GOLIS: Political tribalism is old, irrelevant

"72% of survey respondents believe that the most uncivil place in society is in government and politics ..."

— In a Tweet last week by Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane

Courage comes in many forms. Consider the person willing to become Santa Rosa's next city manager. No matter how much the city pays Kathy Millison, she will still be stuck with a divided City Council that has left many residents wishing for a new approach.

In the past six months, the city manager, assistant city manager and chief financial officer have fled the scene.

It could be worse. The city could be facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Oh, yeah. The city is facing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The council is divided, 4-3, for reasons strangers find difficult to fathom. For a long time, business interests dominated city government, and environmental groups and public employees unions didn't like it. Finally, they elected their own majority.

The trouble is, the issues that motivate these warring tribes are no longer relevant. Even before the real estate economy crashed, growth controls guaranteed there is no risk of sprawl development. Meanwhile, in a city trying to avoid insolvency, real life involves layoffs and agreements to reduce pay.

But the indigenous tribes keep on disagreeing. The "progressives" want to hire Millison, and the "business" council members don't. Presumably, this is because the minority hopes to capture a majority in November, a change that is supposed to generate an explosion of eager candidates.

Good luck with that.

While I was reading about the City Council's latest adventures, I happened on a Tweet from Supervisor Shirlee Zane (@ShirleeZane). At the National Association of Counties convention in Reno, she was attending a panel called "In Search of Civility."

"Civility," she wrote, "is caring for one's own needs & beliefs without degrading someone else's in the process."

Zane told me she hopes to incorporate some of the practical solutions other counties are using to discourage the name calling and outbursts that occur during public appearances.

"Partisanship is very high right now ..." she said. "Polarization happens. People see the world through black and white lenses and then demonize people at the same time."

Here at home, there is evidence voters are weary of the old politics. The election of Supervisor Efren Carrillo in 2008 and Supervisor-elect Mike McGuire in 2010 can be taken as proof voters want a fresh start. Carrillo is 29; McGuire turned 31 on Wednesday. They're too young to be obsessed by political wars that left many of their elders frozen in time.

Some will continue to circle the wagons. When columnist Chris Smith recently suggested there is more to government than whether you love land developers or hate them, the usual grumbling ensued.

One letter writer said Smith's plea concealed his true intentions. It was, she said, his way of criticizing efforts at "wresting the city from the big chains, creating more environmentally responsible policies and caring about those with less as much as those with more."

This Smith is a clever fellow.

About a new book by the late Jim Wilkinson, "Who Rules Santa Rosa and Why It Matters," here's what Smith actually wrote: "As partisans cheer or hiss the book, the rest of us may tune out the din and visualize a council determined to remain independent and free to focus not on what's best for unions, business, chambers (of commerce) or coalitions, but for the city."

If you follow Twitter, you also know that Zane played golf last week with people who don't belong to her political tribe. She was on the golf course with Santa Rosa City Council candidate Scott Bartley and political consultant Rob Muelrath. If you're keeping score, you know that Bartley and Muelrath are members of the tribe viewed as sympathetic to business interests, while Zane is affiliated with the rival tribe, led by environmentalists and public employees unions.

I asked Zane whether her friends fretted about what might happen to her in this mixed company. Are they worried that someone will persuade her to splatter the landscape with Wal-Marts or ring Sebastopol with nuclear power plants?

"If they are, they haven't said it," she laughed, adding, "Most of them know they aren't about to tell me what to do."

"I'm making a statement that I mean to listen to people and build bridges," she explained. "... They care about jobs, and so do I. We don't always agree on everything, but we can agree on a lot of things."

We are left to wonder how long it will take for hometown political debates to catch up to the present. I've joked to friends that Sonoma County may not be able to sustain a coherent conversation about politics until my generation has passed on to that great shouting match in the sky.

Here's hoping we're better than that. We have new problems now — high unemployment, global warming, home foreclosures, bankruptcies, a state government that is broke and broken, downtowns in need of re-invention, a growing gap between rich and poor. Maybe we could talk about these challenges instead of the issues that drove our passions back in the day.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. E-mail him at petegolis@pressdemo.com.