A clean sweep: Dems form working majority on City Council in Harrisonburg

Story by Chris Graham

The days when Republicans could get a party nomination, put a sign out in their front yard and then schedule their swearing-in are over in Harrisonburg. Of course, some of us had foreseen that before Nov. 4.
“It kind of puzzles me that they couldn’t see that coming. That seemed to be kind of a no-brainer, because Democrats have been winning in Harrisonburg,” said Dave Wiens, a former Harrisonburg Democratic Committee chair who was elected along with fellow Democrats Richard Baugh and Kai Degner in a clean sweep of the ‘08 Harrisonburg City Council elections.

The threesome will form an effective working majority on City Council, the first Democratic majority in Harrisonburg for as long as anybody can remember. It’s hard to get a gauge on what that might mean as far as policy and day-to-day management of the city government is concerned. “The three of us have a real responsibility to take some time and just immerse ourselves in the current budget, understand the processes, understand what’s funded. There’s a real steep learning curve that we have the responsibility to climb as quickly as possible,” said Degner, who was the surprise top vote-getter among the eight candidates running for the three open seats.

Another reason it’s hard to get a read on where things might go is that the focus during the campaign ended up being less about what was going on in Harrisonburg than any of the principals assumed it would. “This was our first November City Council election, so instead of City Council being the only game in town, we were the fourth race on down the ballot after president, the Senate and the House,” said Baugh, like Weins a former city Democratic Committee chair and like Weins a former member of the Harrisonburg Planning Commission, a top advisory body to City Council. “At the end of the day, you have to say, We must have done enough of something right to get elected. But it was an odd mix in there. We were trying to find issues to talk about that we thought fit into a narrative to get us elected, and we weren’t even sure we were being heard all that well,” Baugh said.

Weins doesn’t foresee any substantive changes early on, due in part to the learning curve that Degner mentioned and the lack of a feel from the electorate detailed by Baugh. And then there’s the reality in the form of the slumping economy that has to be factored in as well. “The problem here is finances. That’s what’s going to be on everybody’s mind the first few months. With the state pulling a significant amount of money away from the city budget, and the school board wanting more and more money, that’s going to be our biggest issue,” Wiens said.