Hong for Mayor?

It pays pretty well and the benefits are excellent — health care, pension, paid vacation. You get your own office and (bonus!) it comes with its own private bathroom. And the parking? We’re talking rock star quality. Covered, heated, and just steps away from an elevator that whisks you up to your desk on the fourth floor.

And yet, here we are now less than a year from the next Madison mayoral election and only crickets are to be heard. When I first ran for mayor in the April 2003 election I was already working hard a year out. I didn’t formally announce until the September before that election, but that was only because I was waiting for the smoke to clear on the partisan primaries. Those are now held in August, which should only add more reason to get started on a mayoral race by now.

It’s likely that most of the potential candidates are waiting to see what incumbent Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway does. One source who is close to her told me that he figured the odds were about two out of three that she will seek a third consecutive four-year term. (A month later the same source told me he would down grade that somewhat.)

To bolster that speculation, when I texted the mayor to ask when she might decide she listed her successes and then wrote the magic words, “But there’s more to do.” And she added, “I am considering my options heading into 2027.”

When a politician tells me how much they’ve accomplished but that there’s still more to do I’m not inclined to believe they mean that somebody else will finish those jobs for them. So, if she does go for a third term, who might challenge her and what are her chances for success?

I poked around among insiders to find out what names they’re hearing. I came up with Downtown Madison Inc. President Jason Ilstrup, city council President Regina Vidaver, tech entrepreneur (and Soglin’s opponent in 2015) Scott Resnick, Ald. Sabrina Madison, and east-side state Rep. Francesca Hong. Former Madison Police Chief Noble Wray is also being encouraged to run, though he tells me that he hasn’t spent much time thinking about it and he’s finding opportunities to make a difference in community nonprofit boards and criminal justice reform efforts. 

Hong is the most intriguing name on that list. Her campaign claims she’s not thinking about it as she’s currently engaged in a run for governor. And, in fact, she leads the Democratic field with 14% in the last Marquette University Law School poll. But she’s still got to be considered a long shot. Are Democratic voters — as far as I can tell, still very much in the throes of an intense desire to just win — likely to nominate a Democratic socialist?

Maybe not for governor, but for mayor of liberal Madison?

What I’m hearing is that if she doesn’t get the party’s nomination in its August primary, Hong may turn her attention to the mayor’s office. And while most of the other potential candidates confirmed to me that they might be interested, they also leaned heavily against taking on Rhodes-Conway. I’m not sure that’s the case with Hong. After all, she draws comparisons among some with New York’s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Now, again, her campaign denies she’s interested, but that’s what you’d expect them to say. They don’t want her voters thinking she’s not all in on the governor’s race.

The odds may be on the side of the challenger. Madison has never elected anyone to three consecutive four-year terms. Paul Soglin has served a total of 22 years, but when he tried for a third four-year term in a row in 2019, Rhodes-Conway beat him. And when I went for a third term in 2011, Soglin defeated me.

Madisonians just don’t seem to want any mayor to get too comfortable. And then there’s the accumulated scars. After eight years you’ve had to say ‘no’ to virtually everybody, friend and foe alike, at least once. One source told me, “Satya has too many vulnerabilities with both the left and the business community not to draw an opponent.” Yeah, that sounds about right.

For me it’s hard to gauge the mayor’s popularity. She seems like a private person in a public job. And, as for her policies, she gets a lot of pushback on her pro-development agenda. In my own view, the city faces a housing affordability problem and the Legislature has left it with only one way out: build more housing. In fact, that seems to be working as rental vacancy rates are now increasing to more healthy levels, though owner-occupied housing remains expensive.

I have no strong views on whether Rhodes-Conway should go for a third term. But what is important is that we have a meaningful, even hotly contested, race. It’s the only real chance Madisonians get every four years to have a community-wide conversation about the future of the city.

And nobody should get that kind of parking without a fight.

A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.