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KnoxRecall taught some worthwhile lessons

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

KnoxRecall is over. They didn't get enough signatures, which isn't surprising. In fact, they appear to have fallen far short of the 15,617 that would have been required to force a referendum on retaining Mayor Victor Ashe and three City Council members. And so what do we do with it now?

The mayor and his incensed defenders, who came out over the past several weeks in what appeared to be an orchestrated campaign of back-slapping and Ashe-kissing, can relax and assert smugly that the Recallers were a tiny, uninformed group of malcontents who should be quickly consigned to the, um, Ashe-can of history. The Recall members themselves vow continued vigilance and activism in assorted local political issues, not least this fall's City Council elections. And we interested parties on the sidelines can draw our own conclusions.

Here's mine: KnoxRecall was a success. Not a tear-down-the-walls, ring-the-bells, V-for-Victory kind of success, but a success nonetheless. Oh sure, if you only measure the group by its stated mission, you can say they failed. But 15,617 is a really big number—more votes than the mayor himself got the last time he was elected. The Recallers won't say exactly how many signatures they had (I wish they would, but this was their project and I respect their right to do it as they see fit). But they confidently say it was in the thousands, and I believe them.

Even if that means 2,000, that's still a lot of signatures and a lot of voters, a lot of people who were willing to say they don't like the way things happen in Knoxville government. There are no City Council candidates out there who wouldn't be glad to have those people on their side. The impressively dedicated and proudly naive people in KnoxRecall ("naive enough to believe I can make a difference," as their buttons said, quoting the late Danny Mayfield) now have valuable experience in grassroots activism, not to mention a list of concerned voters, that should make them a sought-after commodity as we move into this fall's campaigns. More to the point, everyone in local government and everyone aspiring to it has been watching the whole affair closely. This may be unfounded optimism, but in the current climate, I can't imagine Council members so blithely going along again with the kind of shameful midnight deal that filled Mayfield's seat and prompted the Recall movement in the first place.

For all that he asserted otherwise, it's possible nobody took KnoxRecall more seriously than Ashe himself. Not without reason: because of miserable voter turnout (something on which I predict KnoxRecall will have a beneficial effect), Ashe was most recently elected by just over 10 percent of the city's registered voters. It's not a level of support or popular mandate that a mayor can exactly feel comfortable with. Abundant evidence suggests he tracked the recall effort with great zeal. In recent weeks, he took to calling for Recall to disclose their financial donors, as if the entire thing were being orchestrated by malevolent, behind-the-scenes forces. Anyone who actually watched the Recallers in action, men and women from all walks of life toting clipboards and scrambling like heck for every signature, knows exactly how absurd that idea is.

One of the most contentious things to come out of Recall is the question of "retaliation." Throughout their Ashe-kicking effort, Recallers said they were afraid of what the mayor and his cohorts would do to people who signed the petitions. On one hand, this made them sound paranoid and may have scared away potential participants. On the other hand, if it's paranoia, it is a widespread paranoia, as they found when they went door to door. Many people all over the city begged off of signing the petitions, citing fears about losing their jobs or angering their employers.

And there was indeed evidence of such intimidation. Despite Ashe's casual dismissal of the claims ("What am I going to do," he asked on Channel 6's political talk show last weekend, "remove someone's stop sign?"), Recallers tell first-hand tales of being called into their boss's office and told that "someone" had complained about their activities. Many of these people work in other branches of government. I have talked to enough of them to be very bothered by the reports. In at least one case, a Recall member was frightened out of carrying a petition.

Of course, as Ashe points out, his ability to actually punish his detractors is severely limited. Wily political animal that he is, he knows fear itself is his greatest weapon in keeping at bay what he sees as enemies (and I see as members of the very public that pays his salary and whom he is sworn to serve). And so as he laughed at the notion in public, "someone" was doing his or her darnedest to reinforce it in private.

The most obnoxious, or just noxious, of these efforts were the antagonistic depositions to which several members of KnoxRecall were subjected last week by City Law Director Michael Kelley and Ashe's personal attorney Robert Watson, along with lawyers representing the Election Commission. It's true that in filing a suit asking for an interpretation of the city's recall statute and a purging of the Election Commission's allegedly outdated voter rolls, Recallers opened themselves up to depositions by the opposition's lawyers. But these epic interrogations, some of which dragged on for five hours, wandered far afield from the specific issues in Recall's lawsuit. Before it was over, Recallers had been compelled under oath to say how many meetings they'd had, who had been there, where the meetings had been, who handled their money, and other details they were reluctant to disclose for fear of subjecting others to harassment. I've heard the justifications for why these questions were asked, and I understand it was all part of the "legal process." But there's a broader context here.

Kelley is, ostensibly, a servant of the public. And yet he treated members of that same public, people involved in a completely legal activity, as if they were simply hostile witnesses to be broken down and tricked into lying the way any prosecutor would treat a murder suspect. I don't much care what Kelley and Co. were trying to achieve with this, why they thought it necessary to force private citizens to reveal names of people and places that were not in any reasonable way relevant to the straightforward legal questions at hand. The compulsion to force people to "name names" has a lot of precedent, none of it good. I'm sure from Kelley's point of view, it was cut and dried—he had Recall in his hands, and he was going to make them squirm. That might fly in court. But it is not acceptable conduct for a public servant dealing with the public.

Mr. Kelley, you do not work solely for the mayor. You work for all of us. As one of your 173,000 employers, I am offended by your behavior and I would like to go on record as asking for your resignation. At the least, I would like reimbursement to the city coffers for the public time and money you squandered in "defending" your arrogant boss. I don't expect to get it, being just one guy with a newspaper column. But as a citizen, I'm happy to state my preferences for consideration by my duly elected representatives. You're a bully. I'm tired of paying your salary.

I did not sign the KnoxRecall petitions, for reasons both personal and professional. But because I admire their dedication, and because I thank them for what they've done to further discussion and raise expectations for public servants in this city, and also because I as a Knoxvillian feel my share of the responsibility for the offensive way the Recallers have been treated by my own public officials, I am sending Recall a check for $100 to defray their legal expenses. Anyone else who wishes to help out can send donations to P.O. Box 197, Knoxville 37901-0197.

Now, Ashe and Co. tell us, it is time to move forward and grapple with other issues. I completely agree. Like, what are we going to do with our soon-to-be-completed and seriously underbooked $160 million convention center? Or, as I like to call it (I'm sorry, forgive me) our Ashe-hole.