Looks like the gloves are coming off in the race for mayor of America’s Vancouver, which pits city council member Tim Leavitt against veteran incumbent Royce Pollard.
From The Columbian:
Vancouver mayoral candidate Tim Leavitt has missed “an outrageous” 16 elections over the past 10 years, including primary elections in 2008 and 2006 and general elections in 2002, 2000, 1999 and 1998, according to a review of voting records by the Vancouver Firefighters Union. Leavitt doesn’t dispute missing the votes, but says it has nothing to do with his ability to serve as mayor.
And an IBEW political action committee, PAC 48, has put up a little web site in honor of Leavitt called “Stop Lying Tim Leavitt.” Nothing subtle about that.
Jeff Mapes at The Oregonian had an interesting little post today concerning a $15,000 donation made to an Oregon IBEW committee from wealthy Clark County resident David Nierenberg, who has given mightily to all sorts of Democrats, philanthropic causes and his former boss Mitt Romney. From Jeff Mapes on Politics:
As it happens, though, the PAC operated by Local 48 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers on the same day – Sept. 23 – gave $30,000 to PAC 48 of Washington. That PAC is also operated by the union, but it operates across the river where many of the union’s members are located.
So it appears Nierenberg is coming in big in support of long-time incumbent Royce Pollard. Well, $15,000 isn’t really big money for a guy like Nierenberg, but in a Vancouver mayor’s race it’s still a decent chunk of change. (Full blogger ethics panel disclosure: I knew Nierenberg from a campaign group called Evergreen Citizens for Schools from roughly 1998-2002. While he would probably take a phone call from me, I haven’t spoken to him for several years.)
Chris at Politics is a Blood Sport has a pretty straight-forward take on Nierenberg’s involvement:
David Nierenberg contributes to causes and candidates that he believes will benefit the region. While there’s little agreement from this little blog about the benefits of a Mitt Romney, there’s a wide range of agreement on other candidates Nierenberg has backed over the years.
Pollard is truly in the fight of his political life, and he’ll need all the help he can get from IBEW Local 48 and others if he is to succeed. What may have started as a simple off-year mayoral race is turning into a referendum on the new bridge, light rail, and the overall direction of Vancouver for years to come.
Leavitt has mounted a serious challenge to Pollard, that’s for sure, but he’s done it by exploiting economic uncertainty and trying to have it both ways on tolling when it comes to the CRC project that would build a new bridge on I-5 between Vancouver and Portland. A lot of Leavitt’s rhetoric is that same old “waste fraud abuse” stuff, burbbling about government being run like a business, etc. You know the type.
There isn’t going to be a new bridge without tolls; the Congressional delegations know it, Oregon officials remind us of it repeatedly, and at least Royce Pollard faced up to this basic fact a long time ago. Leavitt can try to finesse the issue all he wants, but he’s built a campaign by capitalizing on the issue and if elected mayor, it would seem to be difficult, if not impossible, for him to endorse tolling. In essence, the bridge project would most likely be doomed.
There’s a great irony in all this. Leavitt is the preferred candidate of the local BIAW chapter, whose members presumably would benefit from improvements in transportation between Clark County and Portland. In a conventional political world like the ones in political science textbooks, the bidness guys and gals from the BIAW would get behind the moderately conservative, pro-business incumbent who wants to make it easier for people to live and shop in their city. But the conventional, tidy views of politics that still find voice in newspapers and on NPR exist only in some imaginary pony land. In the real world, conservatives pull out all the stops, on every issue, from the top to the bottom, and with control of both Clark County and the City of Vancouver within their reach, they’re not bloody likely to let up now, and they’re not at all sentimental about all the good things Royce Pollard has done over the years, either for them or the community at large.
I don’t know who the BIAW thinks buys their warranty-free houses, or rather will buy them again if the economy recovers from the international financial larceny made possible by the same neo-liberal ideology that informs every action of the right, and a fair portion of the “left.”
The BIAW long ago gave up any pretense of being interested in anything other than ultra-conservative ideology and gutting government for the sheer hell of it. It’s not a bug, it’s a design feature. If Leavitt becomes mayor, Vancouver might as well change its name to “Vista, Washington.”
