Kontextmaschine

4th October 2021

Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 134 notes

slatestarscratchpad:
kontextmaschine:
So after the dust settles from Election Day, it seems that the lasting impact of the protests was to shift Portland politics and government in the most conservative way possible
Can you explain? When I Google I just get articles on Portland’s election-related riots, plus lists of “nonpartisan” candidates.
Hm. OK. So to set the scene, Portland is governed by a five-person council who are each assigned portfolios of city departments to oversee. They’re elected citywide on staggered 4-year terms, one is the mayor, which mostly just means they assign the portfolios.
The last few mayors and honestly consensus-focused councils have been fairly tied to a downtown establishment, including the PBA (our chamber of commerce), property owners, old money timber heirs in the west hills, etc.
Incumbent mayor Ted Wheeler, a fairly technocratic centrist who assigned himself police oversight, was himself a timber heir turned establishment fixture.
Portland has a liberal reputation, city elections are formally nonpartisan but broadly Democratic, but lately that had mostly cashed out as sunny good government, a Scandanavish concern for welfare (retrospectively enabled by cheap real estate prices), and a co-option of inner eastside nonprofits
The left had been getting more restive as the cost of living rose, though. 4 years ago elected an outsider Chloe Eudaly to council on a renters’ platform, 2 years ago harder agitation from the outer eastside and minority activists helped lift a black ex-state legislator named Jo Ann Hardesty onto the council
Wheeler, realizing he’s kind of on the outside of this, grabs onto Orange Man Bad #Resistance rhetoric, a little clumsily, to paper over the gaps, meanwhile the street leftists seek to run rightists out of downtown, which just reinforces their drive to show up there, and Wheeler has to balance his ra-ra rhetoric with his duty to keep the city safely open to all political expression
Meanwhile this whole time there’s this smug goody-good on Portland political Twitter named Sarah Iannarone. She was a public policy grad student at PSU - which is kind of like a 4-year community college training the cadre for public service, and it shows, taking snotty potshots at people not adopting her preferred Goodthing!Policy and not at all engaging with how you would possibly assemble the support for it
She had run for mayor in 2016 I think, and again this year, and only got like 26% in the primary as the only rival really trying but that was #2 and Wheeler didn’t break 50% so she advanced to the runoff.
Mingus Mapps, an establishmentarian black guy, also goes to general against Eudaly.
Then, everything went to shit.
At first Wheeler was out of town and Hardesty locked the city down. Then, with the election hanging over him and not wanting to look like the bad guy, he kept acceding to demands to soften police response to the minimum necessary to defend the courthouse, which meant without a crackdown things were kept in stalemate just short of critical
Then the feds came in, and Wheeler had to deal with the fact for all his “#Resist Trump” rhetoric, he can’t really kick federal forces out of an American city in the name of an anti-government mob, but he can at least make some noises and get tear gassed as a photo op
So at this point Hardesty, who has endorsed Wheeler, asks him for control of the police, with the intent of remaking it. He waves her off, maybe later. At some point she retracts her endorsement, mighta been then.
So left-liberals angry that the mob of ruffians are being suppressed at all while the police force (which has never been fully made whole from late-2000s cuts) still existed at all channeled that into supporting Sarah. Also, there’s a black activist named Theresa Raiford many street types are fond of; with a history of marginal campaigns, including missing the mayoral runoff, they pump her up as a write-in
Now, the feds leave, replaced by state troopers who soon pull out in disgust the new “reform DA” isn’t even trying to prosecute their arrests, but by then the downtown courthouse has been pretty pacified speeches, but rougher types march nightly to menace police buildings on the eastside
This is where Wheeler seems to do some thinking, realizes this isn’t just some blowing-off-steam he can draft off like the Women’s March, that he can’t satisfy the left at any acceptable cost, but his straddling has both encouraged them and prevented him from cultivating the moderate base he needs to act against them.
And this part is more speculative, but you start to see signs that this centrist coalition is being built behind the scenes. Downtown businesses talk about costs incurred, or tourist authorities put out statements about reputational damage, and they get written up in the conservative-as-in-old newspaper or the Gen X centrist alt-weekly. We are made to feel the loss - as sports fans and business owners- that the protests might have cost us the NCAA Final Four. You can see the consensus being built, congruent with Portland identity, that Something Must Be Done
On council, Hardesty has moved away from Wheeler and formed a bloc with Eudaly, its clear that if Iannarone joins them it’d be a sharp leftward majority.
A September? poll shows Iannarone winning and you can see the downtown establishment realize it needs to pull Wheeler over the line and whir into action.
Just before the election Hardesty and even Bernie endorse Sarah, but Oregon’s been vote by mail for decades and most ballots are already in. Coming down to the wire, Eudaly and Hardesty push a measure to move police funding over, Wheeler and neighborhood character-type Amanda Fritz vote to hold it off, the deciding vote is Dan Ryan, who won a special election with Hardesty’s endorsement… but he goes with the establishment!
Election Day
Mapps turfs Eudaly, and returns suggest the ticket-balancing “our black guy” approach kinda worked, Wheeler beats Iannarone, but within the margin of a sizeable write-in vote. Which means:
Ted Wheeler is still mayor, only this term he realizes he needs to position against the left and cultivate a base to do so
After loudly staking out a left position, Hardesty is totally isolated, her allies defeated or never there, she’ll serve 2 years with 2 colleagues she endorsed against and then almost certainly face a massive removal effort, because
The establishment has received a wake-up call that it can’t sit on its laurels anymore, it needs to put in actual effort shoring up its position
The left is brought low by its PMC/underclass split, the people most invested in the result will receive it as a lesson against unrealistic activist ultraleftism
It’s unreal. There was an initiative reworking police oversight, though, that passed but the cop union’s gonna put it through the wringer in court. The defunding vote was rescheduled for today, the result was “no”.

Yeah, since then Hardesty’s been on the losing side of several 4-1 votes, Mapps is pushing a move to hire back up to the 2000s police staffing trendline and is being mooted for next mayor on NextDoor, you can see with some stuff like homeless camp sweeps they’re not even pretending the rabble left have something useful to contribute, and the voter-facing portion (party?) of the establishment drive, “People For Portland” just debuted. Also, former and honestly better mayor Sam Adams has been brought in as ideas guy to replay his role bridging the establishment and the hip future, with the side benefit that this, not joking, lures the radicals into age gap discourse.

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