What on earth is happening with the Portland Charter Commission race?
I’ve tried to avoid it. I’ve alluded to how my social media feed is challenging my blood pressure meds…
What has a burned out, privileged af, boring forty-something year old so riled up?
Last fall, the city of Portland voted to open a “Charter Commission.” What is a Charter? Think of it as the city’s constitution — while it doesn’t have a bill of rights or pretentious preamble, it does outline how our city government works. It says we have a mayor, a city council, districts, we vote every X years, the budget is decided by Y, etc. Stuff that is probably boring as hell to most people. A “Charter Commission” is opened when the city’s voters decide that they want to edit the charter instead of simply amending it a little bit. Watch this, it’s better than anything I can type into this thing:
So it’s basically a bunch of elected citizens giving their time and energy to improve the way the city operates. Thank God we have such people, I know I couldn’t do it.
How could this possibly upset me?
The Charter Commission was one of many things promoted by a group in Portland by People First Portland. (Before we get much further — I am not a member of People First Portland, not because I disagree with them, but I’m just…not), but for now, you can remember that People First Portland was the very same group that promoted the following ballot initiatives in 2020:
- A higher minimum wage
- Green New Deal building codes
- Facial recognition ban
- Fair Rent
- Caps on AirBnBs
All but the last initiative won by shockingly wide margins (and the last one was a nail-biter). To be honest, I was surprised that the last one was the unpopular one, but that’s another post…
So — pretty popular, right? This is a group that has some wind behind its sails!
The “Mailer”
A few weeks ago, People First Portland (or is it People First Charter? The branding confuses me — they seem to be the same people) decided to flex its muscles and choose some folks in the Charter Commission race to endorse, as political groups like PFP often do. They put together a pamphlet and mailed it out to a bunch of residents. It… did not go over very well.
YIKES! What in God’s name was in that mailer? Personal attacks? Accusations? Innuendo? Dogwhistles? Black and white photos of candidates kicking puppies?
Note that these are not far-right or conservative candidates. To the contrary, they’re mostly quite progressive.
What was in it?
For something so infamous and nasty, online copies of the thing were hard to find. I remembered reading it about a month ago — it was a colorful thing, neatly designed, much like a scorecard from MPA or a bunch of other candidates. I scanned it, confirmed what I basically already knew, and tossed it into the blue City of Portland recycle bin. I was able to find this on PFP’s Instagram:
Hmm… colored dots. The columns represent issues that are important to People First Portland, and the colors represent the degree to which PFP believes the candidates’ values matches their own. Hmph. There must be something else, right?
Eventually I was able to track down a little more — there was a link in the Instagram bio to the full scorecard online. Let’s check out what despicable gutter politics lurk inside it!
On the page, you can also read the written responses to the questions when the candidates responded. Some have supporting statements, some just say “Support” or “Undecided.”
Fortunately, a friend reached out to me and mailed me a photo of the back of the controversial mailer, which doesn’t seem to be available online. I was worried I had been forgetting something important, so it was good to have a re-read:
I’ve been on committees for political groups that have made candidate endorsements before. It’s hard. Candidates get a lot of these and don’t have time to write paragraphs about their positions. But to be fair, 1.) voters don’t always have the time or attention span to read paragraphs about your position, and 2.) ultimately, as a committee member, or council member, or legislator, or whatever, your nuanced, thoughtful, carefully weighed opinion will come down to a yes or no vote. That’s it. You don’t get to vote “Yes, but here’s why.”
Honestly, candidates get so damned many of these things that they usually don’t have the time to spend crafting thorough responses, anyway. Many would rather check a box and be done with it. And that’s (probably?) fine.
Ironically, endorsement committees are often faced with the very same conundrum. Should we endorse the best candidate even if they don’t match all of our group’s values? Should we only endorse members of our own group? Is endorsing people at all even worth the fuss? And all of that is what leads to succinct formats like the one above with a grid and colored dots.
