425. Awesome, right?

Now imagine the scenario where a 3rd party, the manager, steps in at the restaurant and says, “Your wait is an hour? That’s won’t do at all. (To hostess) I want these folks to be seated within 30 minutes!” Or the body shop chief says, “We’re going to cut this bill to $425!” You’d love those people, right? But what if you found out later that the restaurant knew the wait was really probably going to be around 15-20 minutes and the mechanic really had the cost pegged at $350? Wouldn’t you feel suckered?

***

So I’m with my little man at the Marion County main library about two months ago, and as we're walking out, I see somebody I know on the library board photo. Two days later, I see this person, and I mention I was just at the Glendale branch, and that I hoped they could avoid closing it because it was jam-packed. The person responds that (s)he looked at the books and so has another "well-informed individual" and there are cuts to be had to keep the libraries open. I ask for confirmation, and I got what I felt was a pretty resounding expression of confidence.

That was a staggering revelation to me because I’d read the horror stories just like you all about the impending doom. I started wondering about who has a vested interest in claiming impending tragedy that really isn’t? My first thought was that this was an effort to sway referendum voters on whether they really want permanent property tax caps (more on that coming to you later). But then the Mayor swoops in with a solution that isn’t really, and as Democratic mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy pointed out, the financial pinch won't hit until 2014, so it's not like we're going to turn Keystone Avenue in front of the Glendale branch into to a Half-Price Books.

***

So next I hear Indygo is about to be reduced to apparently one bus that just drives in circles from 10th and College to West and Washington. [Okay, it wasn't really that, but it sounded equally cataclysmic.] The next thing I know, the Mayor swoops in with "solutions" that aren't really. I kid you not, his ideas are: (1) tap a $5 million Indygo line of credit without knowing how it will be paid back; (2) shift $1.6 million that has been set aside for insurance to cover lawsuits; and (3) take $3 million from capital improvements (i.e., making the buses less rickety) and use it for operating costs. And for this, the Star gives Ballard the headline: "Ballard Says City Will Help Indygo Pay Expenses." Wow.

My first thought was that Indygo must really know its drivers to put aside that kind of cash for liability. But here's the Mayor, deciding they’ll use this cash to keep the company operational instead of waiting for lawsuits that might never happen. Brilliant! Thank God Ballard is on the 25th Floor because certainly nobody associated with Indygo could have ever come up with "borrow, raid the reserves, and spend our legal funds and pray we hit fewer pedestrians this year."

My point is this … even though I know the economy is bad and dollars are probably tight in most places, after the Mayor's CIB inflated its deficit figures, because of most likely inflated Pacer operating losses, and because of the episodes above, I now find myself suspicious of the books of any entity that the Mayor controls directly or by appointment power or for whom he shills. They keep, curiously, putting him in a position to "save the day" only for us to later learn the day didn't really need saving to the degree claimed or that the saving was just for a day, not a long-term solution.

Conspiratorial? Alright, I admit it. But explain this. Mayor Ballard said he would go into the city and cut 10% of its budget. He hasn't come close. He smashed Bart Peterson for passing an increase in the County Option Income Tax (COIT). But notice he kept the money. Insiders will tell that if Peterson wouldn't have done the COIT, the Indiana General Assembly (cough - Luke Kenley) wouldn't have authorized a state takeover of police and fire pensions, which unloaded a huge burden on the city's finances. In addition, you have a massive federal influx of dollars, which I would wager means that if you add all revenue streams, Greg Ballard has more dollars at his disposal than any Mayor in Indianapolis history. (I'm going to get these numbers!)

So why is the Mayor raising taxes on almost every service provider in the county, and why do we need an imprudent, back-door tax increase in the form of a $170 million bond issue just to fund sidewalk repair? (I still don't know anybody who can say specifically how the separate $262 million from the back-door-tax-hike Cit Gas purchase of the water and wastewater operations will be spent).

Sorry, but, yet again, something doesn't add up here.

