Boise spent $950 to make ‘The Mayor Bieter Podcast,’ released it during the runoff
Halfway through the runoff campaign, Boise Mayor David Bieter has launched a podcast, made with the help of $950 in audio equipment and a few city employees.
The first episode of “The Mayor Bieter Podcast” is the first of two focused on homelessness. Bieter spends 22 minutes talking with Wyatt Schroeder, the city’s director of community partnerships. It was released Wednesday, one day before Bieter and his opponent, City Council President Lauren McLean, were scheduled to take part in a joint forum before people who are homeless at Interfaith Sanctuary, and two days before he planned to speak at another homelessness forum at Trailhead Boise.
Early voting is underway for the runoff on Tuesday, Dec. 3. McLean finished first in the seven-candidate November election, getting 45.7% of the vote, but city code requires a runoff when no candidate wins a majority. Bieter came in second, more than 15 points back.
But the podcast has been in the works since “late summer,” Mike Journee, Bieter’s spokesman, said in a phone interview Wednesday, and it has been an idea “for a while.”
“Between all the other things that are going on, we just finally got it out,” Journee said.
Robert West, Bieter’s campaign manager, confirmed Thursday that the decision to release the podcast was made independently of the campaign. The episode was recorded before the general election, West said, and the release during the runoff cycle was coincidental.
The podcast is hosted on BuzzSprout, a website that offers users a place to host up to two hours of audio each month at no charge, although it can also be heard on Spotify or through an RSS feed. Podcasts are only available online for 90 days through the free part of the site.
It’s not atypical for a government entity to create a podcast — the office of Idaho’s attorney general launched a show in April.
To produce the podcast, the city ordered $950 worth of recording equipment. Journee said Jeff Janis, constituent services coordinator for the city, acted as producer and recorded the introduction.
Bieter’s re-election campaign has declared homelessness “the central issue of this campaign” on multiple occasions.
He has criticized McLean for changing her stance on the city’s decision to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Martin v. Boise, the lawsuit that centers around whether the city can ticket people who are homeless for sleeping in public places when they have nowhere else to go. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Sept. 2018 that cities can’t prosecute people for sleeping on the streets if they have nowhere else to go because it is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
McLean was originally in support of appealing the case to the Supreme Court but told the Statesman that she changed her mind after hearing that not all local advocates were in favor of it. McLean has spoken against the idea of police officers ticketing people sleeping in public. She has said she believes it’s ineffective and hurts people who are homeless by saddling them with a legal record.
In the podcast, Schroeder and Bieter don’t talk much about how the case could go before the Supreme Court. Schroeder does, however, talk about how the city is starting to see success in helping people who are homeless.
He goes on to address the debate at the core of the Martin case: “We need some tools for police officers while we’re figuring this out, because unfortunately, we can’t end homelessness tomorrow. We gotta keep up.”
That’s a line Bieter himself has used to talk about pursuing the Martin case and taking it to the Supreme Court.
Melanie Folwell, McLean’s campaign manager, said the podcast “certainly seemed strategically timed.”
Homelessness “should be talked about, though,” Folwell said. “It’s important to talk about this issue in a thoughtful manner even when it’s not campaign season.”
The city is not considering what would happen with The Mayor Bieter Podcast if Bieter is not re-elected, Journee told the Statesman.
This story was originally published November 21, 2019 at 12:48 PM.
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