Volm is well-known to City watchers and certainly understands how the wheels turn in Portland, but as far as I know reports no specific governing experience to substantiate her candidacy. (I'm happy to be corrected on that). She will be seeking public financing, which I fully support; if she can get the signatures and spend the money properly, we've found from past example that it's a pretty good indicator of one's seriousness, motivation and discipline (cf Amanda Fritz, for whom if hardest worker meant winner, she'd be governor by now).
When I say "well-known," it's for a couple of reasons that go beyond her longtime public visibility and communications role with the City. There was a rather odd incident involving Volm and a town-car driver in 2007, where Volm got the early media and police attention to her side of the road-rage tale, but which apparently saw all charges against her adversary dropped, and a fairly detailed (but unconfirmed) account at The Merc that placed Volm as the aggressor.
More recently, Volm drew attention as a "volunteer spokesperson" for the initial Recall Adams drive earlier this year, which failed by an unknown deficit to gain the ballot. She was a frequent critic of Adams, as she continues to be in more veiled form--"There is a leadership void at City Hall"--and certainly will be labeled at least in part as an anti-Adams candidate despite her challenge to Saltzman. Poor Dan, who I refer to that way not because he doesn't deserve a challenge, but because it's not very fair for him to be the proxy Adams, just because the Mayor isn't running for three more years.
Also on the Volm bandwagon is Adams Recall chief Jason Wurster, whose Facebook page in support of Volm was what tipped The Merc. That's why Matt Davis called Wurster, who was apparently abrupt and answered no questions about a Volm candidacy. OK, that's fine, perhaps he didn't want to steal her thunder.
But you gotta figure he was one of the first people to find out about her intentions, given Volm's individual Facebook page--which highlights not only the importance of prepping your online persona before announcing your candidacy, but also who you're feeling chummy with these days: in this case, Jason Wurster.
As an aside, it's a fair question whether a candidate's romantic interests are suitable fodder for reportage, and there will certainly be some who find it completely irrelevant. Ordinarily I might agree, although certainly it's par for the course for a politician to at least have your significant other be known and reported on.
Anybody but Wurster, in fact, probably would not be news. But because he represents the face of the recall supporters, and because Volm's own commentary on Adams has been frequent and similarly damning, it's worthwhile I think to posit questions about what it might imply for her candidacy.
For instance: does Wurster's co-initiation of a Facebook page, and his immediately previous management of a campaign, indicate that he is a likely candidate himself for her campaign manager? How much of his message and activism defines and motivates her nascent indulgence in actual politics? Or more baldly--is this a coordinated attempt to raise from the ashes of the RA campaign and try to get at Adams in a different way?
Running against Saltzman means that if she's succesful, she'll have immediately signed on to work with Sam Adams on a near-weekly basis at best, daily at worst (for her, anyway). How does she plan to handle that, given her desire to see leadership restored? Sure Portland has a weak mayor system, but does Volm intend to make up the "leadership gap" in the Mayor's Office from her seat at Position 3? That's a recipe for disaster...or at least more Merc stories.
Given that "jobs and economic development" are famously generic goals for Council tenure, we'll have to wait in order to learn more about what Volm offers and what distinguishes her from the already-declared challengers and Saltzman. Until then, we're left with questions about package deals and coordinated campaigns. I'll try to talk to Mary directly about her candidacy (we are Facebook friends after all, and isn't that meaningful?), but we'll also have to see if she'll talk to me. I'm totally open to hearing her plan for Portland, but yeah, sure--I'll cop to being skeptical at the moment.
As we know, no one is working harder or more frenetically to gin up opposition to the deal bringing MLS to Portland than Jack Bogdanski at his Crucible of Curmudgeonry, bojack.org. Grasping at any potential straw to indicate an agreement falling apart or suffering from lost support, bojack presents this article from Willy Week as his proof that "the wheels are coming off," asserting that "3rd vote" commissioner Dan Saltzman "smells a rat" and is now reconsidering his support.
To be fair, although WWeek's headline is somewhat more accurate and they may well have been misled a bit by what they print as Saltzman's comments, in the paper's recurring role as Bojack Lite on this issue they make rather the same mistake:
Saltzman, of course, was the swing vote on the council March 11, when this deal won initial approval. His proposed (and until now, unreported) amendment sheds new light on Adams’ announcement Monday that he would postpone three key votes on the soccer-baseball deal and reconsider the best use of Memorial Coliseum. At the time it appeared Adams was bowing to public opinion that called for saving Memorial Coliseum. Now it appears the mayor may have thought he was on the verge of losing his third vote.