In the Ballard Superman story, maybe truth is the kryptonite, which is exactly why the administration, quite frequently, seems to have it tucked away in a lead box.

iPOPA Schools You on "Expectations Game" and Greg Ballard's Thin Line Between Hero and Con Artist

Let the Bayh Intrigue Begin

The Democratic Party family have displayed all of the five phases of grief today following Evan Bayh's official announcement of resignation, but I'm going to focus on two:

ANGER

A recurring theme is that the Senator left the party hanging because there is no time to get the necessary signatures to qualify a candidate for the primary ballot. But this doesn't mean the Democrats won't have a candidate. It just means that the state central committee picks that candidate. In that respect, the timing is absolutely beneficial because it ensures there won't be a costly, divisive primary like the one that demolished the party in the 2008 gubernatorial election.

In addition, by waiting until the last minute, Bayh bluffed his strongest opponent, Mike Pence, out of the field. Now Pence won't be able to able to run unless the other GOP contenders step aside for him. Does anybody see that happening?

In short, if Senator Bayh was going to go, he did it in the best way to do it.

People are also angry about the money hole Bayh seemingly put us in. Whoever steps up won't have Bayh's 13 million or six years to raise it, and Bayh can't just hand it over. All Bayh can give his successor is $4,000 ($2,000 for the primary and $2,000 for the general). Bayh can transfer an unlimited amount to the DNC and DSCC, but all they could give back to his successor is $42,600 per election.

This leaves the option of transfers to "other party committees," which can give $5,000 per election. In short, if Evan Bayh is committed to saving his party, expect the most massive cash flush in Indiana history. Senator Bayh can send money to tons of federal candidates and party committees with the hope that all these dollars will find their way back to his successor in a money swap, hopefully, without too much of a "processing fee." In other words, Bayh's successor will be in the millions in short order if Bayh likes him/her.

The second dominant emotion of the day? Disbelief.

Nobody is buying the "excessively partisan" rationale for Bayh's retirement, but this may be because it came out of the blue for most of us, and nobody can figure out what happened in the past twenty-four hours that made D.C. suddenly intolerably partisan. Senator Bayh was in D.C. in 1994 during the "contract on America" and during Clinton's impeachment, and he knew last year how committed the GOP is to demolishing everything Obama. Moreover, if Republicans refused to support a bi-partisan deficit reduction commission they once championed because Obama said yes, this is how you pay them back? By taking away bi-partisanship's best voice in the senate?

But these are all secondary considerations now for a party in search of a candidate. There are a slew of names circulating: Woody Myers, Baron Hill, Jonathan Weinzapfel, Joe Hogsett, Jim Schellinger, Bart Peterson, and Brad Ellsworth, Joe Kernan, and Kathy Davis. For my money, Ellsworth makes the most sense. He has a strong law enforcement background and southern support, which would make him formidable, a la Frank O'Bannon. The problem is that we'd hand over a sure thing in the 8th, so this is a dicey prospect given the House of Representatives might be in jeopardy.

But perhaps the most intriguing question of the day is this: when Evan Bayh said he's "an executive at heart" and gave an extended defense of his life's work, did anyone wonder if he was looking at coming home to be governor in 2012? Why would a man riding off into the sunset feel the need to recount his accomplishments?

It's getting interesting.

Let the Bayh Intrigue Begin

O'Connor's Mayoral Mishaps

Say you are managing an incumbent mayor's campaign. You have a staggering financial advantage, and you're running against a guy who can't get a return phone call from his own party leaders. What does conventional wisdom tell you to do?

Ignore the man. Don't appear anywhere with him. Don't debate him. Don't say his name because it will give him free press he can't get on his own. Don't respond to anything he does. Don't even acknowledge his existence, if at all possible.

The problem with conventional wisdom is that it's worthless for incumbents in "tsunami years." Every so often, a wave of outrage revs its head, and voters descend upon their elected officials with vengeance. On the national scene, it happened after Watergate, with Reagan in 1980, and with Gingrich in 1994 (though it flipped back with Clinton in 1996).

In Indianapolis, 2007 was definitely a tsunami year. O'Connor should have thrown the text-book for re-election out the window early on. Anybody that drove the city could see it. Almost as a lark, I started trolling property tax protests, and I immediately saw that this was no fringe group, like the Freemen affiliates who are always trying to invalidate our elected officials based on their failure to sign oaths.

