Joe Mallahan, the man who would be mayor, has publicly positioned himself as the business candidate and has leaned on his experience at T-Mobile HQ—working as the "Vice President of Customer Delight," among other things—as evidence that he can manage a city.
A few problems with that:
1) Both T-Mobile and Mallahan's campaign have been vague on what, exactly, Mallahan did at the cell phone company. Even a simple job description has been difficult to extract.
2) T-Mobile has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau. That rating is based on an equation that factors in the size of the company, how long the company has been around, how many complaints the company has racked up, how many of those complaints have gone unanswered, and how many of those complaints have been resolved. AT&T Wireless, for example, has a BBB rating of A+. (It is also accredited by the BBB—businesses with an A or B rating can apply for accreditation.)
When people criticized Mallahan for working at anti-union T-Mobile, he said: Hey, not my department, not my fault.
But when your department is customer satisfaction/delight and the BBB gives you an F... what then? The (non)answer from a campaign spokesperson:
Looks like they should have kept Joe in charge of customer delight!
That F rating, by the way, is based on 36 months of data—well within Mallahan's tenure as a high-ranking T-Mobile executive.
3) Mallahan's management experience hasn't been that extensive. Two sources at the Municipal League (who requested anonymity) said a representative from T-Mobile told them that Joe has never managed more than 40 people at the cell phone company. Campaign spokesperson Charla Neuman quasi-denied this:
His average size group that he manages usually varies between 20 and 40 people although he has managed as many as 500. Either way, vastly greater than the number of people Mike McGinn has managed throughout his lifetime.
McGinn laughed when he heard this quote "I'm managing more than 20 to 40 people right now on my campaign!" he said. "But the framing of the question is off. It's more about leadership style and ability to achieve."
McGinn rattled off his public and management experience—managing teams of lawyers in commercial litigation, the Sierra Club, Great City, the Parks Levy, the roads and transit battles—before going in for the kill:
Joe says "Mike's risky because he doesn't know how to manage." But he's never put forth any vision for the future. We've seen his leadership style. He's not available to the public, not available to the press, has no vision for the future, and insulates himself with paid advisers who represent people who stand to profit from cost overruns for the deep-bore tunnel.
Government is not a business, McGinn continued. "You can't fire the citizens you don't like," he said. "Citizens aren't customers either. But this is Joe's model: His funders are stockholders and he's planning to give them an excellent return on their investment with cost overruns on the tunnel."
So what do actual business owners think of the two candidates?
That post coming later today.
