Elections in College Park are legally non-partisan, but this year’s city council candidates in District 4 have informally divided themselves into two slates: incumbents and challengers.
Council members Mary Cook and Karen Hampton are asking voters to send them back to City Hall because of their experience and track records, while dismissing their challengers as uninformed newcomers. Denise Mitchell and Marcus Afzali insist that the incumbents are out of touch with the district, which includes most of western College Park.
In particular, Afzali, a 24-year-old government and politics graduate student, has stressed that he has learned a lot from going door to door in the neighborhoods, and criticized the incumbents for failing to do the same. At a crowded candidates forum last month in College Park Woods, nearly every attendee said Afzali had spoken to them about city issues; none said Hampton or Cook had knocked on their doors to ask their opinions.
“I’ve talked to more people in this district over the last two months than they have over the last eight years,” Afzali said, referencing Cook and Hampton’s combined service. “I already know the wants and needs of the district more than they do.”
Afzali, who grew up in College Park, said he is running for office because he “[loves] this city” and is dissatisfied with Cook’s and Hampton’s recent votes against rent stabilization and funding full-time contract police officers.
“And the reason they voted the wrong way is they hadn’t talked to anyone in the district about it,” he said.
But Cook is highly skeptical of Afzali’s candidacy, pointing out he has little experience in the city’s government and rents rather than owns a home here.
“Do [voters] want somebody who has no experience, who isn’t stable within the community, who hasn’t shown any dedication?” she asked. “Even though [Afzali] may have discussed a lot of issues with people, he doesn’t have any firsthand experience. ... It’s one thing to knock on doors and talk to people — it’s another thing to put in a lot of time.”
Before Cook, a 53-year-old academic advisor at Prince George’s County Community College, first ran for city council in a January 2007 special election, she was active in citizens’ associations and city committees. She now argues Afzali should do the same. Doing so would give him a better understanding of how the city works and demonstrate more commitment to the community, she said.
Although Afzali’s student status may seem to give Cook’s questioning more validity, he has taken great strides to emphasize he’s not a “student candidate.” His policy positions seem to back that up: He is advocating steeper fines and penalties for noise violations and backs a rent control policy that would discourage landlords from renting College Park’s homes to groups of students.
His outreach work with the Maryland Democratic Party during the 2008 campaign season and his studies in government and politics also make him qualified to serve on the city council, he said.
But Afzali’s experiences may not be sufficient. Cook says she only “learned the ropes” of the council during her current two-year term, changing from one of the quietest council members to one of the most outspoken and casting more dissenting votes than most of her colleagues. She even considered challenging unopposed mayoral candidate Andy Fellows, largely because of Fellows’ friendship with Mayor Steve Brayman.
Hampton is also looking forward to working with a different mayor.
“There’s a lot of things I haven’t been able to accomplish, and I want to be able to do so under a new mayor,” she said.
Hampton, a council member since 2002, said Brayman stifles discussion and discourages her from speaking out at council meetings — and she rarely does.
“I call it a strategic move. You know when I speak people are going to listen, because I rarely speak,” said Hampton, the human resources manager for Takoma Park. “Do I feel like I’ll be speaking a little bit more under a new mayor? Yes, I do. ... I’ll be more willing to debate and go back and forth on some issues.”
Both councilwomen shrugged off accusations that they’re out of touch. They attend civic association meetings and periodically distribute newsletters throughout their neighborhoods, they said.
In response to Afzali’s complaints about the votes she and Cook cast on public safety and rent control, Hampton said they were based on community feedback and experience on the city council.
District 4 residents had expressed opposition to a plan to spend $500,000 a year to hire three full-time police officers to complement an existing setup of cheaper part-time officers. Cook and Hampton said their constituents needed more evidence that those officers were worth the money, not that they were opposed to police.
Hampton said the rent control legislation she and Cook voted against had too high of a rent cap to accomplish anything or to solve the neighborhood’s problems and that the law had been designed to expire this year anyway as more student housing was built on Route 1.
Hampton, 42, described her priorities for the next term as a council member as carefully evaluating any city spending and reaching out more to College Park’s senior citizens. She has also said she does a lot of behind-the-scenes work — meeting with various officials outside the city and working with her College Park Woods neighbors — and would continue this into her next term.
But Mitchell said District 4 shouldn’t keep waiting and shouldn’t limit itself to experienced incumbents.
“I don’t think you have to have experience. You have to have the eagerness and determination to find out the knowledge,” Mitchell said. “That’s giving 110 percent back to your community. You have to have that by having a pulse of what’s going on in your community.”
Like Afzali, Mitchell said during this campaign she’s been learning a lot about the residents in a community she’s lived in for 35 years, and she said Cook and Hampton don’t appear as concerned with noise issues as most of her neighbors are.
Mitchell, 46, proposed regular focus groups with residents for the council to stay more in touch with community concerns.
She said she has some experience with city government as the chair of its Education Advisory Committee. She is also a board member of the West College Park Civic Association.
Mitchell hasn’t run for public office before in her decades as a city resident. But she said what she sees as the lack of “presence” from the incumbents in the community spurred her to action; she hopes voters will recognize what she would offer them.
“Yes, I am a new face in the city of College Park, a new person who’s trying to provide leadership to the city council. People need to take a chance on change,” Mitchell said. “Some people have a fear of change. That is human. But I have the commitment.”
bholt@umdbk.com
Log in to be able to post comments.