These protests had young and old, black and white, liberal and conservative, blue collar and white collar, gay and straight, and most importantly angry and more angry. After one rally, I remember driving back telling myself, "The Governor is toast!"

I said this because the Mayor of Indianapolis has no real control over property taxes. That's a Governor's fix to make. I know this because the Governor can't stop telling me how he "fixed" property taxes. As an aside, Quicken tells me I'm paying more in sales tax than I'm saving in property taxes, so I sure hope Governor Daniels doesn't fix anything else. If I asked him to fix the creaky knob on my bedroom door, I might come away with no door or bedroom furniture.

But I digress. Given the intensity of the property tax protests, a great commercial would have shown Mayor Peterson opening up his property tax bill, yelling an expletive, and telling everybody to grab their pitchforks because, "I'm a taxpayer just like you, and I'm not going to stand for this! TO THE STATEHOUSE!"

Instead, soooomebody signed off on an ad that had the Mayor saying how we would "work together" to solve the city's problems. In other words, he took ownership of a catastrophe...ON FILM. THEN THEY SHOWED IT TO PEOPLE! There was no frothing at the mouth Mayor. There was just nice guy Bart, the coalition builder. And in the back room, a decision was made to NOT say anything about the Governor for fear that he would get interested in the Indianapolis mayoral race and put money into it. This thinking, quite frankly, was perplexing, which is my polite way of saying "batshizzle insane."

Mitch Daniels hardly acknowledged Greg Ballard as a candidate until after his victory. Daniels had NO interest in putting money in the race because he did not believe, under any circumstances, it could be won (which is another way of saying Daniels read the tea leaves as poorly as did O'Connor).

Ballard then goes out and gets the most succinct and deadly yard sign in political history: "Had Enough?" Of what? It didn't matter. Whatever evil irked you at the moment is what you used to fill in the blank with your mind. Were you a police officer angry about consolidation? Ballard was talking to you. Were you angry at the way the Mayor was silent on Monroe Gray's behavior? Ballard was talking to you. Were you upset that you were shut out of a city-county council meeting packed with the Mayor's supporters? How about the trash that got left on the curb the week before? All of it was Ballard talking to you while not really saying anything concretely.

The entire Ballard campaign was "fresh-roasted coffee." Doesn't that sound delicious? Mmm hmmmm. But nobody knows how "fresh-roasted coffee" is made. We just envision in our minds what we THINK it means, and our imaginations are always more appetizing than reality.

I called a higher up in the Peterson camp (not O'Connor), and I told them two-and-a-half months out that they would lose. Boy, did that make me unpopular, and I got a hearty laugh when I said they needed to attack Ballard immediately.

You see, when you have a tsunami election, you can only survive by diverting the wave because it will crash down somewhere. And if you're running against a nobody, voters go into that booth looking at two options: you or not you. By not engaging Ballard and forcing him to expose himself as a guy who had no real plan early on, Peterson turned his campaign into a referendum election that he could not win. Peterson needed to legitimize Ballard by going at him and building up the strawman that he could then set fire to by exposing Ballard as being unready, a condition that doesn't seem to have improved six months into the job.

Instead, the Peterson camp did nothing but continued to run ads that they knew from their focus groups wouldn't work. Why any manager would sign off on spending money to continue to produce a broken product is beyond me. Only after all hope was lost, did Peterson go negative, and the late hour made him come across as supremely desperate.

Here's the interesting part. I had several friends who are Democrats who voted for Ballard. Then they heard him talk after his election, and they called me and said, "Ooops!" That was maddening. Had Peterson advanced the engagement between voter and Ballard, Peterson might have survived.

But why would O'Connor do something like that? The Mayor wasn't in trouble.

COMING SOON....

...Peterson and O'Connor's Monroe Gray Doctrine...

...the long-awaited race test.....

...how Pam Carter got it right in 1992

STAY TUNED!

O'Connor's Mayoral Mishaps