The Scottsdale City Council election results were an illuminating one; while Jan Dubauskas was expected to perform well, given strong fundraising compared to most of the rest of the pack and previous experience as a candidate (nearly upsetting John Kavanagh in a 2022 GOP primary for the state senate), she was an early front-runner to at least go on to the November elections. Instead, Dubauskas was the one candidate to avoid a run-off and win outright.
While success has many fathers but failure is an orphan, as the saying goes, we could potentially assign her success to a number of different reasons. But one thing sticks out as a differentiator in her race: her strong opposition to Axon’s egregious proposal to place up to 2,000 apartment units next to a neighborhood, and at a time when the community needs a brothel about as much as more apartments.
Dubauskas was an early opponent to this proposal, and has made the case frequently. Perhaps most impressive about her opposition was that it has been nuanced and multi-layered. Instead of simply focusing on the apartments, she was correct to acknowledge that the plan short-changes our school by using zoning tricks. Instead of just sticking to the low-hanging fruit of unwanted density, something that has been demonstrated to be unpopular amongst voters, she demonstrated a thorough understanding of the problem, and as a result demonstrated herself to be a worthy future member of city council.
While I don’t want to kick anyone while they are down, an extremely stark contrast can be made between her and Justin Laos. Laos made a tactical mistake of going to bat for Axon and significantly downplaying the harm that Axon’s proposal would cause to the city. He ended up finishing near the bottom of the pack in last week’s election, and while there were a few reasons for that, tepid fundraising being a big one, taking such an unpopular stance certainly didn’t help.
There are certainly lessons to be learned, especially for those city council candidates that made their way to the November elections (as well as those who are currently on council). Primarily, don’t fight the will of the people. This proposal has shown itself to be wildly unpopular, and that’s leaving aside how Axon has conducted itself in the process of trying to push it through. When you want to represent the citizenry, it’s critical to listen to them, and they have been speaking loud and clear.
Past that, it underscores the importance of building good relations with good corporate partners as a member of council, not to cave to bad corporate partners. After Axon’s games of dangling a threat to move their headquarters if it doesn’t get its way like a petulant child, it has proven itself to be a bad corporate partner. The city deserves better.
Congratulations to Jan Dubauskas; the remaining pack should learn a few lessons from her.