Dan Ryan: Portland is in the ditch

The last-minute election porn keeps showing up in our mailbox, and it gets edgier by the day. This new one is the heaviest of the election cycle by far.

It's the starkest example I've seen of this year's wild, paradoxical strategy of the incumbents, which is to emphasize how bad things are. In Ryan's case, he's been on the job only a year and a half, and so I guess he can squirm his way out of the obvious fact that state and local governments here have failed badly. But his acknowledgment of the direness of our straits is hardly a confidence-builder.

Over on the flip side, the Ry-Guy takes his message a step further:

And most notably, he says he's not buying the touchy-feely "housing first" line that says we should wait until we have a nice little free apartment for every addict and psychopath before we do anything to clean up the streets:

It's a pretty daring set of statements. "Services first" is the opposite of "housing first." And "enabling," people, one of them finally said "enabling." So, so correct.

It was also refreshing to see that he is not bragging about "fighting" or "tackling" anybody or anything. That rap has gotten mighty old.

Despite the downer message, Ryan's words are mildly promising in a way. But hey, if he really wanted to get things going, right now, today, he could form an alliance with his City Council colleagues Wheeler and Mapps and take much bolder steps than they have so far. And so while this piece of election porn is striking, I'm sure there are a million reasons why what it's proposing won't be delivered.

But just as we had to vote for Wheeler because the alternative was much worse, so too must we give Dandy Dan another four years. I hope he uses it wisely.

Comments

  1. Can't kiss the Gonzales ring, but Dan or Wheeler I can't really hate on given the choices & position they're in & agree w/the blog on this one...

    Is Dan Ryan actually in trouble?
    Doesn't seem like he has a lot of vocal supporters, but not a lot of enemies either?

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  2. Ryan has no serious opposition. We have seen much worse than Dan.

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  3. Dan is the only incumbent I voted for- willing to give him a chance. But yes, everybody is SO concerned now. I heard that Lucy is finally going to let Charlie Brown kick the football....

    ReplyDelete

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