Betting Line on Mayor Pro Tem

The 2023-2025 Richardson City Council was sworn in Monday, May 17, 2023. Other than canvassing the election results and swearing in the new Mayor and Council, no business was conducted. The first order of business next week at the May 24 meeting will be selecting a new Mayor Pro Tem from among their ranks. The following is The Wheel's highly unscientific, subjective-as-heck, just-mostly-guesswork betting line on who that will be.

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The role and powers of the Mayor Pro Tem are pretty limited. Richardson City Charter Article 3, Section 3.03 says: "The city council shall elect one (1) of its members as mayor pro tem, who shall temporarily perform the duties of mayor in case of the absence or inability of the mayor to perform the duties of office, and who shall for such time be vested with all the powers belonging to the mayor."

Each Council member is free to apply their own criteria when picking someone to serve as Mayor Pro Tem. Do they look at the current Mayor for a prototype to emulate? I hope not. He wasn't my first choice for Mayor, so why would I want a person like him for Mayor Pro Tem? But the same voters who elected him also elected the other six Council members, so what do I know about what the Council might want in a Mayor Pro Tem? Consider that I might be unique when you weigh anything else I say about the chances of each Council member becoming Mayor Pro Tem.

I'm deliberately leaving out the possibility of deals being cut under the table for votes. Am I too naive to think that none of our Council members are calculating enough to behave badly (cough, Laura, cough)? It's just too depressing to even factor that into this exercise, so I won't.

Even if you love the incoming Mayor, management guides usually offer advice like this: "To find the team leaders that would best serve their team and in turn, the organization as a whole, the key is balance." Most of the Council members would bring balance in some way or other (management style, principles, age, gender, ethnicity) when contrasted with the incoming Mayor. Lots to pick from there, making my job of creating a betting line harder.

There are some general rules-of-thumb that I think will hold true.

It's unlikely that a council member serving their first term will be tapped. It's happened before but you could hear the murmurs of surprise ripple through the audience when it did. It was unlikely then, and it's unlikely in 2023.

The council is not going to pick someone who has said they don't want the job. Not when there are three council members who have expressed interest or at least don't rule it out. One, who weighed a run for Mayor, openly says they want to be Mayor Pro Tem; another one is open to the job; and a third won't rule the position out, which I interpret as an expression of wanting the job. One Council member I didn't get a chance to ask.

Dark horses emerge only if there are deep, irreconcilable differences on the Council between favorites, keeping any favorite from getting a majority of votes. You know, the kind of differences that maybe kept one prominent PAC in Richardson politics from making any endorsement in the Mayor's race. I'm not aware of irreconcilable factions on this new Council, at least not yet, and maybe never. So I don't expect a dark horse pick for Mayor Pro Tem.

OK, enough talking, enough delay. It's time for me to pick, not necessarily my preferred Mayor Pro Tem, but the betting line. The chance of each Council member being selected Mayor Pro Tem is:

1. Jennifer Justice: 30%
2. Ken Hutchenrider: 26%
3. Arefin Shamsul: 24%
4. Joe Corcoran: 10%
5. Curtis Dorian: 5%
6. Dan Barrios: 5%

In the final analysis, my best guess is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.