“Being a good alder is really about good customer service and really asking the people what they need. It’s about community engagement,” says Barbara Harrington-McKinney. “There is a sense that an alder does it all. We can’t do it all. We are a connector. We try to build a culture of concerned, civic-minded residents within that district who want to get involved in these issues.”
Harrington-McKinney, the owner of The Imago de Consulting Group, is wrapping up her first two-year term as an alder for the Madison Common Council’s District 1. She is one of the very few Common Council members facing a challenger in the upcoming April 4 election in David Handowski, a retired IT services professional who is also vice president and co-founder of the Madison West Neighborhood Association.
“For two years, I’ve been at the table and I’ve really learned how city government works,” Harrington-McKinney tells Madison365. “For two years, I’ve laid some foundations but I have not completed the work. I understand how to work with a diverse population of people. I think that is critically important as you look at Madison’s future.
“When I sit in the Council Chamber and something comes up, my vision is different because I have that life experience that is critically important,” adds Harrington-McKinney, who is 72. “When you are looking at a community that is growing more and more diverse, it’s not just putting a black or brown person in that position, but someone who has the capacity to embrace and look at the whole segment of what Madison can be rather than having a more narrow vision. You have to have someone who really wants Madison to have opportunities for everyone. That’s why I’m running again.”
Harrington-McKinney is talking about equity, the word that community members and elected officials have been constantly throwing around ever since the Race to Equity highlighted the worst of Madison racial disparities.
“The City talks about equity a lot. I’m getting tired of that. I want to see it applied,” Harrington-McKinney says. “If equity is one of the City’s primary goals, we have to start at home. We have to ask ourselves: Who’s being impacted? Who’s NOT at the table? How is this resolution or ordinance or policy going to impact other people? That is something we will be taking a look at.”
Another hot-button topic during this election cycle has been “growth.” Madison has been growing quite a bit on the edges of the city and there’s going to be even more growth coming on the southwest side in Harrington-McKinney’s District 1. “Somebody told me when I first started coming here to visit [her late son] Mike [McKinney] that the southwest side looked like a brand-new city,” she remembers. “That’s going to happen again as we look at the peripheral of the southwest side.”
The southwest side is a large district. It starts at High Point Road and goes down to County Highway M and goes out towards Verona and comes up Raymond Road. It encompasses High Point Estate, Hawks Landing and all of Elver Park.
“Yeah, it’s big. And when you look at diversity, there’s not a great deal of diversity there. Not a great deal of interaction between the extremes. We’ve been working on that,” Harrington-McKinney says. “It’s really important for us to realize that when we look at District 1, we have to look at where our successes are and where our needs for attention are.”
As a person of color in a district that has constituents that do not predominantly look like her, Harrington-McKinney says her first goal upon being elected alder two years ago was to build a sense of trust in her community. “I realized that I have to be very, very intentional with that,” she says.
And unless you believe in extreme coincidences, race plays a significant part in Madison electoral politics. Only four of the 20 current Madison alders have challengers and must work hard to retain their Common Council seats. Three of those four current alders being challenged, however, are black. (The other alder being challenged is Zach Wood of District 8, the high-turnover student district.)
Two of those three African-American alders being challenged on Madison’s southwest side – Harrington-McKinney and Maurice Cheeks – are facing challenges from white, more-conservative candidates who have been very vocally supportive of the police. Needless to say, the support of police has come up many times in these alder debates.
“There’s a discussion that, ‘This Common Council doesn’t trust the police. This council is against the police.’ That’s not a true statement,” Harrington-McKinney says.
Her opponent has been attacking her on the $400,000 the Common Council wants to spend to review police policy. “It’s not a waste. My colleagues have told me that the police have the largest budget and whenever the police come to the Council to say they need more staffing, we’re always going to do that staffing,” Harrington-McKinney says. “But what is important right now is how you rebuild trust in a community,”
“The things that the police department are doing well, let’s celebrate those things. I’ve seen officers do great things. I’ve seen officers go into their own pockets to pay for things. We have some really good ones,” she adds. “But the things that need to be shored up, the places there needs to be uplifting … we need to give attention to that, too. You can’t write your own report card. You just can’t do it. That’s like auditing your own business. You have to have an independent audit.”
Four hundred thousand dollars might seem like a lot of money, but if it could prevent the city from having to pay out the record $3.35 million settlement they will have to pay out to the family of Tony Robinson or the $2.3 million the city agreed to pay the family of Paul Heenan in 2015 … it might be a good investment.
“I want our police to be the best it can be. When you measure it up against what the police budget is or what these settlements have paid out, it’s not very much,” Harrington-McKinney says. “To say we’re not facing those challenges … you’re sticking your head in the sand.”
