Strickland cast a vision, acted on it
“Leave a place better than you found it” isn’t just a Boy Scout slogan; it’s the expectation Tacoma has for its elected leaders. Using this metric, two-term Mayor Marilyn Strickland did not disappoint.
As a City Council candidate n 2007, and as a fast-rising mayoral candidate in 2009, Strickland promised to focus on education. “I knew education was tied to just about everything you’d want to accomplish as mayor.”
That emphasis demonstrated shrewd political logic, something Strickland’s 2007 council opponent, David Curry, faulted her for. Education, Curry said, “is not a primary function addressed in the City Charter.”
But Strickland knew the city had an image problem, and as long as Tacoma was saddled with a 55 percent high school graduation rate, its reputation would remain marred. With an undergraduate degree in sociology from the University of Washington and a master’s in business administration, Strickland knew a thing or two about rebranding -- namely, that it always starts with a narrative.
By turning attention to Tacoma’s shameful school performance data, Strickland helped push one heck of a Cinderella story complete with a 30-point increase in graduation rates.
As a trustee in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Strickland could eventually boast that Tacoma, once deemed a dropout factory, had closed achievement gaps across several demographics and now topped the state in test scores and graduation rates.
As she’s said on many occasions, politics is a team sport, an analogy we’re happy to run with. With a council-manager form of government, Strickland served as coach, someone who could look at the long game and call the big plays.
Strickland knew an educated and prosperous city only exists because someone cast a vision, and herein lies her greatest strength.
As she told a TNT reporter in 2016, “I don’t think we have historically imagined ourselves as an international player. We are, because we have the diverse population, we have the Port, we have the proximity (to Seattle), so there’s really no reason to sit on the sidelines.”
On this, our mayor of Korean and African-American parentage led by example. Her trade missions to Vietnam and China helped capture millions of dollars of private investment for housing, office and retail space.
Her legacy will live on in the high-rise, four-star hotel under development next to the Tacoma Convention Center, the nearby Tacoma Town Center, and in the seven-story apartment building with affordable units being built directly south of the downtown Tacoma Library.
Strickland’s enthusiasm for new international business didn’t always hit the right note. Her pre-recorded appearance in a video advocating three methanol plants be built in Washington — one in Tacoma — provoked an understandably negative response here. The video was released in 2016, just after city attorneys advised council members to take no position as they evaluated the controversial plant. Methanol opponents claimed it proved the mayor wasn’t neutral.
The methanol company’s release of the six-month-old promotional video certainly poured fuel on the debate over the plant. Strickland acknowledged she erred by speaking glowingly about the project in the video, and that it contradicted the advice the council had since been asked to follow. The company subsequently pulled out, and the plant (which was first pitched to Tacoma by the state Department of Commerce) was never built.
It’s no secret this Editorial Board has disagreed with Strickland on occasion. We still see her push for the “all-in” business model of Click, the municipally owned and operated retail internet and phone company that receives millions in public subsidies, as an ill-advised gamble.
But there’s no question Strickland elevated Tacoma’s profile. Convincing Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet with students at Lincoln High School was a coup; his visit in 2015 might have been one of Tacoma’s proudest days.
The work Strickland leaves undone is enormous and will require at least as much endurance and vision. We believe new Mayor Victoria Woodards can grow into the role.
Predicting what Strickland will do next has become a popular Tacoma parlor game. Our expectation is that her endeavors will be consistent with the hometown pride this member of the Mount Tahoma High School Class of 1980 has displayed throughout her storied career.
And our hope is that it will benefit the place Mayor Strickland has spent a lifetime calling home.
This story was originally published January 4, 2018 at 4:29 PM with the headline "Strickland cast a vision, acted on it."