Challengers yet to emerge in Cedar Rapids mayor’s race

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's a City Hall election year, but is anyone going to run against Mayor Ron Corbett?

Recent history suggests it is getting late for a substantial mayoral candidate to emerge to take on a City Hall incumbent.

In 2009, for instance, Corbett, a former speaker of the Iowa House, announced at the first of March that he would try to unseat one-term incumbent Kay Halloran, who eventually chose not to run. Corbett was easily elected.

In 2001, eventual winner Paul Pate, former Iowa secretary of state and state senator, made it known in February that he would try to unseat three-term incumbent Lee Clancey.

On the other hand, Clancey, then director of the downtown Renaissance Group, waited until the end of August in 1995 to announce her first successful mayoral candidacy against two City Council incumbents.

In 2005, Halloran, a former state senator, announced her mayoral candidacy in early June while Scott Olson, a high profile commercial Realtor since elected to the City Council from District 4, didn't get into the race until the first part of July.

So is it too late for someone of substance to emerge to take on Corbett, who announced his re-election bid in May?

For that matter, is anyone going to take on incumbents Pat Shey in District 3 or incumbent Justin Shields in District 5, both who are seeking re-election? District 1 incumbent Kris Gulick hasn't yet announced his re-election bid, though he is expected to run. No challenger has surfaced in that race either.

No matter what, voters in the city are getting a race for the two at-large council seats on the November ballot. Four candidates already have announced that they will seek one of the two seats. They are incumbent Chuck Swore; former District 3 council member Jerry McGrane; Ralph Russell, retired former president/CEO of engineering firm HR Green Inc.; and Anthony Brown, a staff member with Diversity Focus. At-large incumbent Don Karr has not decided if he will seek re-election.

In 2009, 17 candidates competed for the six of nine council seats on the election ballot that year. So far, seven candidates - eight counting Gulick - are competing for the six seats.

Candidates have until Sept. 19 to collect signatures and file nomination papers: 471 signatures are needed for mayor; 340, for an at-large seat; 85 for District 1; 80 for District 3; and 63 for District 5.

With each passing day, though, it seems that Cedar Rapids voters may not be in store for a high-profile mayoral contest like Clancey-J.D. Smith-Lyle Hanson in 1995; Clancey-Pate in 2001; Halloran-Olson in 2005; and Corbett-Brian Fagan in 2009.

Council member Shey on Tuesday said he wasn't sure why no one to date has taken him on in the District 3 race, though he noted he had "a pretty tough" campaign in 2009 in which then-District 3 incumbent Jerry McGrane spent "a ton of money" against me.

"And I still won, so I don't know if that means anything," Shey said.

As for Corbett, he thought the mayor might be tough to beat.

"I think Ron has very high approval ratings," Shey said. "I think he's done a great job as mayor, and I think people probably believe that the city is going in the right direction. I know the mayor is just one of nine votes on the council, but he certainly gets credit and deserves a lot of the credit for that kind of thinking."

District 1 council member Gulick said on Tuesday that he'd like to think that his constituents think he's doing a good job and that's why no one has yet said they will challenge him. But he added that he's not sure that's the case. It can be hard for first-time candidates to take the leap, he suggested.

As for both him and Corbett, Gulick said some would-be challengers might decline to run because they approve of the way the incumbents go about making decisions even if they don't agree with all of them.

Even so, Gulick said anyone seeking to run against a mayor or other council member doesn't need several months to sell themselves. Voters can become educated pretty quickly, he said, and he pointed to the short campaign that led up to the March vote in Linn County on casino gaming.

It was clear in 2009 that Cedar Rapids was in for a good mayoral race when Corbett's supporters conducted a phone survey in January of that year, 10 months before the election.

The mayor this week said he has used his campaign funds to conduct a new phone survey, the results of which he said have him feeling optimistic in his bid for re-election.

One question in the campaign survey asked if respondents thought Cedar Rapids is headed in the right direction or is off track.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said the right direction, 27 percent said the wrong direction with 12 percent unsure or didn't answer, he said. The survey was conducted for the Corbett campaign by Victory Enterprises, Davenport. The survey has an error margin of plus or minus 5.65 percent.

Asked to name what was going right, 38 percent of respondents said flood recovery, 21 percent said economic development, 20 percent said revitalization of downtown and 3 percent cited the proposed casino.

Asked about the most important issue that is facing City Hall, 30 percent said street repairs, 26 percent, flood protection, 18 percent, job creation, and 14 percent, taxes.

Corbett on Tuesday didn't know why he has yet to attract a challenger, a substantial one or anyone.

However, he pointed to his campaign's new survey numbers and said they show a big shift from 2009 when his supporters conducted a similar survey and found 38 percent of respondents thought the city was headed in the right direction while 44 thought it was going in the wrong direction.

"That's a huge switch in four years," Corbett said. "I think people see things happening in the community, where four years ago things were stagnant, there was a lot of disenchantment from how fast flood recovery was going. In the last four years, we've seen both public and private-sector investment, and I think the public likes to see the construction, the job creation."