Dear Gonzo: Run to the middle
I was a little disappointed to see this tweet from Rene Gonzalez's mayoral campaign. I get the part about not being safe on Tri-Met, and I get the part about it not being cool that they firebombed his parents' car in front of his house. But why he's bringing up school closure issues from four years ago is beyond me.
Taking a stand against ideology has a cost. Rene has been doing it since they locked children out of Oregon schools in 2020.
— Rene For Portland (@reneforportland) February 3, 2024
But the fight for Portland’s livability has hundreds of little sacrifices, including some freedoms. It is worth it - every day - in the fight for Portland. https://t.co/vMfn9G1F6n
Dude, what does the school closure thing have to do with being mayor, in 2025? You already have a lock on all the Trumpy votes in Portland (few as they are). Why go out of your way to alienate progressive people who thought safety was the paramount concern during Covid? It doesn't make sense. What next – you're anti-vaccine?
Speak to the voters who, even though leaning hard left, have had enough. Stay on topic. Forget Covid. It's over.
If it weren't for COVID, we never would have heard of Gonzalez. COVID jump started his political career. It's like the guy was on the winning football team in high school and still talks about it today. Even so, he's our best bet for mayor. Rubio and JVP are cut from the same cloth and Mapps will do whatever staff tells him to do.
ReplyDeleteThe school closure thing generates a TON of heat amongst the Moms for Liberty crowd on the Elon app. What I don't think Gonzalez (or West, his fellow traveler here in Clackistan) gets is that Moms for Liberty is MOSTLY bots and don't actually cast ballots.
ReplyDeleteYeah on the Elon app it seems like the "conservative" influencers numbers around a dozen or twenty, but this user base only get 200-500 "likes" on a top notch post. There's probably 100 combined liberal Portland accounts I regularly see post, but these also get only 200-500 "likes" per post. Elon's App is pretty far removed from the pulse of Portland, and it's very clear that many of the "conservative" commentators left Portland long ago, and many likely never lived in the city's voting boundaries.
DeleteMoms for Liberty isn't all bots. I'm hoping the big sex scandal in Florida will hasten their demise
Deletehttps://thehill.com/homenews/education/4372144-moms-liberty-rocky-year-elections-scandal/
The “Dude” brings back fond memories of long ago.
ReplyDeleteGiven all the PPS downtime this year and how bad the public’s memory is (schools were closed, it was bad!) this might not be a total loser. He’s 100% toast on the far left anyway so maybe it resonates with more center left PPS liberals who are on the fence about him.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for calling out the school district (including Julia Brimming Over) for its incompetence (although there's not much the mayor can or should do about it). But the Covid lockdown gripe is really old and a turnoff for many.
DeleteA lot of people would like us all to forget how the lock down hurt students and many businesses.
DeletePPS had one of the longest Covid lockdowns in the country and you’ve talked about on this blog about how the teachers were rushed to the front of the vaccination line only to then not teach.
DeleteOregon is the only state in the country where test scores have yet to turn around post-Covid. So it seems the lockdown is a good point to remind people of.
I actually complained about the line-skipping for the teachers quite a bit. But that was three years ago. If I were running for mayor, I'd stopping beating that horse. It's dead.
DeleteI kinda have to believe that educating children is pretty important, especially the kids that may not be self motivated, to do it for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe worthless, unscientific and dangerous mask mandate damaged many children from language development because they learn from lip reading. The hypochondriac teacher's union forced the school closure much longer than needed. Kids were never in danger and many states had schools open years before Oregon. Oregon is filled with a bunch of scared little sheep that run to .gov to save them from reality.
ReplyDeleteOn and on and on. You guys need to turn off Fox News. Trust me, Gonzalez is going nowhere if this is what he wants to talk about.
ReplyDelete“You need to turn off Fox News” is a lazy way of avoiding asking why Portland was among the last large school districts to open after COVID. Please don’t tell me it’s because OHA and PAT and Kate Brown were public health geniuses.
DeleteFound Fox News after becoming fed up with the bias in the “major” networks. Continues to puzzle me that elites consider those networks mainstream.
DeleteIt's virtue-signalling. He is angling to get a piece of the anti-vaxx anti-mask vote.
ReplyDelete