Harrington-McKinney says that public safety will always be at the top of her list and that the police are doing some wonderful things in her district. “In District 1, we have a new police captain and he is excellent and he says he wants my officers out of my cars and talking with the community. That’s how you rebuild trust,” she says. “We need to really work on the root causes of what we’re seeing in our neighborhoods.”
Harrington-McKinney lives in the house of her son, beloved former NBC-15 anchorperson Mike McKinney who passed away in 2006. On top of being a well-known TV personality, McKinney was very active in the Madison community.
“Mike has been dead for 10 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I think about him all the time,” Harrington-McKinney says. “When I’m out knocking on doors … when I get discouraged. I think of him constantly. He ended up in a community where he could give and the community gave back which was really tremendous.
“Some people have connected me as being Mike’s mom and some have not,” she adds. “But when they connect, it’s like, “Ohhhh. You’re Mike’s mom. Wow.’ So people still remember the work he’s done. That is so rewarding to me.”
McKinney has done great work of her own in the community as the associate director of the Madison-area Urban Ministry for nine years and as a Madison alderperson and she has blazed a trail of her own apart from Mike.
“I bring my own basket of stuff. Because of I’ve had the advantage of being Mike’s mom, a lot of doors were opened to me. But in working at MUM [Madison-area Urban Ministry], I also worked with a community where I would constantly see people who said, ‘Madison has not been a great place for me. Madison has not treated me well,’” she says. “Since I have the privilege of understanding both of those communities that exist in the two Madisons, my goal is to identify where the commonalities are that we can start working together.”
At the age of 72, Harrington-McKinney has seen a lot of her contemporaries slowing down the pace as they get older. But she finds that her passion for politics, social justice, and empowerment are getting stronger. She remembers her very first Council meeting two years ago and was not deterred by the incredibly long hours (“We went until 3 o’clock in the morning!” she says.). She remembers fondly the hours and hours she has spent in meetings with her constituents and the competitive struggle of her first council race.
“I ran against Matt Brink back in 2015 and I had a great deal of respect for him because he had a passion for the community much like me and understood how to move the community forward,” she says. “When he ran, he got most of the endorsements. This time, the support has been just amazing for me.
“I remember when I ran the first time, an article said, ‘Barbara is smart and passionate, but she lacks the experience.’ I was really offended by that because I had been working in the community for such a long time,” Harrington-McKinney says. “This time around, I’m still smart and still passionate. But now I have a lot of experience. I’ve learned so much about how city government works and the connection between community values and community needs.”
McKinney says that she is excited about the Common Council moving more towards shared values. “We realize that the City can’t fund everybody’s project,” she says. “That’s just not sustainable budget wise. It’s really important to be smart with our priorities.”
The city faces population growth, public safety concerns, development challenges, and needs for affordable housing, equity, teen employment, and expanded transit. All of these areas need to be carefully planned out and some of the work done now will not see dividends for years. “People have that tunnel vision of ‘now, now, now!’ but we’re not planning for now, we’re really planning for 10, 20 years out,” Harrington-McKinney says.
But that’s not what voters want to hear in an election cycle. It is essential for an alder, she says, to do a lot of “big picture” thinking. That includes anticipating what the demographics of the city will look like 10, 20, or 30 years from now.
“By 2020, the population is going to look totally different. So, do we let it happen to us or do we start planning?” McKinney asks. “You start planning for it. You start looking at it now. You start having those tough conversations. And you keep coming back to the table. I’m always going to come to the table. We may not get to the goal the same way, but we agree what the goal is. That’s what diversity is and we need to honor and respect the diversity and differences that exist for all of us.
“The next generation is going to be so diverse. It’s not going to look like the community right now,” she adds. “People don’t want to hear that, but that’s the reality and we need to begin to bring that vision to the table. We need to be driving towards a community where everybody has an opportunity to succeed.”
Harrington-McKinney believes that vision is the biggest difference between her and her opponent for District 1 alder. “He sees the world in black and white. I’ve worked with enough populations to understand that there are some grays in there,” Harrington-McKinney says. “And it is in the grays in there that the depth and the heart and the caring about people happen. You can do all the planning you want, but it is still people driven and relationship building. If you’re not able to sit across the table from me and hear my story – and I hear yours – we’re not moving this forward.”
Harrington-McKinney says her goal is to have those deeper conversations with people in her district so they don’t feel so isolated in their own little silos.
“I want to talk with people who are willing to go a little bit deeper … who are willing to understand the gaps that lead to inequities. It’s important for me to work from the grassroots,” she says. “Even though I understand development and all of the other issues as we grow as a city, I want people to know that I truly want to build community.”
