The sickle gets hammered
I had to chuckle when I read this one: Mitch Green, one of the socialistas in the Portand City Council Book Club, has lost two union endorsements in his re-election bid becase he opposes spending city money to renovate the Moda Center arena at the behest of the billionaire owner of the Trail Blazers. He also had the nerve to point out that the Bull Run water filtration project will double everyone's already outrageous water bills when cheaper alternatives were available. That is blasphemy to the construction boys, too.
Mitch, welcome to Portland politics, where the unholy alliance of the construction companies, unions, and real estate developers have pretty much run things for 50 years. (Over the last 25, the nonprofits have joined them in the star chamber.) Tax revenues belong to them first and foremost, and don't you forget it. You do things their way, or you go find yourself a real job outside of politics. They have the heads of many of your predecessors stuffed and mounted on the walls of their trophy room in Dunthorpe.
So you just make a speech, display a pained facial expression if you must, but be sure to vote to give those nine figures to those billionaires, and let some of it trickle down to the union overlords for distribution among the laborers. Laborers, Mitch! Power to the people, remember?
I happen to agree with Green on both these issues, although on the whole, we'd be a lot better off without him on the council. He and the other five spoiled brats on the left wing are a painful blister on the heel of progress.
But here's an interesting question: Under Portland's dopey version of "rank choice" voting, how are the unions going to make Green pay for his offenses? If the re-election campaigns are like the inaugural go-'round two years ago, none of the candidates are going to criticize any of the others directly, because by doing so they might risk losing second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth-place votes of the fans of the candidate they're criticizing. And with three seats up for grabs at the same time, to get rid of an incumbent you'd probably have to back two or more of his opponents and hope your targeted incumbent finishes fourth.
Anyway, I hope the unions apply the same screws to two of the birds running for re-election in District 3, Morillo and Lane. They're as bad as Green, or worse. And they, too, owe it all to The People. United. As in unions.
He only lost the endorsement of the leadership, not the workers.
ReplyDeleteSomething I've heard more than once, when doing organizing around Portland, particularly with the construction trades - union leadership does not always represent the views of the membership, in these situations. Members are aware that the projects they're working on could price them & their families out of the city, over the long-term, but say their leadership is not sharing their concerns & are focused only on jobs for-now (and their relationship with politicians, of course).
So membership may have ideas of their own, when they're alone with their ballots next Fall.
Decades ago, union leadership was in lock step with its members. Of course, those were the days when their primary function to over see the things that benefited its members.
ReplyDeleteHe's not the worst. Avalos and Zimmerman are tied - I don't care if Zimmerman avoided the the DSA endorsement, he's got no idea what's going on and plays like he's some operational guru. Avalos can cut and paste AI talking points all day, but is equally clueless.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thing about Portland's ranked choice voting is that the ease of entry to office likely means that you would be extremely vulnerable to a recall campaign.
ReplyDeleteIf you were only elected with 35% voter support in your multi-member district, how are you going to fair in a recall that presents a binary up or down question to that same district?
These guys are all incredibly vulnerable. If one of them falls in a recall, everything will change.
If we could ever get healthcare not being dependent on being provided by unions and/or companies they would not have nearly the power to influence who to vote for. That dependence has largely caused so much disruption in our economy it is hard to measure. Government healthcare of course has its own big issues because of the massive corruption, but at least we'd have a framework to try to improve upon.
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