Chann’s protest against the mailer was one of the earliest I recall seeing, as was former mayor Cheryl Leeman’s, who at a District 4 Debate for Charter Commission (coincidentally, a more apt place for dialogue), she said
“I do not appreciate the untruths that have been put in this flyer about where I stand or votes that I took on issues.” — Cheryl Leeman (R), Former Portland Mayor and District 4 Candidate Debate, 05/19/2021
But it seems that People First Portland kept receipts, and backed up everything they said, with references. There were no “untruths” after all.
What’s Really Going On?
From where I sit, it’s pretty obvious what is really going on, and that is what has me so riled up.
The people who started the faux outrage after the mailer went out seem to be, generally, the very same people who were opposed to opening a Charter Commission in the first place. They are the people who’ve raised over $10,000 to win this race (as of May 1!), it’s the people who have admitted they’d consider disbanding the very commission they’re running for. As it turns out, there are a lot of people who are quite satisfied with keeping things the way they are. A lot of them are the same folks who campaigned against those five referenda I mentioned earlier.
And it’s working. The mailer now has a reputation, deserved or not. Read any comment thread on Facebook about it, and there are usually more than a few people who don’t even know what mailer is being discussed. Other commenters try to tie People First Portland to a polarizing former mayor, making personal attacks.
Some of the other comments in the above thread call PFP a “shadowy PAC,” which is laughable. People First Portland is a ragtag couple-dozen or so Portlanders with a surprisingly strong track record taking on the people making the city unaffordable to most people.
“These tactics — whether they are used by the right or the left — are dividing our nation and our city. PACs run by unaccountable political operatives should have no say in our city charter.” -Ryan Lizanecz, District 5 Candidate, on his Facebook capmaign page
The obvious (to me) strategy at play here is to smear People First Portland, and by proxy, all those people who PFP endorsed. And that has put all those candidates on their heels, playing defense and denouncing this so-called “attack.” With people convinced that PFP is some sort of (Dark corporate PAC? Communist propaganda cult? Which is it, it really can’t be both!), candidates a forced to distance themselves from them.
Many of those candidates now denouncing PFP are people I consider my friends (or at least decent acquaintances with whom I have not yet made enemies… but perhaps that’s about to change). So I’m telling you this out of a place of kindness and friendship, and I sincerely mean it from a place of love:
You are all being played.
Think back to the reasons that motivated you to enter this race. Think of who your past allies have been for enacting those causes. Please consider the possibility that folks demanding civility and kindness in the wake of this, um, hit piece (like the attorney for Real Estate Developers who sits on the City Council) may have ulterior motives to do so.
Discrediting you, and discrediting People First Portland, kills a whole bunch of birds with one stone — birds they’d really prefer not to have around. You don’t need to hide, and you don’t need to keep repeating how awful it is that PFP had the audacity to publish people’s positions on issues.
Those of us who actually remember reading the mailer in question recognize the pearl-clutching “leaders” crying foul… they’re making a mountain (nay, a whole mountain range!) out of a molehill, quite intentionally.
Shouldn’t I Feel Better Now?
I got it off my chest, but I don’t feel better. I backed away from doing political stuff a couple of years ago because it was doing a terrible number on my mental health, and I’m wading into it again my writing and sharing this.
I’ll probably piss off a lot of people whom I consider to be friends and allies. I want people designing this charter to make Portland work for the people who live here and wear name tags at their workplaces. I don’t trust the likes of the same old people we’ve let lead in the past with that job.
A lot of the folks whose candidacy I support are running for office for the first time. They didn’t sign up for any of this. But the enemy isn’t PFP or their “divisive” mailer, it’s the people who never wanted you to run in the first place.
But those same old people have held onto power because they’re good at holding onto power. They’re doing it yet again by creating this fake controversy and forcing candidates to throw their ideological kinfolk at PFP under the Metro. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if the charter commission’s first motion isn’t to disband.
