Jolie Justus and Quinton Lucas, this mayoral campaign needs some cliché-free clarity

How would Kansas City change under Mayor Jolie Justus versus under Mayor Quinton Lucas?

We hope to help voters answer that question in the six upcoming debates The Kansas City Star is sponsoring ahead of the June 18 city election. The first of those community forums will be held at noon Saturday at Winnetonka High School in Kansas City.

There are important differences between the candidates, but some of the surface similarities in their presentations can obscure them. And those areas of near agreement could lead voters to conclude that there are no meaningful contrasts to be drawn between these two likable, competent members of the Kansas City Council.

Right now, they share too many tossed-in-a-blender talking points — and even a few verbal tics.

Justus talks about the centrality of the city’s “small business space” and the relevance of her experience as a lawmaker in the “domestic violence space.”

Lucas, meanwhile, points to his passion for the “housing space,” his focus on the “criminal justice space,” the “incentive space” and even — who knew — “the marijuana space.” Please, let’s put a stop to this mayoral debate drinking game-in-the-making.

For Justus, too many answers involve her ability to convene all stakeholders. And then what?

Her vague, soothing promises to for instance, “get things right, like violent crime” don’t tell us anything. When she says she wants to put new tools in the hands of neighborhood leaders, what does that mean?

On jobs and economic development, here’s what Lucas says: “We need to move away from the classic real estate-style tax incentive” in favor of the “small business that’s been working for years and decades ... That’s what our economic development policy needs to build around — not just home runs, but basics.”

And Justus? “We can chase after the big ones” like Amazon HQ2, “but at the end of the day, over 70 percent of our economy is based in the small business space.”

She hasn’t yet made clear how she’d govern differently. Maybe as the top vote-getter in the primary, that’s strategic as well as characterological.

Lucas is more specific, especially on affordable housing, violent crime and the need for incentive reform. But he too needs to spell out differences much more clearly than in the occasional snide aside.

In case you glanced away and missed it, the candidates do not agree on transparency — he says we need more of it in local government, and she says we already have it. He says the whole process surrounding the airport terminal project has been mysterious and continues to be. She says, “I would argue that there is transparency right now.”

She’s much more likely to want City Manager Troy Schulte to stay on in his job.

Justus frequently, and on a number of issues, says we need to do less reacting and more planning “in a systemic way.” Lucas counters that, “The problem isn’t planning. We have planned, but just haven’t upheld our promises” even on basic city services.

He says yes, we’ve overbuilt hotels and don’t need to keep subsidizing more of them with tax abatements and other giveaways: “I think we need to get out of that space and let the market work the way it should.” She says no, we haven’t overbuilt, though “when I look at what we need to be building next, it’s not hotels.”

What we need in the less than six weeks between now and the election is some cliché-free clarity.

This story was originally published May 10, 2019 at 12:54 PM.