I think the bridge toll should be exactly equal to what the Washington sales tax would be on all the stuff Vancouverites bring across the river from Oregon stores.
“In the real world, conservatives pull out all the stops, on every issue, from the top to the bottom”
Did you know they want to rewrite the Bible to remove what they perceive as “liberal bias”? Seriously, I’m not kidding …
http://news.aol.com/article/bi.....yes/706054
Well, why not? They’re already full of shit, so they may as well fill the empty spaces in their heads with more shit …
Isn’t there some way to discredit BIAW? It seems like all their ideas are losers–not just things progressives don’t like, but things that almost no-one (except roadbuilders) like.
I’ve got to throw up a flag here on this bridge thing. Although I typically side with the left on things, I’m really beginning to side with where Leavitt’s coming from. And I’m severely disappointed in all of this rhetoric from the left about tolls.
It’s appalling to me that the Democrats and other lefties who aren’t beholden to the party don’t see the vast inequity in this issue. And flat-out aren’t listening to Leavitt’s arguments. Tolling this bridge is inequitable because the costs are exorbitant and there is little sign that the feds or the states are going to pony up their share of this federal interstate project.
This isn’t “we want a bridge for free.” It’s ‘stop making SW WA ride bitch to both Olympia and Portland, yet again.’
Leavitt’s been saying, and he’s not the only one: tolling is the *easiest* answer, not the right one. Applying tolls means that Portland is happy because they keep dirty Vantuckians from clogging their streets, and it keeps Olympia happy because we’ll be too mortgaged up to complain about anything for the next 30+ years.
Rolling over and grabbing your ankles isn’t “fostering relationships.”
This bridge is out of control, too big and messy, and a horrible waste. It needs to be pared back to something affordable, the feds and states need to make commitments to the region, and THEN the local share needs to be equitably distributed among SW WA and the Metro tri-county area. If all the talk is about commerce and economic future, then ALL of us benefit. And if ALL of us benefit, then ALL of us should pay. Not just the 60,000 people who have to go to work in Oregon because there aren’t any jobs here.
The modern conservative’s mantra: “I want my guv’mint services – but somebody else has got to pay instead of me.”
Not much has changed since Reagan first started adverting The Free Lunch to his self-centered followers.
Vantucky: tolling/congestion pricing is a Bush era product. Us libtards actually support general taxes going to infrastructure. If the conservatives & libertarians didn’t blow all our federal road dollars on pavement in Iraq, we could easily pay for that bridge to somewhere in SW Washington.
@ 7 Jonesy Libertarians didn’t have anything to do with the Iraq War. That’s all Repugnicans and the Dems who voted with them.
As to Portland, Mayor Sam Adams is looking to add all kinds of stuff to the bridge. Portland’s leadership wants a bridge the looks great. Not one that necessarily works great. The first thing Portland needs to do is fix the transportation agency and do that by opening the market to other providers. Right now workers living in Vancouver, but who work in Portland pay income taxes, but get little in the way of services in return. Adding to that their wages rates get taxed to support Trimet, the local transit agency. Portland has put a lot of money into lightrail and would have been better off updating their busses, but the agency doen’t answer to anyone but the governor and he’s asleep.
I have no idea how a larger automotive bridge on I-5 could work. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any place for the cars to go on the Portland side, Portlanders aren’t willing to tear up their downtown with more freeways, and Oregon as a whole isn’t willing to spend the money for a hugely extensive freeway system in and western Multnomah and Washington counties when they’ve already built the light rail.
bluecollar libertarian, Haven’t you learned yet that privatization is code for “giveaways to businesses that do bad jobs” and “buses” is code for “don’t build a transit system?” As for complaints about the Oregon income tax: you can also shop in Oregon, and pay no sales tax. If you can find a job in Washington, you can even manage to not pay both states taxes.
@9
One other issue is even the Bush era DOT said there wouldn’t be any Federal grants for the CRC unless there was provision for high-capacity transit on the bridge. Sure Oregon and Portland support that too, but the Feds are the ones requiring it.
