This comment was left anonymously on the “Meet The Candidates” post. Hey Anonymous, do you know something I don’t?  Love to talk…….

Dear Joe Higgins,

You and I don’t really know each other, but I’ve been observing you, and I have a pretty good idea that you are planning a lot more than a radio show and a blog. I figure that a lot of self-important people in Tucson are also watching you, wondering how ambitious you are, monitoring your every move, because it is a potential threat. A potential threat to their status as “community leaders”, as protectors of the status quo, and as Those Who Are Always Turned To by the electeds who don’t know to whom else they should turn.

Any day, week, or month now, I imagine that you’ll receive a phone call from a distinguished member of Tucson’s established “leadership elite”—known in some parts as the Cloth. This person is likely an older white male, with a job either as a consultant (whose clients are not well-defined, but obviously powerful) or as an executive with some local firm (probably a developer or other company whose income growth depends on Tucson’s continued population growth) with an interest in keeping things moving along in a predictable fashion.

This person will begin by feigning admiration and praise for what you’ve done with the radio show, the Thursday night meet-ups at McMahon’s, and this blog, attempting to draw your confidence through flattery. He will try to play the role of mentor, deigning to share his sage advice, gleaned from years of experience leading our fair community.

After he thinks he’s softened you up for the real purpose of the call, he’ll talk about what he and the more experienced business and community leaders have accomplished. “We got the RTA approved . . . we held the Regional Town Hall and built consensus for the first time anyone can remember . . . we created TREO . . . we’ve brought the community together . . . we won the water wars . . . we got Kromko indicted”. Okay, perhaps he won’t mention the last part.

Then he’ll say, “Join Us!”, or “Let’s work together!”, or “Let’s join forces. We’d be an unbeatable combination of youthful energy and wise experience.” He’ll tell you how he and his colleagues have the ear and the respect of Chuck Huckelberry. “We can get things DONE!”

You, being the practical fellow that you are, and also one who is basically respectful, will indulge this conversation for a while. I don’t know you well enough to know how you would respond. My guess is that you would be cautiously positive, not saying no and not saying yes, but showing respect. Maybe you would remind this person how the leadership elite hosed you when you ran for the Board of Supervisors.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that you say yes to joining forces with this esteemed Cloth Weaver. You try to make sense of what this new partnership will bring. Meanwhile your new friend has returned triumphantly to his smoke-filled room, announcing to his fellow Weavers that he has effectively ended the threat of the upstart Joe Higgins.

What can you expect from such a partnership? You can expect a 3-step process of being shown the door:
Assimilation. Your efforts will be subsumed under some existing organization or informal effort. That is the internal reality, but outwardly, this will be heralded as bringing everyone together to create a powerful force for change.
Assumption of Leadership. Your new friend will be the formal leader of this new partnership or organization. You may be given a token position such as vice-chair or something, which is a way of stalling for time to see how well you will play along. You will have no power, but you will be the first to know when your friend and his colleagues are ready to tell you what they’ve decided. Won’t you feel special?
Agenda-killing. Your efforts to use this new apparatus to actually accomplish something will not be welcomed. You will soon see that the purpose of your partnership is to keep you busy and quiet while the real power in Tucson keeps things moving along in a predictable fashion.

If you go along with whatever level of inactivity this group promotes, you will be rewarded with not being black-balled, and they may groom you to be the next generation of do-nothing community leaders.

If you choose to pursue something like the agenda that has your friend so nervous in the first place, you will be marginalized, minimized, and eventually discarded entirely. You will no longer have a radio show that anyone would bother listening to; your blog will be something not worth reading; you will have none of those things that got you off to such a promising start, AND you will also be shut out of the relationships with the go-alongs that could have been yours had you just left everything well enough alone.

It all comes down to whose respect you wish to earn.