The great American novelist Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I thought of that Tuesday night while watching the Lowell City Council once again debate whether the method of selecting Lowell’s mayor should be changed from the way it’s been since the 1940s (a majority vote by city councilors on inauguration day) to a new “add on” election for city councilors on the city election ballot. Tuesday’s Lowell corollary of the Sinclair quote would go something like this: “It is difficult to get a city councilor to accept the outcome of the Voting Rights lawsuit against the city when his being elected mayor depends on his not understanding it.”

The matter arose Tuesday with a joint motion by Councilors Erik Gitschier and Corey Robinson to have the city solicitor draft an ordinance modeled on the Worcester system in which candidates for city council may simultaneously run for mayor in the same election. The Worcester system is limited to at large council candidates, but the Lowell proponents would prefer both at large and district candidates to be eligible for the mayoral ballot. The way it works in Worcester is that the top vote-getter in the mayor’s race who also wins a council seat becomes mayor. In the unlikely event that the person who gets the most votes for mayor does not also win their council race, then the winning council candidate with the next highest vote total in the mayor’s race becomes mayor.

As I pointed out in last week’s newsletter, the problem with a citywide election of the mayor of Lowell is that it would violate the US District Court judgement in the Voting Rights case that was brought against the city several years ago. The basis of that case was that the all-at-large method of electing councilors then in use in Lowell illegally diluted the impact of the votes of minority residents. Changing the method of electing Lowell’s mayor from the current majority vote of the new city council on inauguration day to a citywide at large election would be a reversion to the kind of winner-take-all, citywide election that was found to violate the Voting Rights Act. (And allowing district councilors to run for mayor does not cure the problem since the issue is about the voters not the candidates.)

During Tuesday’s debate, some comments were made that the mayor of Lowell is not a very important position, but if that’s the case, why do so many councilors lust after the job? In the last city election, when Councilor Gitschier made the jump from being a district councilor to being elected at large and also topped the ticket, my guess is that he fully expected to be elected mayor by his colleagues. Unfortunately for him, while he was waging an all-out campaign to win the at large seat, his council colleague, Dan Rourke, who was running unopposed for a district seat, was able to lock up the votes of a majority of his likely colleagues during the campaign since he didn’t have to worry about whether he was going to win his council race (since he was unopposed). Rourke succeeded in that effort and was able to announce commitments from a majority of the councilors-elect shortly after the election. Perhaps Gitschier would have a better chance of being elected mayor in a citywide vote than he would under the current system.

Although Councilor Vesna Nuon has not been the prime mover in trying to change the way that the mayor is chosen, he does seem open to it. Tuesday night he urged the city solicitor to contact the attorney for the plaintiffs in the Voting Rights lawsuit and ask how their clients feel about such a change. Three years ago, Councilor Nuon was likely another frustrated aspirant for mayor. In the 2021 at large race, the first under the new system, he topped the ticket (after having finished first in 2017 and a strong second in 2019). I think the expectation of Nuon’s supporters after his top finish in 2021 was that he would be the next mayor. But some of the district council races that year were hard fought, pitting incumbents against each other. That was the case in Pawtucketville where incumbents Rodney Elliott and Dan Rourke sought the single district council seat. I don’t recall if Vesna officially endorsed Elliott in that contest, but he did appear at some of Elliott’s events and spoke favorably of his colleague. However, on election day, the voters chose Rourke over Elliott, which not only deprived Vesna of Elliott’s vote for him to be mayor, but likely motivated Rourke to help frustrate Vesna’s mayoral quest as payback for supporting his opponent. On inauguration day, it was Sokhary Chau (with the support of Dan Rourke), not Vesna Nuon, who became the first Cambodian American mayor of Lowell.

What is it about being mayor of Lowell that makes that office the Holy Grail for anyone elected to the city council? Elected officials like to talk and they like to be in the spotlight – if they didn’t, they would not be running for office – and among all of the city councilors, the one chosen to be mayor gets to speak the most and receives the most attention. This is especially true for events outside the council chamber such as flag raisings and ribbon cuttings. The mayor always is at the podium speaking while the other councilors are relegated to waving to the crowd when the mayor introduces them. This may sound trivial, but the political culture in Lowell places very high value on these events so they take on outsized importance among the local political class. Additionally, when a dignitary comes to Lowell or a delegation from Lowell attends a conference or an event at a distant location, outsiders, lacking familiarity with the Plan E form of government, treat the mayor as THE MAYOR which generates mild envy among council colleagues.

Aside from all this pop psychology, the mayor of Lowell is potentially of great importance to the successful operation of city government. Just because of being chosen for the position, the mayor becomes a voting member of the school committee as well as the chair of that body. While that is important by itself, the mayor plays a more critical role as the primary link between the city side of government and the school side of government. Massachusetts law grants school committees and school districts a great deal of independence from the rest of municipal government, but if the school department and the rest of city government don’t work in concert, great problems will eventually arise. The mayor is the only person in Lowell in a position to synchronize the efforts of the two sides of government. It is a task that is underappreciated and undervalued, but it is perhaps the most important aspect of being mayor.

On Tuesday night, the Gitschier/Robinson motion was referred to the city council’s elections and rules subcommittee where it will join all the other motions on the “elected mayor” topic at a future subcommittee meeting.

If it’s not already apparent, I think we should leave the system as is. But if, at some point, circumstances allow us to change how our mayor is elected, I suggest going all the way and replacing Plan E with Plan B, which would make a mayor elected by the voters the chief executive of the city rather than a city manager elected by a majority of the city council.

Some members of the current council give much weight to the nonbinding referendum on the 2021 ballot that showed those voting in that election to have a preference for directly electing the city’s mayor. Perhaps they should give equal weight to another referendum presented to the voters 30 years ago. That 1993 ballot question asked, “Do you support a change in the city charter to provide for an elected mayor as chief executive instead of an appointed city manager?” To that question, 10,441 residents voted YES and just 6,730 voted NO. (It was a non-binding referendum, so nothing ever came of it.)

Why do I support a strong mayor? For more than two decades, successive city councils have made it clear that they prefer a politician to be city manager rather than someone with training and experience in municipal management. Since 2000, four of the five city managers elected by councilors all came from the state legislature. None had municipal management experience. (These were John Cox, Kevin Murphy, Eileen Donoghue, and Tom Golden; with Bernie Lynch being the one trained municipal manager.)

I have nothing against a politician being in charge and no complaints about Murphy, Donoghue or Golden. What I don’t like is taking successful, thoughtful politicians and, rather than giving them the power to set and execute a comprehensive agenda for the city as elected “strong” mayors, instead making them as city managers subservient to the whims of eleven city councilors who micromanage city affairs through countless motions and paralyze the city manager with daily barrages of texts, emails and phone calls that make it hard to get anything significant done.

If we’re going to continue making politicians the chief executive of Lowell, let’s allow the voters to make that selection and then hold that person accountable at the ballot box.

But as I said, due to the court judgment that controls our method of electing the city’s leaders, trying to make such a change now is premature, so our focus should be on making the current system work better. The best place to start is by getting more of our residents to participate in city elections. This coming Tuesday is the presidential election. When the votes from Lowell are counted, make note of how many residents have voted, and compare that to how few voted in the last city election. More on that next week . . .