Last night, Saltzman says he came to the conclusion that the proposed Rose Quarter redevelopment scheme calling for a new baseball stadium and an entertainment district south of Broadway is still moving too fast, despite a second one-week delay on finalizing the deal.
Citing lack of process, his own nostalgia for Memorial Coliseum (and a long-ago Jethro Tull concert) and increasingly troublesome questions about the deal’s financing, Saltzman says he told the mayor he wants to decouple the Major League Soccer deal from the Rose Quarter redevelopment.
Wouldn’t that imply Saltzman opposes the pre-development agreement, since it ties construction of a new baseball stadium to the city’s deal with Paulson to bring MLS to Portland?
“Yeah,” Saltzman told WW. “I didn’t say it [to Adams] in those black-and-white terms. I’m still going to listen to what he has to say about what he may come back with, but that’s the way I’m feeling now.”
Note carefully what Saltzman is saying (his quote notwithstanding)--not that he doesn't support bringing MLS to Portland under the terms Paulson specified, but that the baseball park doesn't HAVE to go in the Rose Quarter, and that the rest of the entertainment district and how the Coliseum fits into that should be a separate discussion from renovating PGE Park and bringing the Timbers here...because of course MLS doesn't care whether the Beavers have a place to play or not, as long as it's not PGE Park.
I wouldn't share Saltzman's perspective on this necessarily, but it's a rational point to make. It apparently was so rational that Mayor Adams and Merritt Paulson seemingly agree, as today's Oregonian reports.
They have indefinitely delayed the baseball siting question, essentially decoupling it from the rest of the deal, which is what Saltzman wanted. And much more directly, we have confirmation that he is still behind that part:
Commissioner Dan Saltzman said he wouldn't vote to raze the coliseum without a more lengthy public process, one that lasts two or three months and takes a hard look at alternatives.
"If I'm going to make a decision to demolish the coliseum, I'd like to do that knowing there's been some process to look at the options," he said. "All these competing uses in the Rose Quarter and the implicit commitment of public money makes me think we ought to slow it down."
Saltzman said he's not opposed to ultimately tearing down the coliseum, a building he's nostalgic about, but he wants to make sure it's the right move. He also said he's still in favor of bringing Major League Soccer to Portland and is still behind the city's agreement with Paulson. [emph mine]
So what's the upshot here? Are the wheels really falling off, or is Council doing almost exactly what critics have been asking it to do about the Coliseum issue--slow down? Saltzman still supports the deal, but doesn't want to rush the baseball aspect of it into a much larger plan being developed in the Rose Quarter. Couldn't we agree these are good things? (Nahhh, probably not).
As the blogosphere--certainly in the Portland area--is by now aware, City Commissioner Erik Sten has announced his resignation effective in April. Willamette Week got the early-year scoop on everybody with an announcement that isn't surprising in its effect but rather the timing, and the fact (at least to me) that it didn't leak out before the issue ran. Or am I wrong and someone had it Tuesday night?
The story, and 3+ hour interview with Nigel Jaquiss that fills around it, are well worth the read if only for the vivid example of Sten as Sten in his comments. Even after you see it a number of times, it's still a bit of an eye-opener when he is so direct, particularly about professional relationships and evaluations of other people. He dishes on everyone, freely admitting tensions and difficulties. But it's part of both his charm and what makes him effective as a politician and policymaker.
I've had the pleasure of sitting down or talking to Sten at length on a couple of occasions; his was the first big interview of a sitting officeholder that I'd done for the blog, in spring of 2006. It was a long interview that I mostly reprinted verbatim, because the way Sten talks he fills in his own details and backstory, which is both entertaining to read and makes narrative mostly unnecessary. You can read Part One, then Part Two and finally Part Three.
I had another chance to talk with Erik when he called ME up, to talk about the sit/lie ordinance and his worries that it was going to take effect before the homeless-aid parts of the deal had been made good on. That one's shorter, but no less Erik.
It's a real balancing act to be both savvy and starry-eyed. Sten made high hopes and aspirations for Portland a signature approach during his Council career. Yet even at the start he had been inside City politics too long to ever be naive about how things worked, who had to be stroked and who could be bullied, and how much money played a part in things. Still, he maintains an infectiously deep passion for certain things that no self-respecting cynic would ever allow himself to express, and gets people to accomplish things most cities wouldn't even try.
Best of luck to you Erik; keep in touch with us as a civilian, will you?
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