Tim Leavitt will have his hands full come January 2010 as the next mayor of Vancouver / Photo by Sarah Lynch

The long campaign trail for Tim Leavitt ended Nov. 3 at the Brickhouse Bar & Grill, where he and supporters celebrated his seemingly assured election as Vancouver’s next mayor.

With 99 percent of the votes tallied, Leavitt is ahead 54 percent to 46 percent.

Speaking Tuesday night to a group of his closest supporters, Leavitt gave an impassioned speech that promised better leadership and greater transparency in Vancouver city government.

“We are moving this community forward,” he said above a bed of cheers.

It was a somewhat rare showing of emotion from Leavitt, whose orderly demeanor in debates presented a clear distinction in style from Pollard. Some have called Leavitt soft-spoken. He prefers the description, “calm, cool and collected.”

“As this election has progressed, I’ve been more comfortable wearing my emotions on my sleeve,” he said. “I think a lot of it is playing off the energy of the crowd.”

Leavitt sometimes will hit a bit of a wild streak, said his close friend and Vancouver attorney Jamie Howsley. “But there is still a measured classiness that comes along with that,” he said. “It definitely that engineer at heart.”

Leavitt points to friends as his biggest supporters and biggest critics.

“They know who I am as a person,” he said. “They know what I believe in, and they’re going to make sure that my feet are going to be held to the fire.”

Humble origins

Leavitt refers a lot to his “home grown” upbringing as something that shaped his personality.

At the age of 9, Leavitt, his parents and his brother moved to Vancouver to an apartment complex on Minnehaha. His mother worked for Fire District Six, his dad on the claims side of the insurance business. It wasn’t a privileged upbringing, he said, but one with humble origins and a humble environment.

His father was a disciplinarian, he said, ordering strict focus on spelling homework and well-groomed hair for school. The “perfect” hairdo combined with glasses and braces left Leavitt open to ridicule by classmates early on, but physical fitness helped him phase into becoming a more outgoing kid with confidence.

Fitness remains a big part of his routine — working out at Northwest Personal Training and 24-Hour Fitness, and playing basketball on Saturdays with a local group of guys when he can.

Outside of home and school, Leavitt’s early pastimes fit with most Vancouver boys: riding bikes around town, playing street ball in Walnut Grove, basketball at Truman Elementary and, of course, Golden Skate on the weekends. His claim to fame was that he was one of the fastest roller skaters in town, despite being “one of the poor kids with rental skates.”

In high school, he says, he got along with everyone, from the stoners to the jocks to the brainiacs. That’s a part of his upbringing that today he links with his ability to relate to different people from different walks of life.

Leavitt’s first job was with The Columbian – “Ironically enough,” he said, considering the heavy editorial support that newspaper gave Pollard through the election. It was as a paper boy that Leavitt began to learn business sense: selling subscriptions, dealing with complaints, trying to win contests.

While a senior at Fort Vancouver, Leavitt donned the brown polyester as an employee of the Hazel Dell Taco Bell, back when “we actually cooked the meat and beans.” That’s when he met his first girlfriend, and a time he developed his first interest in politics. Losing his bid to become senior class president by 12 votes didn’t deter him.

During a senior trip to the city council chambers, students were asked who wanted to sit up in the big chairs and pretend to be mayor. A young Tim was first to raise his hand.

“That is, probably, when the seed was planted.”

A new kind of leadership

“If anything he’s approachable,” said Maria Rodriguez-Salazar, president of the local chapter of League of United Latin American Citizens. LULAC supported Leavitt in his mayoral bid, impressed by his willingness to come to the table for discussions. “It was very refreshing to be able to sit down with somebody from city hall who we just felt very comfortable with,” she said.

Friends, supporters and coworkers echo the same thing about Leavitt: He may not agree with you, but he listens to you.

“It’s made for a great working relationship,” said Temple Lenz, Leavitt’s campaign manager. “There’s no pressure to be a yes man with him.”

Leavitt isn’t a gavel-in-hand kind of boss. He admits to not having all the answers, insisting instead to gather the experts and discuss the possibilities. It’s a methodical, conservative approach that goes hand-in-hand with his “calm, cool, collected” personality.

“His demeanor, his style, is what I think Vancouver needs,” Rodriguez-Salazar said.

Councilwoman Jeanne Stewart has insight into Leavitt’s leadership style from serving on the C-Tran Board with Leavitt as chair. Past chairs were “vigorously controlling” with agendas and conversations, she said. When Leavitt became chair, conversations began to linger, agenda items went back and forth.

“For the first three meetings, I’m thinking to myself, ‘come on Tim, a little leadership here.’ And I was getting a little frustrated,” Stewart said. “But by the fourth meeting, I’m starting to see that he shouldn’t have to control this. A) We have to control ourselves. B) We need to take on mutual responsibility to stay on topic. C) If someone has something important to say, we shouldn’t shut them down, we should hear their thought, have a little discussion about it, and as intelligent adults, move the agenda forward.

“And what I discovered is, it was bringing out this different style, different characteristics in the members who sat on there,” Stewart said. “It opened some doors and developed some personal growth in me and some other people, instead of sitting there being resentful.”

Moving Forward

Come January 2010, Leavitt will be in charge of the weekly Vancouver City Council meetings. He has promised to take those meetings out into the community, going to the citizens to have dialog. He becomes mayor with an experienced council, with incumbents Stewart and Jeanne Harris elected for four more years, and former councilman Jack Burkman joining the team. Leavitt’s vacated spot will be filled by a vote of the council.

“There will be some time while we learn how to work together,” Harris said. “So you’re going to see us be a little uncomfortable, squabble a little bit, and then you’ll see us fall into our rolls. Fortunately, we’ll be working with [Leavitt], who we know.”

Leavitt said his background and experience already set the stage to be a successful mayor of Vancouver. And the dogfight that became Vancouver’s mayoral race, perhaps, helped prepare him even more.

“It was really testing my faith at time – not only my faith in the community, but my personal faith,” he said, referring to the negative campaign ads against him and what he called “character assassinations.”

“You know, I’ve made mistakes and done things that I regret, but I was raised a certain way, and I think for the most part I’ve lived up to those standards.”

However, the campaign was a piece of cake compared to the work that lies ahead in the next four years, Leavitt told the crowd at the Brickhouse.

There already is a stream of questions to be answered coming off his campaign. Will the Chicago-style politics that some say plagued this election have lasting effects? Will Leavitt pursue a worthwhile fight against tolling the Columbia River Crossing, without burning bridges along the way? Or was that strictly a campaign tactic? Can Leavitt give citizens more transparency, as promised, closing the divide between city hall and the taxpayers?

“There are things that have been going on in this community that city council hasn’t been privileged to see, for better or for worse, and which I will be exposed to right out of the gate,” Leavitt admits. “Those will probably be most eye-opening to me come the middle of January.”

And so, Tim Leavitt is headed to the mayor’s chair with new energy and an impressive array personal commitments to take Vancouver forward.

Ossie Bladine is Editor-in-Chief of The Voice and occasional bocce ball champion.