Tuesday night, Democratic primary voters in Johnson County picked Mandi Remington to be one of the party’s nominees for County Supervisor this November, virtually guaranteeing she will be sworn in next year. She beat a state trooper as well as a twice-elected incumbent for the nomination with a respectable five-point margin.
During the campaign, Remington took a stand against the $80 million jail proposal. In a post before the election, former Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek called her a “defunder” and offered some fear mongering expressed concerns about the future of the “Taj Majail.”
As some commenters pointed out, it had echoes of last fall when Laura Bergus won “big for Iowa City Council, despite mayor’s snub”. She won 2-to-1 against a two-term incumbent and didn’t shy away from her desire to turn down the police funding spigot in Iowa City. (Full disclosure: Laura is my wife, and I adore her.)
Certainly, electoral politics are blunt instruments (you can really only pick folks on the ballot and, unless you’re on the ballot, their politics won’t perfectly align with your own), but it should tell leaders something about what people actually want to see happen when these candidates are winning elections.
First, what neither is arguing for: the immediate disbandment of the police or sheriff’s department. In fact, Laura didn’t argue for funding cuts beyond what was already going unused and Mandi acknowledged unsafe conditions of the current jail.
What these candidates are actually advocating for is, at a time when crime and arrests rates are declining locally, investments in alternatives to police that prevent crime, address causes of harm and build a system of emergency response to eventually replace police.
Simply proposing we stop shoveling more money into policing is not a radical idea but also a seismic policy change for an industry used to seeing budget increases even in lean years.
It’s telling that Pulkrabek summarized questions from seated Supervisors Jon Green and V Fixmer-Oraiz about how the sheriff and consultants arrived at the proposed jail needs as opposing “a jail that is not falling apart and will give the staff and inmates a safe place.” No one denies the current facility is terrible. (A new jail would also be terrible.)
Two elections doesn’t make a rule, but local policy makers should heed the message of voters: we want leaders who will ask questions about policing, turn down the money spigot and push for alternatives.
Abolition: Yes! 