FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

Recently, I stated that “once the May 16 primary election is close at hand” I would be discussing the City Council races and the candidates available to us.

That’s untrue on one count. While I indeed am going to discuss those races, I’m going to do so now, rather than wait.

There’s really only one reason for this: I just finished drafting my thoughts on the matter, and there’s no reason not to just get to it.

Commissioner No. 2: Anyone But Burdick

Amongst some of the local blognoscenti, there’s something of an Anyone But Sten movement going on. Although, if truth be told, much of that actually seems to be more of a Dave Lister movement.

For me, this election is far more about preventing the current stalking horse for the town’s power brokers from making up for the failure in 2004 of those interests to install Jim Francesconi into the Mayor’s office.

With the likes of Brian Gard (political campaign confidence man) and Ed Grosswiler (manager of Francesconi’s primary campaign) behind her, it comes down to this: I don’t give a rat’s ass what Ginny Burdick’s positions on many of the issues might purportedly be.

Now, the politically correct liberal within me does, in fact, believe that there are two many testicles on the dais in Council Chambers.

But the monied backers of anti-democracy (see the political tactics of Gard’s firm) cannot be permitted to inject themselves directly into a seat on the City Council. For me, the central theme of the Commissioner No. 2 election is simple: Anybody but Burdick.

Many of those championing the candidacy of Dave Lister frequently point out that he owns a business. He’s met a payroll. They repeat these things like a mantra, as if they somehow inherently indicate that such a someone is more qualified to hold public office than someone about which these things cannot be said.

I do not mean by this that Lister can’t possibly be qualified. What I mean by this is that the mantra is meaningless. GOPresident Bush once owned and/or ran businesses, including a Major League Baseball team. It clearly didn’t magically make him qualified to run the fiscal policy of the United States.

(And I will also admit to a bias: I have a particular distaste for the Brainstorm NW crowd. You’ll notice that Lister’s website touts his having written for that particular magazine.)

But the bulk of what I hear his supporters argue is that his experience running a small business automatically makes him qualified — if not moreso than the incumbent — to sit on the Council. And there’s simply no automatic magic connection between the two.

They have to do better than that argument.

To be clear, I have never had anything personally against Lister. I met him many times over the course of publishing Portland Communique, and it’s not as if he ever came across as an idiot or an asshole, because he came across as neither.

That said, there’s a curious degree of venom in this piece, where he generalizes an entire room full of people into some sort of degenerate “poor by choice” crowd.

At the end, he huffs that “Portland’s job creators [who] have participated in the political process by funding the campaigns of the candidates” will not, with the advent of publicly-financed campaigns, have a voice anymore because the only other option for them would be the absolutely degenerate horror of having “to go downtown and mix it up with the poor by choice.”

(And I’m setting aside the fact that this word of warning doesn’t actually make sense, since Portland’s publicly-financed campaign program is not mandatory. Lister’s vaunted job creators, who he seems to find somehow more intrinsically worthy than the “poor by choice,” continue to be able to dump as much money as they want behind any candidate not participating in the program. Whether this indicates that Lister doesn’t understand the program, hasn’t read it, or is lying about it remains unclear here.)

Lister ends most, if not all, of these pieces, with this: “But what the heck do I know? I’m just an Eastside Guy.” I would hope that Lister’s dismissive and derogatory attitudes are not representative of how Eastsiders view their fellow Portlanders. But if these sorts of gross over-generalizations are the norm, then perhaps there’s a good reason we haven’t put many Eastside Guys on the City Council.

Not long before I shuttered Portland Communique, I argued that the weakness of Erik Sten was a possible preference for legislative over administrative duties, perhaps to the detriment of the skills (or the attention) required for more routine bureau management.

I should note, as I write this, that the Mayor might believe this as well. Just take a look at Sten’s bureau assignments, as compared to those of the other Council members. A couple of bureaus, one of which relates to housing which is a “big picture/big idea” emphasis of his. And then a couple areas of focus that aren’t bureaus, one of which technically, when it was first assigned, amounted to Sten’s bid to have the City purchase PGE — another “big picture/big idea” emphasis.

(To be clear, I don’t use “big picture/big idea” as a dismissive term or phrase, since generally I support the specific goals. The term is meant to distinguish policy making and legislative responsibilities from the more mundane and day-to-day administrative management of actual bureaus.)

In a sense, it’s an argument for Sten perhaps being better suited to what on the Federal level would be some sort of czar position. But this isn’t a campaign for Czar of Whatever — it’s a campaign for a seat on City Council.

