Mayor

Flip a coin. The business candidate who can’t articulate a single policy proposal (or pay his rent and taxes on time) or the career insider in the hip pocket of the big condo developers who will bring nine-story “green” towers and rich white people on bikes* to a gentrifying neighborhood near you. Dozono may be the best hope for a break from big-time public subsidies to the Homer Williams set, but don’t expect him to utter the words “rent stabilization” or “gentrification.” If you’re a renter, working class, poor, black or brown, you don’t have a dog in this fight. You can write me in if you want.
*I support equal rights for bike riders on our roads. Don’t take this statement as a repudiation of the bike community.

City Commissioner seat #1

Amanda Fritz. Transit nerd Chris Smith would turn the city into one big Pearl district he could. Charles Lewis? Meh. Not impressed. He seems quite angry, and quite willing to use his non-profit as a platform to jump into a higher-paying job. (Of course it’s all for the good of the children!) Jeff Bissonnette? Nice guy. Doesn’t have a chance. Mike Fahey? Grumpy old man; not running a serious campaign. John Branam? His campaign seems to be a jobs program for unemployed alt-weekly editors.

City Commissioner seat #2

Ed Garren. Of all the candidates running for city government, Garren gets gentrification the best. I’ll give Nick Fish a green light, too. He understands neighborhood issues, and he’s the candidate with a real chance to beat Sten’s anointed successor Jim Middaugh.

State measures

These were off my radar until I got my ballot. There are no arguments in opposition for any of them, but the arguments in favor scare me. Kevin Mannix. Crime victims’ rights groups. District attorney’s groups. My knee-jerk reaction is to vote against them, based on who is in favor of them. Use your best judgment on these. I got nothin’.

Democratic primary

I’m not registered Democrat, so I don’t get a vote in these, but here’s my take on the races:

Senate

Flip a coin. I like Novick personally. But policy-wise, there’s not much space separating him from Merkley. Either one would be to the left of Wyden, not to mention Smith. There seems to be a battle going on for the heart and soul of the state party, and it’s a freakin’ ugly fight. The old circular firing squad, as third-party spoiler John Frohnmayer called it. Frohnmayer, a former Republican, is coming into this race as a populist progressive. He will likely hand the race to Smith, regardless of who wins the Democratic nod. Like the mayor’s race, it’s a sad state of affairs. (I’m just reporting what I see, folks.)

President

Obama, simply because I don’t think Hillary stands a chance against McCain. Both Clinton and Obama are closer policy-wise to Bush than they are to me, and they are both bought and paid for by Wall Street. I strongly suspect the Democratic party is going to figure out a way to fuck up yet another in a string of gimme elections, and we’re going to be stuck with a McCain/Lieberman White House in January. Obama has an insurmountable delegate lead, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the party bigwigs throw it to Hillary.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 7:04 am and is filed under Economics, Election '08, Gentrification, Me, Politics, Portland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.