McLean defeats Bieter overwhelmingly in Boise mayoral race
Boise City Council President Lauren McLean soundly defeated four-term incumbent Mayor David Bieter in Tuesday’s runoff election to become Boise’s first regularly elected female mayor.
With all of the city’s 88 precincts counted, McLean had 65.5% to Bieter’s 34.5% of the more than 46,000 votes cast.
“I’m feeling honored and blessed. I feel deeply responsible to the city and her people, and I’m looking forward to everyone coming together as we get to work,” McLean told the Idaho Statesman at her election night headquarters at the Gem Center for the Arts on the Boise Bench.
Supporters danced. Former Mayor Brent Coles, a Republican who came in fourth in the November election, was on hand. He said he knocked on doors and made calls for McLean during the runoff campaign.
“Lauren is going to be a great mayor,” he told the Statesman.
Soon after results started rolling in, Bieter told supporters that the race didn’t look like it would go his way. An hour later, by 9:45 p.m., Bieter called McLean to congratulate her.
Carolyn Terteling-Payne was Boise’s first female mayor, taking the reins for a shortened term after Coles resigned in 2003 after a scandal. McLean is the first to be elected directly to the office by voters.
“Next year, it’ll be 100 years of the women’s right to vote, the year I’ll be sworn in as the first elected female mayor,” McLean said. “... I think often about these Girl Scouts that were at City Hall this winter, who walked up to me and asked me why there weren’t more women on the wall of mayors. The question stuck with me, and I’m thinking about them right now.”
McLean planned to board a plane shortly after 5 a.m. Wednesday to head to join mayors-elect from around the country for Harvard University’s Seminar on Transition for Newly-Elected Mayors, which McLean called “mayor camp.”
She’ll join with newly elected leaders from around the country, including Nadine Woodward of Spokane, Erin Mendenhall of Salt Lake City and Robert Simison of Meridian, to talk about effective transitions and to “get right to work starting a relationship with mayors across the region.”
McLean said she will announce her transition team soon shortly and will begin working on housing and building new relationships as soon as she is sworn in Jan. 7.
“I am profoundly grateful to this community,” she said. “I take this responsibility seriously, and I look forward to working together with our City Council and our citizens to move our city forward.”
Meanwhile, in Caldwell, former Idaho Republican state Sen. John McGee, who resigned in 2012 after accusations that he propositioned a female staffer, easily defeated Evangeline “Van” Beechler, the chairwoman of the Idaho Democratic Party, in a runoff for a seat on the City Council.
The runoff election saw 46,345 votes cast from 35.2% of Boise’s registered voters, shy of November’s 52,303, which was 40.1%. Bieter won about 300 votes more than he did in November, while McLean picked up more than 6,600. McLean won more votes in every precinct except one, 2109 in Southwest Boise — the candidates split the six votes cast there, according to a graphic from the Ada County Elections office.
McLean won 50% more votes in the Nov. 5 election than Bieter did, but fell short of a majority in the seven-candidate race, forcing Tuesday’s runoff election. She ran promising to listen more closely to voters, to attack the city’s worsening affordability problem and to replace Bieter’s longstanding feud with the Ada County Highway District with a new spirit of cooperation.
Policy stances
Bieter ran on his achievements, touting improved public safety, new parks and new libraries.
He criticized McLean for her “flip flops,” decisions where she changed her mind. “You can’t have it all ways,” he told McLean at their only debate, a City Club event a week after the November election. “You can’t be for it until it’s hard. That’s what this job is about, making tough decisions.”
McLean argued that she was just listening to constituents.
“I’ve personally knocked thousands of doors and had conversations with you at your doorsteps,” McLean said during the same forum. “Things that I’ve learned over the course of this have helped me change my mind about a couple things.”
The two differed little in either political philosophy or council decisions until McLean began running in May. Both are Democrats, both have supported levying the maximum allowable yearly increase in property taxes, and both supported a proposed new, larger main library and the relocation of The Cabin to make room for it.
Both opposed ordinances on the November ballot to require citywide elections on the library and a proposed sports stadium on the West End. Voters passed them overwhelmingly anyway.
McLean, who runs a philanthropy consulting business, said she decided to run after hearing rising concerns about growth, including rising housing prices. She pledged a more transparent government, saying there wasn’t enough open conversation surrounding the library and stadium.
Mostly, she differentiated herself on style. McLean, 45, offered a fresh alternative to 60-year-old Bieter’s 16 years in office. She held opening listening sessions with voters in public spaces and opted not to go on the attack as Bieter did. She declined to debate Bieter again after their City Club meeting, saying she would focus on listening sessions instead, although the two did appear together at a forum for homeless people at Interfaith Sanctuary.
Homelessness was the issue that most separated the candidates. Bieter said the ability to ticket people for camping is an important tool to prevent formations of encampments. Boise is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold that authority. McLean had agreed with the decision to pursue the case but said she changed her mind after hearing that not all local advocates for the homeless favor ticketing. She now opposes forcing homeless people into the criminal justice system for camping.
Runoff cycle
Though the runoff cycle was only four weeks, it was full of excitement.
It began as soon as results came in Nov. 5. Bieter didn’t comment on the election that night or for much of the next day, fueling speculation he may drop out of the runoff race. On the afternoon of Nov. 6, he issued a news release saying instead that he looked forward to the chance to “distinguish himself even more.”
The two had their debate a week later.
Bieter won endorsements from all but one of the other City Council members besides McLean. They included Elaine Clegg, Holli Woodings, T.J. Thomson and Scot Ludwig. Thomson took to Twitter to complain that local media were not covering their endorsements. After a flurry of criticism, Thomson deleted his Twitter account.
The campaign got more aggressive from there.
Someone started putting tents and sleeping bags in front of McLean’s campaign signs, her campaign said.
Someone told voters that Bieter was backed by the “Basque mafia,” his campaign said.
A bunch of mailers came from a political action committee funded by two Bieter-backing developers attacking McLean on everything from her stances on homelessness to the fact she’s a “Registered North End Democrat.” (Bieter lives in the East End.) One mailer showed a picture of Cooper Court, a homeless encampment the city cleared in 2015, with a headline calling it “Lauren McLean’s Future Boise.”
McLean fell behind Bieter in early campaign finance reports — reports that came out a week before the election showed her taking in $27,827 in the first three weeks in October to his $72,947. She spent significantly less, however, and in reports that came out last week, she outraised him — $57,879 to his $32,270 — although $1,000 donations reported since appear to show him catching up in the days before the runoff. (You can look who donated in our searchable campaign finance database available online.)
The night began badly for Bieter as the county elections office posted the first returns, from early and absentee voters.
“It’s early but it doesn’t look good,” Bieter said to his supporters at about 8:45 p.m.
The numbers stayed bad for the rest of the evening, with McLean never surrendering her double-digit lead. The crowd of 50 to 60 people at Bieter’s election-night headquarters gradually thinned as supporters lauded his legacy. Aides said he would not make a public statement Tuesday night.
Business Editor David Staats contributed.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 2:00 PM.
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