Let's Get It Started

[March 22nd, 2006] Go to www.candidatesgonewild.com to respond.

At 10:24 pm, March 13, 2006, CityHallVet wrote:

OK, folks, on May 1 at the Roseland Theater a lineup of local politicos will squirm, perform and try to look hip at Willamette Week's and the Oregon Bus Project's Candidates Gone Wild. In the meantime, we Portlanders need to get fired up and fire up the candidates through this online conversation about what matters and what doesn't in the local Portland political scene.

First, and briefly, my credentials: I worked at Portland City Hall for a half-dozen years in the '90s as a commissioner's assistant. I dealt with it all: transportation, land use and development, public safety, parks, citizens' activists, the nattering neighborhood nabobs of negativity, fat cat developers, whining downtown business tycoons...well, you get the picture. I have also served as political advisor on many local campaigns and have worked at other levels of government for electeds.

Enough about me, let's talk about a critical issue in play right now in city politics.

Voter-owned elections...code for publicly financed City Council campaigns or the rise of communism, people power in the People's Republic, a direct attack on all that is decent and good about our great nation. In other words, a spear chucked directly at the heart of the American Dream—that's right, the wealthy, the powerful...shiver in your boots....the big-business boys.

This initiative is, for now, the law of this land. You've read about the well-financed, frontal assaults from the First Things First Committee, thus far repelled by the signature counters. But the mud wrestling will continue. It ain't over by a long shot. (In fact, it was reported on March 14 that the committee of big spenders planned to try to place its repeal measure before voters on the November 2006 ballot.)

Why? Because money talks, and money means power in Portland. It does at every political level: the city, the county, the state and the nation. Our political system is rife with it, and every single soul in the game knows it.

Don't kid yourselves, there is a very good reason that aerial trams are built no matter the cost in dollars or sense; that a small cadre of well-heeled developers get tax breaks, tax abatements and tax-increment financing; and that corporations provide a shrinking sliver of the tax revenue pie. Let's name this dog. A $10,000 political contribution pays for itself many times over. The politicians say they are clean, but they are tainted. It is not their fault. It is the way it is. It is a matter of survival. I have been on the inside, and I can assure you the big-money contributors get their calls answered first and get more face time with those in power than any other citizen. They also usually get what they want. Period. End of story!

That's why they are hoppin' mad about this idea. If the mere collection of 1,000 five-dollar bills can get you $150,000 or more in real campaign cash and you get elected, whose call are you going to answer? Who is going to call the tune if the voters or citizens have more power? Sure, the big boys will still try and throw their weight around, but if their threats against electeds of bankrolling a future opponent are empty, then a lot more politicians are going to find their courage each and every morning.

Is the system devised, championed and put into place by Erik the Red and the City Council the right one? Is it perfect? I don't really know, and I am not sure I care at this point. This is, after all, a radical experiment.

But I do know one thing: They have attacked the belly of the right beast. We all wring our hands about "what's gone wrong with the political system?" Why do voters and citizens feel so cynical, so disenfranchised, so hopeless? Because they are disenfranchised, they are powerless, they are frustrated. If this isn't the right fix, so be it. Tweak it, improve it, make it work. But do not abandon this reform effort! I believe we have hit the target dead-on. That high-pitched squeal of pain and indignation we hear from those currently greasing the wheels tells us all that this is so. Let us enjoy the death rattle.