Pragmatic, tough Cole heads into runoff
As a member of the Austin City Council, Sheryl Cole won plaudits for her even-keeled, conciliatory approach in the choppiest policy waters.
Her challenge now, as she steers toward a May runoff for the Democratic nomination in an East Austin Texas House district, is whether she can turn port fast enough to satisfy liberal primary voters.
Cole, 53, faces Jose “Chito” Vela in the race to replace state Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin, in a district that runs from East Austin to Manor and includes parts of Pflugerville.
During her stint on the Austin City Council from 2006 to 2014, Cole was sometimes described as “nice,” “quiet” and “thoughtful” in the media and by her allies.
But she could be tough — and exercise some political muscle. She pushed hard, for example, on police matters involving excessive force in ways that put her at odds with the city’s powerful police union. After the Austin City Council initially declined, in 2010, to settle a wrongful death suit in the police shooting of Nathaniel Sanders II, Cole successfully campaigned for a challenger to one of the council members who opposed a settlement. The new council then authorized a $750,000 payment to Sanders’ family.
She also swung into action after some Austin businesses shut down during the 2009 Texas Relays and city officials closed some Interstate 35 exit ramps downtown.
The event is attended by as many 40,000 tourists, many of them African-American, and the decisions by the businesses sparked protests by black ministers and the Austin NAACP.
Cole worked with other officials to cultivate a more positive vibe: The following year, she managed to keep open I-35 exits downtown and helped facilitate the addition of more officers at Highland Mall, where businesses had shuttered, so that it would keep its normal hours.
Her pragmatic approach was effective in other ways: She successfully pushed for affordable housing, championed the public-private partnership behind the Waller Creek Conservancy and sponsored in 2012 an Austin resolution in support of same-sex marriage — the first such in the state. She even managed to get new rules passed that led to the closure of Chester’s Club, a raucous East Austin nightclub that had long been unpop- ular with neighbors.
Her public service has earned wide praise from Austin’s heavy-hitting Democratic stalwarts: U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, state Sen. Kirk Watson, former state Rep. Wilhelmina Delco, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt, as well as Austin’s two previous mayors, Black Austin Democrats, labor unions
and Annie’s List are all listed as supporters.
Cole deserves to win because she “knows the district very well and is the most qualified,” said Nelson Linder, head of the Austin chapter of the NAACP. “She has all the experience, she works for everybody and has the right disposition.”
“She’s very professional, she’s very steady, she’s not reactionary,” he elaborated.
Like other African-Americans interviewed, he said it’s important to have a black Austin voice in the Legislature — but said Cole should get the job because of her experience and qualifications.
Donna Edwards, an architect who describes herself as a “rabid progressive”
and who has donated to Cole’s campaign, said that “in today’s political climate where discourse has been downgraded, where coa- litions are not easily built, we’re going to need people who can work across the aisle.” But in these fist-shaking
times, ones in which Republicans and Democrats are eager for confrontation, her collaborative style has struck some of Austin’s youngest Democrats — and those newest to the city — as nearly quaint.
“We don’t want some- one playing nice and getting deals done,” said Jeremy Hendricks, spokesman for Austin Liberal Democrats, which endorsed Vela. “We want someone who would will call out shenanigans and throw bombs.”
Hendricks said many of the group’s members are either so new to Austin or so fresh to politics that “they don’t
know Sheryl’s past.” Cole, for her part, says her approach depends on the issue at play, but that she’ll look for opportunities to find common ground across the political spectrum.
“You’re never going to have reconciliation when it comes to the Republican position on reproductive rights,” she said. “But we can try to come to agreement on environmental conservation.”
At the Legislature, Cole said, she wants to build on
her accounting background and City Hall experience to work on pension and school finance system issues.
Cole received 38.2 percent of the vote and Vela won 39.6 percent in the March primary. Dukes got 10.2 percent.
Flatland roots
Cole’s open-faced approach dates to her upbringing on the flatlands of North Texas.
She and her brother were raised in Wichita Falls, nearly 300 miles north of Austin, near the Oklahoma border.
She has described her upbringing as “lower mid- dle class,” with a mother who was a maid and a father who was a house painter. Academically bright, Cole said she was in the honor society and worked selling blue jeans.
Cole, the first in her fam- ily to attend college, earned an academic scholarship to the University of Texas. She studied accounting because she wanted a high-paying job that would allow her to stay in Austin.
At UT, she met her future husband, Kevin Cole, who was also an accounting student. After graduating in 1986, she got a job in Austin as an accountant. But two years later, intrigued by the life of the courtroom, she attended UT’s law school.
After graduation, Sheryl Cole practiced civil litigation before working at the Texas Municipal League. She later joined the firm Cole & Powell until she was elected to the City Council.
Her political career had started in 1997 serving on the PTA at Lee Elementary School in the Hancock neighborhood. She had two young sons, Marcus and Nelson, and had recently taken in her 9-year-old nephew, Femi, whose mother had died in a car accident.
Cole sat on the boards of such organizations as Planned Parenthood and Communities in Schools, which focused on dropout prevention, and chairing a successful Austin school district bond campaign.
In 2006, Cole ran for City Council and won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. She twice won re-election — the only real hiccup was media coverage of expenses tied to a South Africa trip in 2011.
At the time she said the $5,200 trip using city money was worth the expense and that the trip didn’t add to the cost of running her office.
“It’s not as though taxpayers had to pay more because I went to Africa,” she told the American-Statesman in 2013.
Cole said the trip, orga- nized by the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, was useful because that country is try
ing to address climate protection in ways that might be helpful to Austin.
After an unsuccessful mayoral run, Cole returned to her legal practice and registered as a lobbyist at the city of Austin, earning as much as $60,000 in the most recent four-month reporting period as she advocated on behalf of entities ranging from the Austin school district to property develop- ment company Manchester Texas Financial Group, the builder of the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Austin.
‘Practical and pragmatic’
Stephanie McDonald, a former City Council chief of staff for Cole, described her as “dogged.”
“You see it in her commitment to affordable hous- ing, her work around mental health. We worked really hard on Waller Creek. Question what you want about the engineering and the tunnel itself ” — the project has had a series of costly setbacks — “the fact that the project languished for so long before she took it on speaks to Sheryl’s determination to make something
happen,” McDonald said. The very qualities that made her so effective at the city level will make Cole that much more valuable at the Capitol, McDonald said. “She is not partisan for the sake of being partisan —
that’s something missing at the Legislature,” said McDon-
ald, who is now chief of staff at Central Health. “She’s an attorney and accountant by training. She’s pretty practical and pragmatic. That pragmatism is important for trying to work for both sides of any legislative body.”
“I think she understands fragility of everyday existence: She wants to make sure every day is a big day
a nd we’re getting done important stuff. The Legislature needs that kind of can-do attitude,” she said.
And, for the record, she said Cole is not all that quiet: “Her laugh is almost a cackle.”
The runoff is May 22, with early voting beginning May 14.
The winner faces Republican Gabriel Nila, a public
school teacher, in November.