Besides with light rail if you don’t like the tolls on the bridge just take MAX to Portland.
@4 I think the best response to BIAW is a market-based solution. Thanks to the Wingnut Wack-O-Nomics they helped champion, there are so many empty houses sitting on vacant lots that it’ll be 20 years before another house gets built in this country. Meanwhile, all the builders will either go into some other business (e.g., recycling gas guzzlers) or starve. By the next election cycle BIAW’s dues-paying membership will be down to 4 or 5, and eventually none, and then Tom McCabe will shrivel up and blow away like a tumbleweed in te wind.
@5 “Not just the 60,000 people who have to go to work in Oregon because there aren’t any jobs here.”
I was under the impression those 60,000 people are actually Oregonians who live in Vancouver so they can pay Washington income taxes and Oregon sale taxes.
@8 And the people now calling themselves “Libertarians” voted for who in 2000 and 2004? If you count as “Libertarian” only the people who actually voted for the Libertarian Party candidates in those election, then there are fewer than 400,000 Libertarian voters — about 1/3 of 1% of all who cast ballots in 2000 and 2004. But if a “Libertarian” is anyone who calls himself that because he doesn’t want to be known as a Republican, there’s millions of ’em, including some in my own family. Yes, I hear a lot these days from people who voted for the likes of Bush and Cheney and various corrupt GOP congress critters who are feverishly working to rebrand themselves after the gummint they twice voted into power blew up in their faces. Can’t say I’m impressed. This is all very reminiscent of the post-Watergate ’70s, when you couldn’t find a single person willing to admit they had voted for Nixon.
It’s already the law that people who live in Washington and buy stuff in Oregon have to pay “use tax” on that stuff if they bring it into Washington and it would be taxable in Washington. I wonder how many actually do that? Can we guess, “none”? And every single Vancouver resident who doesn’t is a lawbreaker and a tax cheater. Under the circumstances, why should Olympia collect taxes from the rest of us and send that money to Vancouver?
@4
The only way to put BIAW back in the closet is to take away their cash cow the ROII program which takes money from contractors and puts it right into their political action committee.
I’m a contractor and I refuse to take part in the ROII program even thought it could save me 25% on my L&I bill. It is a bad program that needs to be stopped.
@15 Well, we can thank BIAW buddy Frank Chopp for the fact they still have it. And Frank’s likely to be around for a long time, given that nobody runs against him except the likes of Mark “We Need Another Terrorist Attack” Griswold.
Let’s not forget that every truck coming over that bridge will be tolled. That’s where the real money comes from, those of us in the Seattle metro area who will pay for it in higher freight costs.
I wasn’t in Vancouver then, but I have been told by several people that were, when the current bridge was built there was a toll to cross for many years. Even then the government did not pony up all of the money. I don’t think things are so different today. Also if lightrail made it over the river, I would use it every day instead of dealing with the traffic because even if it were easier to get across the river I’d still be driving into the same mess once I got to the other side.
While some people have thoughts of using lightrail others simply cannot. It doesn’t go where the jobs are. Just south of the Columbia River is the Rivergate Industrial Park which is home to a number of warehouses and some manufacturing plants. With good paying jobs I might add
Just a few miles away in north Portland is a large concentration of low income families who for the most part are African-American. Unless the people living in that area have their own vehicles they have little or no chance of getting work in the Rivergate area because the transportation services to that area are almost non existent. There were three busses in the morning and three in the afternoon. Lightrail only comes to about a mile away, which doesn’t help in the rain, sleet or snow, or when you have been busting your ass all day moving freight. Transit used to be somewhat better but when Trimet put in their beloved lightrail they reduced the bus service. Nor does it help those worker in the area who live in Washington. They have no option except to drive their own vehicles.
The government won’t provide the services but won’t allow private businesses to do so either.
Bluecollar Libertarian, oh I see. Have you tried contacting TriMet and asking? They are very approachable and they might have some ideas as to how to provide service, and who might be willing to pay. If some of the firms in the Rivergate area were interested in better transit, that would help. If Rivergate has some union shops, perhaps the unions would be willing to push.
Raven Trimet has been contacted. They don’t reply.