Why Were Council Incumbents Re-Elected? Good Question

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In the article titled Incumbents untouched by controversial issues, even the Janesville Gazette seemed befuddled that some of the Janesville city council incumbents were re-elected.

JG Excerpt:
Incumbents George Brunner, Bill Truman and Russ Steeber cast differing votes on such issues as the Milwaukee Street bike tunnel, the children’s museum and spending $200,000 to bring a hockey team here. That makes it difficult to say if voters looked at the issues or were mostly happy with the status quo.

Doh! Since voters chose to re-elect incumbents with opposing views anyways, doesn’t that actually make it easy to say the voters ignored the issues and chose incumbents for some other reason? Any chance, is it possible? Ya' think?

In a post election editorial, the Gazette editorial staff felt the voters stayed with the incumbents for stability and experience. That’s possible since we know most of the incumbents weren’t chosen for economic sustainability or progress.

But there is much more riding on the real reason why the incumbents were re-elected. Since we now know issues were not a priority, and stability and experience are mostly matters of opinion, a better guess would point a finger towards the at-large system of Janesville’s city council candidacy and government.

It is safe to say that the only reason why one challenger won a council seat at all was because Amy Loasching vacated AND because the winner represented the status quo more than the others. If each council member represented an individual ward district, they would have to stand on their own against a challenger(s) on the issues in their ward, instead of the personality-based and forgiving system we have today. If this election proved one thing, it proved the issues did not matter. At least not in Janesville.

But here is the dichotomy. If a challenger were to actually challenge one or all of the incumbents on the issues at a candidate forum, the status quo wouldn't view it as a good open honest debate on the issues, they'd spin it around as an attack on them and paint the challenger as divisive and combative. They'd twist the issue oriented challenger into a person with a unstable character flaw. Yet it’s equally frustrating to hear most (not all) of the challenger’s generally agree with what the past council has done. If you don’t see anything wrong, you’re probably not going to make a difference – so why run at all?

Obviously then, residents challenging incumbents for the Janesville City Council run at an extreme disadvantage in more ways than one because they think the voters want something new and refreshing. Perhaps a new and refreshing personality. But on issues? Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case at all in Janesville. Like a comedian on a stage looking for a few good laughs, you’d notice that most of the winners all play to a committed at-large voting audience. And it's important to note that the at-large voting audience is the at-large status quo. However, the at-large voting audience should not to be confused with the silent majority simply because the silent majority are not voting. Confusing? It shouldn't be.

Change the majority in the voting audience either by instituting ward representation OR awake the current non-voting majority - and you would change the council into one that better represents all the communities that make up Janesville. Of course, that's easier said than done.