Week 5:
U.S. Conference of Mayors

June 26, 2014

Monday:

This is the week! We leave for Dallas on Thursday, and everyone around here is  hustling and bustling to get things done. We have a few outstanding projects to work on; for me, the individual metro economy charts need to be assembled and printed, for everyone else, continuities and visuals like banners and posters need to be made. I helped Dave proof the continuities he wrote. You know how when you used to watch politicians and speakers on TV or at press conferences, you would think “wow, that guy’s really smart, he knows all these stats about (insert obscure topic here)!” Now that I’m the one helping write talking points and continuities, it’s clear that, no, that politician sometimes (maybe usually?) has no idea what the heck he’s talking about, and he is relying on someone else to get the right numbers. It’s kind of cool to be the behind-the-scenes person feeding the numbers.

Dave, James, David, and I shared lunch time again today, and it was the usual political talk. I’m able to keep up a little more on sports, and while I’m nowhere close to David’s level, I can talk about the Nats and keep up. They just moved Ryan Zimmerman to first base, a big move for our recovering hometown hero, and we’re one game ahead of both the Braves and the Marlins, so things are looking good for my new team.

Tuesday and Wednesday:

We spent these days going over and over the Metro Economies Report and key findings. There was a mistake in one of the tables, which was a bit of a scare, but we caught it and printed more copies. We also worked on writing continuities. Proofing this publication was good exercise for my writing skills, which are employed often at Cornell. The paper I’ll be working on, discussing income inequality, after the conference will be an even better opportunity to create a high-level document.

The day was high tension- my favorite. No one was terribly focused; we all were ready to get to Dallas and praying that all our materials would get there! I left the office around 4 or 4:30 and read a little bit of the book Capital in the 21^st Century by Thomas Picketty. Dave bought and is having me read the book, which focuses on historical income inequality and includes Picketty’s policy recommendations. The book is somewhat controversial, in several reviews and due to allegations of data errors (the Amazon readers’ comments were quite divided as well). It’s dense – Dave jokingly called it nice beach reading..at least, I think he was joking – but it will be a really good thing for me to read in terms of familiarizing myself with economic terms and ideas on a more academic level. Once home, I packed and got ready to go!

Thursday:

James and I were on the same flight (along with a few other USCM staffers, we found out at the airport), which left around noon on Thursday. Transportation to the airport was smooth, and the flight also went well. We landed around 3:30, and wandered around until we found a bus that would take us to our hotel, the Omni in downtown Dallas. The ride from the airport to the hotel took a good 40 minutes, which meant 40 minutes of viewing the area outside Dallas and its downtown. Honestly, there wasn’t much there, but Fritz (a man who works with the Conference) chuckled and said I should have seen it ten years ago. Apparently there has been quite a bit of development recently, and that is certainly reflected in the unique and modern architecture of several of the downtown buildings.

We arrived at the hotel around 5 and immediately set to readying the DollarWi$e booth. Upon checking the staff room for boxes, we found that ours were not present, and, after some extensive and frantic looking, we found them with the concierge (they had been addressed not to the conference, but to a particular person). SIGH! We then set up the booth, complete with banners, publications, sunglasses, and mini Rubik’s cubes with the DollarWi$e logo on them. We didn’t look half bad.

After everything was set up and Dave and Jillian had arrived, we went down to the hotel sports bar for a half-pound burger and fries- indeed, everything is bigger in Texas.

Friday:

Friday we had our first meeting at 9:00 in the AM. It was the Council on Metro Economies and theNnew American City. James and I set up the room with the materials, which included our ever-so-carefully-edited Metro Economies Report. The report was later mentioned in several notable newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal. Dave informed me that the way in which our report was featured in the article was a pretty big deal, and that it is gaining traction in terms of its respectability, credibility, and renown – impressive for a report that is only around ten years old.

The meeting went well, and every seat was full. The speakers talked about different programs in their communities that were addressing economic concerns. A big role that the conference is intended to play is to provide best practices (i.e. ideas on good policies) to mayors. Mayors who were successful (at anything, really – the conference and its resolutions covered a vast array of topics) with specific programs or policies would share those for the other mayors/private sector folks and would answer questions. It was cool for me personally to hear first about the specific things mayors were doing to improve their cities and help people, and also to see other mayors really get engaged with these ideas and talk about carrying them out in their own communities. I also really appreciated how approachable every mayor was. I did not, in my four days there, have a mayor who acted like he was above talking to me, a young intern.

That being said, it was definitely a great exercise in evaluating how formal I had to be with each person there – who I could joke around with, who I could call by their first name, etc. This could be based on mayoral status, what the person seemed to indicate, or my level of comfort with the person. Other networking or simply social skills in a high powered setting included striking up and perpetuating conversations. Mayors are pretty social people (you have to be!) but I still had to work to engage them and get something out of the conversation beyond an ability to say ‘hey, I met the mayor of Kansas City!’ In other words, I had the opportunity to make substantive conversation with mayors, staff members, and private sector representatives. Dave is an elegant example to follow. He certainly knows how to work a room, and I learned so much about patient, intentional interaction from watching him all throughout the weekend.

After our morning meeting, there was an opening plenary session, and then more meetings. This was how the weekend was structured; there were different standing committees that debated and voted on pre-submitted resolutions (each committee had around 15), task forces that dealt in certain issues (like Dave’s Council on the New American City that has an economic report), and plenary sessions featuring some big-name speakers. The days’ events would usually conclude around 5, and the night fun would begin about an hour later.

Friday was the Cowboys stadium. I’ve seen the 60-yard screen on TV many times while watching NFL games, but to see it in person was incredible. As I would soon recognize as a weekend theme, the food was southern and fantastic. Mac n’ cheese, sliders, fried chicken – I was pretty happy the whole weekend!

Saturday and Sunday:

The days were structured the same as Friday. Dave did not have any meetings until Monday, so James and I hung around the booth when there weren’t meetings going on. When there were, I would attend them; I went to, for example, a committee meeting on health, a meeting on transportation and communications (which had a rather controversial net neutrality resolution), and this really cool Google presentation that featured self-driving cars. As scary as it is, Google is planning to start putting these in cities! These meetings were not only rich with information, but also allowed me to see the workings of the organization and gave a glimpse into the politics that came into play during the weekend. Two-thirds of the Mayors are democrats, but the organization is non-partisan, and they do a fairly good job of keeping it non-partisan. That does not mean there aren’t subtle undertones from both sides.

These two days featured Maria Shriver, Ernest Moniz (Secretary of Energy), Gina McCarthy (EPA Administrator), Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education), and several prominent mayors, including Kevin Johnson (President of USCM- Sacramento), Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (VP, USCM-Baltimore), Mike Rawlings (Dallas), and Bill de Blasio (New York). This list is by no means exhaustive.

The night events were downtown, in the Ross Perot museum, the Arts District, and this really cool rooftop bar. The food, again, was amazing, and there were concerts from Bonnie Raitt, Kool and the Gang, Lyle Lovett, and a few more bands. Don’t worry if the names don’t sound familiar – I only knew one song from all of these bands, but Kool and the Gang sings Celebrate, so that was pretty cool.

It was fun to see the mayors relaxed and having fun. Everyone was dancing at the after-parties, and I was able to have some more great, low-key conversations with some pretty powerful people, which was exciting!

That wraps up the first three days, I’ll be back next week with more!