By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief

Let’s face it Amarillo, we’re the side out of power right now. The local establishment has the reins and they are taking Amarillo taxpayers along for the ride on this dumpster fire of a city administration right now. And I know many people want to point fingers about the last city election, but here’s the summary of what happened: Ginger Nelson and the Amarillo Matters team got re-elected, and the taxpayers scored one victory with the election of Cole Stanley.

However, even with Stanley, we’re still two seats short of getting anything done at City Hall.

I do believe that looking back and learning from the mistakes of the past is important when it comes to winning future elections and there is one big mistake I see from the 2017, 2019, and 2021 City Council elections that I believe needs to be addressed if local conservatives want to make any dent in the Amarillo Matters majority this year.

We have got to stop being against everything, all the time.

Now, understand what I’m saying here. I’m not saying we should support the aggressive spending and debt issuances at City Hall. What I am saying, however, is that we have got to make our future election campaigns more about what we are for, rather than completely about what we are against.

Here’s a great example: can you name one thing mayoral candidate Claudette Smith was for last election? I can’t. And you probably can’t either. I can tell you what she was against though. Her entire campaign commercial was about that.

Likewise, most candidates who lost in previous election cycles didn’t do a very good job of explaining what they were for, but they sure told us what they were against. And, even though they may have been right to be against those things, voters don’t care. Voters are fickle and they don’t want to hear negativity all the time. They want to hear what you are going to do, as an elected official, to make their lives better. After all, the only reason why voters vote for someone different is that they found someone they like better for whatever reason.

In 2017, when Ginger Nelson first ran for mayor, she was running on the Amarillo Matters ticket, which made its entire appeal basically about the fact that they hated Randy Burkett. However, that’s not what Nelson ran on. She made promises about all the things she was supposedly for and all the ways she was going to make people’s lives better. She claimed she was going to create a “job creation task force” to kickstart economic growth, that she would clean up I-40 and I-27, and that she would reduce the red tape at City Hall.

She didn’t follow through on any of those promises, but it didn’t matter. She made those promises, she cast a vision that made people feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and she won her election as result. In the five years since, she has been leading a reign of terror at City Hall, but every two years, she comes back and tells everyone about how much she loves Amarillo and how she’s going to make their lives better again. And they keep voting for her because of that, and she keeps terrorizing the taxpayers. Thus, the cycle continues.

If local conservatives want to break that cycle, then we’ve got to talk about what we are for rather than solely what we are against. And the things we are for can’t be about banning drag queens and firing the city manager. Even though that might sound like saying you’re for something, that’s still being against something. It truly is a complicated dance.

I think we should be shifting the focus to broad-consensus items that we are for. For example, let’s talk about increasing election accessibility by moving election dates to November. Let’s talk about allowing voters to decide their governance structure through a referendum on single-member districts. Let’s talk about reducing petitioning requirements to make the public’s ability to petition government greater. Let’s talk about ways to drive more tourism to areas like Route 66 and how to attract and retain quality staff at city departments other than the city manager’s office.

These are all important topics and they are topics that could probably win elections. But, we would need to shift the focus to issues like these rather than pointing the spotlight completely on issues like why candidates hate the Mayor.

Talking about issues is hard, but it’s a necessity to win an election. And pushing a more positive view of our city is also necessary to win. Like I have said in past elections, voters don’t care about your memes or how many insults you can hurl. They want to know what you are going to do for them and how you are going to improve Amarillo. So, let’s start talking about the improvements that we want to make.

If I were a candidate for mayor, it’s what I would be doing. And it’s what our candidates should be doing next year when they make their appeals to voters. The only way to retire Ginger Nelson and give the City Council their pink slips is to win a majority of the vote. And the only way to win a majority of the vote is to make voters believe you have a plan for good, not that you’re only plan is to burn all the bridges on your first day in office.