Many of us also grew tired of a certain degree of, shall I say, wishy-washiness on his part, most prominently on exhibit during the annual ritual of renewing the memorandum of understanding governing the City’s participation in the Joint Terrorism Task Force. You can see the same sort of dynamic at play in comment of Sten’s which are compared by Jack Bog.

In the end, however, there’s a problem. I don’t happen to believe there are any truly viable or workable candidates other than (technically, anyway) Burdick or Lister, and I can’t bring myself to support either of them.

It would have been nice if the campaign for this particular seat had developed an opponent which would truly challenge Sten on the merits without, as will be the case for Burdick/Groswiler/Gard, slime. But in the absence of such a challenger, and regardless of any other issues, Sten sort of has his seat by default.

That’s politics for you.

Commissioner No. 3: Anyone But Saltzman

I presume that it’s clear to anyone who read Communique, but now would be the time and opportunity to make it abundantly so: Dan Saltzman irritates the living crap out of me.

For the purposes of this item, it will suffice merely to make passing reference to the disaster of his push to cap the Mt. Tabor reservoirs — a push which somehow managed to include the same consultancy firm being permitted to declare that there was a problem with the reservoirs and then also being given some of the contracts for solving those problems.

Impropriety or not, corruption or not, that’s precisely the sort of thing against which public officials are meant to guard. When the same company who states there’s a problem also gets to correct it, people are well within their rights to cry foul, since it presents at least the appearance that they could have found “problems” just so they’d then get paid to “solve” them.

To not have guarded against this means either that Saltzman deliberately was letting this company get away with something, that he didn’t even notice the conflict of interest, or that he simply didn’t care. None of these options can possibly be considered a plus for him.

As it turns out, that was more than just a passing reference. But it needed to be made perfectly clear.

But the other problem with Saltzman is his occasional (but dramatic) streak of anti-rationalism.

Not an irrationality, but an anti-rationalism, which came into its most stark relief when he stooped to wrapping himself in the tragic banner of 9/11, speaking for the victims of the attack while simultaneously claiming not to be doing so, as he cast his vote against requiring proper local oversight over Portland police officers to ensure that their work with the Joint Terrorism Task Force was not violating Oregon law.

This from the Council member who actually bothered to step up and sponsor a resolution in protest of the USA PATRIOT Act when no other Council member (including, it should be stated, Sten) would do so.

Rhetoric is nice. But if you don’t actually step up to the plate when it counts, with actual policy decisions over which you have some control, then the rhetoric is only just so much gas. If I want gas, I’m perfectly capable of choosing to have beans for dinner.

And this is important regardless of whether or not you happen to believe the JTTF debate was a proper issue for the Council to be addressing. The particular issue isn’t the point. Rather, the point is Saltzman’s approach to it, and the anti-rationality he exhibited during the Council discussion.

I’ll spare you any extended mention his attempted political stunt of trying to rush reforms to police and firefighters disability and retirement fund onto the ballot to coincide with his own primary campaign.

If nothing else, Amanda Fritz scores points for pointing out a major flaw in a change to Commissioner Adams’ lobbying registration proposal which was being pushed by infamous local lobbyist Len Bergstein.

I have no earthly idea whether or not Bergstein’s manipulation of the proposal was ultimately allowed to stand. But at least Fritz pointed out the problem at the time.

Amongst all of the people running for the two available Council seats, Fritz is the one who (so far) escapes any attempt I might make to shitcan her in addition to the other candidates discussed here.

That said, I should mention that somewhere I have notes from one meeting or another where I very specifically jotted down something that caused me some irk. But the meeting in question never got written up for Communique prior to its being shut down, and I haven’t yet had the chance to see if those notes are readily available somewhere.

But in the main, while this race, for me, is mainly about anyone but Saltzman, the City likely could do worse than to elect Fritz to Saltzman’s seat, if only to create a Council which includes someone with a neighborhood orientation and plenty of experience dealing with the City.

We’ve had that opportunity before. But the last time, I found myself having to endorse “none of the above” when a set of neighborhood insurgents were trying to unseat Randy Leonard.

To date, I’ve not yet seen anything from Fritz which suggests to me any disqualifying behavior such as what I witnessed in that case in 2004. For the time being, Fritz has my benefit of the doubt.

Caveat, Sort Of

All of that said, it is my intention to attend two candidate events prior to the election: April’s forum hosted by the League of Women Voters, and May’s annual Candidates Gone Wild event. That gives the candidates just over a month to sway me from the above.

I won’t hold my breath.