Well, I was surprised, and sorry, to see this:
Tige Watts Ends Campaign for Columbia City Council, Endorses Howard Duvall in Election for At-Large SeatCOLUMBIA – Neighborhood leader Tige Watts announced today he will not file to run for Columbia City Council and will instead support Howard Duvall, who recently declared his candidacy for the At-Large seat that will be on the ballot Nov. 3.“Since I kicked off my campaign 8 weeks ago I have found it very difficult, sometimes impossible, for me to balance all the demands of my professional, personal, civic and family obligations. This has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make because our city truly needs new leadership in the seat that’s up for election this year,” Watts said. “So, when I learned of Howard’s interest to run for this seat and serve the citizens of Columbia, it made this decision much easier for me because we share so many values and positions on the important issues facing our Capital City.”Watts is a small business owner and the President of Neighborhoods USA, the Richland County Neighborhood Council, and his neighborhood Brandon Acres/Cedar Terrace. He is also the chairman of the city’s Citizen Advisory Committee over Community Development and a past president of the Columbia Council of Neighborhoods.“I can’t thank everyone who has supported my campaign enough. Your words of encouragement, your financial contributions and your shared desire to make our city better have fueled me and this campaign. I am sorry I’m letting you down by not being on the ballot this Fall,” Watts said. “However, I encourage all of my supporters to join the effort to elect Howard Duvall this November. He is a man with great integrity, unmatched experience and the passion to create the change Columbia needs at this time.”Duvall said he was honored by Watts’ decision to support his candidacy for the At-Large Seat. “This is a double bonus for my campaign. Not only do I have Tige’s personal endorsement but I look forward to working with him professionally as we go forward in this campaign,” Duvall said.###
I say “surprised” because I thought he was really committed to this. So surprised that I checked around to see whether others had reported it before posting, i the hope that this release was a hoax. And I say “sorry” because I thought he made a good candidate, and I thought he and Cameron Runyan offered voters a clear set of choices.
And… well… while I’ve always gotten along fine with Howard and respected his dedication to municipal government, I was pretty disturbed by his successful effort to set up the strong-mayor vote for a loss, by having an unnecessary extra election weeks after the mayoral one. I thought that was wrong, and even kinda shifty. The claim that voters needed those extra days to make up their about something we’d been discussing for years and years was absurd. He and the other defenders of the status quo seemed to make a hard-eyed political calculation that separating it from Steve Benjamin’s re-elected decreased the chances of passage, and they were right.
So I don’t see this as an ideal substitution. At least not at this point. Maybe Howard can win me over; we’ll have to see how his campaign progresses.
To remind you of why I object to Tige deferring to Howard, I’m copying and pasting here what I wrote after the strong-mayor vote to explain my view of the way a group of insiders defeated reform:
Interestingly, Tige Watts in in the photo at Kit Smith’s house for the “celebration” of defeating the strong mayor proposal.
Not such a great choice between Runyan and anyone else, but hopefully Runyan will still loose. And then Columbia can continue on its politically dysfunctional trajectory of self-cancellation and unaccountability.
“WE” defeated strong mayor because we don’t agree with y’all who don’t live here.