Barn burning

Valerie Keehn might not be well acquainted with the works of Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, but the incumbent mayor’s warpath to re-election seems to borrow liberally from his oft-studied playbook. The idea of the Schlieffen Plan is simple: wage a blitzkrieg campaign against the weaker of two enemies, and then wheel around to tackle the sleeping beast before it has time to awake.

Keehn and her supporters tried to handily defeat Boyd during September’s primary. Her campaign waged an aggressive series of political mudslinging to energize her base, marginalize Boyd and seize the Democratic primary in a way that was almost humiliating for her challenger. Kamp Keehn certainly banked on Boyd capitulating after such a defeat, allowing their candidate to centralize her efforts on the real challenge: defeating Republican challenger Scott Johnson.

But much like leaders of the German Reich found during the dawning years of the First Word War, Keehn is finding there could be some drawbacks to waging a two-front battle against a wounded enemy not yet vanquished and a much larger one just digging in for the fight. The vitriol traded during the battle for the primaries somehow convinced Boyd to stay in the mix, setting up a bizarre dynamic of political rivalries and alliances that is all but certain to drastically change the composition of the city’s governance.

Voters got their first look at this dynamic Tuesday, during the League of Women Voters’ candidate’s forum. Though Keehn came out much sharper than her previous showing during the primaries, she often found herself warding off poignant attacks coming from within her party and on the other side of the partisan line. Ultimately, her back-tracking left her on the defensive against both her challengers, rather than the offensive against Johnson, who many rightly view as her most formidable opponent.

Keehn’s diminutive attempts at going on the offensive were limited to questioning both panelists on their views toward development in the city and if they wanted to limit the powers of city “land use” boards. Clearly, this was a round-about attempt to characterize both opponents of being pro-development, something that has become a sort of furtive mantra of her campaign. But in both cases, Keehn’s quasi-assertions were summarily defended, first by Johnson and then by Boyd.

In contrast, the attacks on Keehn ran all night long. If there were any doubt of Boyd’s dislike for the mayor, they were readily clarified during the debate. He rightly pointed out Keehn’s “tacit” support of Republican Public Works candidate Skip Scirocco and how such an allegiance is even more of an indication of her willingness to sink the plan to tap Saratoga Lake as a city water source.

And then Johnson joined in the fray. Blasting the mayor for her “un-accomplishments,” he pointed out that not a single acre of open space or unit of affordable housing has been added to the city during her tenure in office. He also cast serious doubt on Keehn’s role in restoring the state’s video lottery terminal funding, which is perhaps the greatest footing she has used in her campaign.

Overall, the debate was a much less back-biting affair than its doppelganger in September. Perhaps this was due to Keehn’s attempts to ward off significant attacks from either side; maybe it was the fact that all candidates are starting to realize it’s too close to the election to wage a campaign of negativity.

Despite being the clear underdog, Boyd again seemed like the most poised of the three candidates in his answers, even though he decided to make note of the Keehn appointment-Fulani link he foisted last month, an assertion that roundly drew jeers from Kamp Keehn. Even thought Johnson’s answers seemed well thought out, his delivery and intonation seemed remarkably bad for someone who was a high-toned trial attorney.

Keehn, as aforementioned, seemed markedly more collected during the debate. At times, she even seemed a bit impassioned compared to other speeches, such as her state of the city address and the first debate. Such a comparison, however, is akin to telling the difference between a tagged corpse and a clinically brain-dead patient; a sign of life in one doesn’t mean it’s any better off than the other.

Though it was clear through the debate that Boyd is aiming to sink Keehn’s ship, he also seems quite determined to grab voters from the middle ground; the politically unaffiliated. It’s this middle ground of voters that often seem to sway elections these days. But to Boyd’s detriment, there seems to be few clear differences between his views and those of Johnson, who many Keehn detractors see as the favorite to unseat the wicked witch of the left.

Keehn, on the other hand, is attempting to electrify enough of her base so that she won’t need to rely on the old-school Democrats, a band of hardliners that are unwavering in their support of her enemy Tom McTygue. Her hope is to create a great enough schism in the party and even some rogue Republicans to oust the Public Works fixture, while keeping staunch ally Ron Kim in the mix.

The problem with this thinking is this: she could very easily end up one of two Democrats on the board come January, the other being McTygue supporter John Franck. Strangely, this dynamic would all but hand the reins of the City Council to Scirocco, the highest ranking Republican running for office. Stay tuned folks; the only clear thing at this point is that we’ve got a barn-burner here.