Electoral Evidence: Don't write off a single district!
Fri May 18, 2007 at 09:46:28 AM PDT
There are reasons why our local electric utility expected their ballot measure authorizing investment in coal generation to be a "slam dunk." Even the most optimistic of us opposing it were bracing for disappointment, hoping at best to prevent their success coming in the form of a landslide.
But, lo, a miracle occurred. Check out the odds against it, and its magnitude, after the jump.
To say that expectations amongst Democratic party and other progressive activists seldom run high in my county is an understatement. Although voter registration lists show a slight Dem plurality, our state legislators are Republicans, and our Congressman is the sole GOP member of Oregon's delegation in D.C. The state party expends little more than token resources here, prefering not to "waste" them in a district where our pickups and gun racks seem to be as effective candidate repellants.
Add to that the fact that the nature of the local "media": the hometown newspaper is owned by ultra-right-wing Eagle Publications owned by former Congressman Denny Smith (R-Oregon) who, during a previous exercise in American adventurism, was fond of bringing crowds to their feet with the line, "I'd rather fight them on the banks of the Mekong than the shores of the Columbia." I was in High School at the time, and was cheeky enough to challenge that logic on the basis that at least on the Columbia we would have the advantage of knowing the terrain... but I digress. The area's radio stations are owned by our current Republican Congressman, who, by the way, quit making public appearances when Bush's poll numbers started dropping, but was returned to the House anyway.
I think we Democrats in Wasco County can be excused some measure of pessimism. After all, the "professional strategists" at the state and national level routinely write us off altogether, choosing to place their precious eggs in bluer baskets. (Bitter? Who, me?) But in the matter of the coal plant proposal, we had even more reason than usual not to get our hopes up too high.
In the run-up to the vote, it was announced that the local aluminum smelting plant was going to be demolished. Once the largest employer in the county, and virtually the only source of real jobs (you know, the kind with living wages and actual benefits), it has been sitting all but idle in no small part due to rising electric rates. (Yes, there are plenty of other factors, but in-depth analysis of the rust-belting of America is rather beyond the scope of this tale.) Environmentalists have already been blamed for much of the area's economic woes, including loss of electric generation capacity because we "care more about salmon than people." So, it was reasonable to brace ourselves for losing this battle.
We pleaded our case at community meetings, pamphleted, and kept our fingers crossed, but the dire warnings from the Bonneville Power Administration that they were going to run out of juice in 2012, and the P.U.D.'s reminders that as windy as it is here, wind farms generate no electricity 70% of the time, felt like they might be drowning us out altogether.
Boy, were we wrong. The ballots were counted Wednesday, and 81% of the voters said no to what the utility had framed as "investment in safe, clean coal." No mountains are going to be topped to keep my appliances humming. No rivers are going to be filled with toxic slag to save me a buck on my power bill. The electric company is going to have to come up with a better plan, thanks to my neighbors.
The lesson for those of us in the trenches is to keep on plugging away, against whatever odds. I hope our state and national party will also get the message to quit dismissing us, and the millions of other Americans who don't live in true blue counties, as unworthy of their investment. Do we really know how Larry the Cable Guy will vote if he's given the facts?
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