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Posts published in January 2022

Kinds of residency

Kinds of residency

January 23, 2022

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The Oregon Supreme Court may issue a narrow ruling when it decides between gubernatorial candidate Nicholas Kristof and Secretary of State Shemia Fagan, but it would better serve the state to take a broader view.

The narrow case would review the details of Kristof’s immediate case, his request for the ballot status Fagan’s office has denied him. But more could be accomplished here.

Some arguments fail simply, such as one contending the secretary’s office shouldn’t be making this decision at all. But it regularly does such work. So far this election season, the secretary of state has rejected ballot status for 10 candidates, and three more are under review. (I asked the office for recent disqualification letters, which it promptly provided.)

Oregon law, as the office said in a release, “requires all candidates to provide a signed statement affirming that they will qualify for office if elected. Oregon elections officials evaluate whether prospective candidates meet residency requirements by checking Oregon voter registration records. If those records are insufficient to verify residency, or if officials become aware of other concerns about residency, they ask prospective candidates to provide additional facts.”

Kristof isn’t the only candidate to get a turn-down this month, not even the only candidate for governor, or even the only Democratic candidate for governor. The list includes four Republicans - John M Kohler Jr., Alexander M Males III, Timothy R. Meeks and Governor Sweet - and one other Democrat, Sergio Retamal. The case of a third Democrat, Michael Cross, is pending.

The reasons for disqualification have varied. Some want to run in legislative districts where they do not live. Kohler, who wanted to run for governor as a Republican, was denied for this reason: “You will not have been a member of the Oregon Republican party for at least 180 days before the candidacy filing deadline as set forth in ORS 249.031 and ORS 249.046. You needed to have been a member of the Republican party by September 9, 2021.”

The reasons the office cites usually have this in common: Some specific data point (or more than one) which runs afoul of some qualification element in Oregon law. It is a legalistic approach, but clear and specific.

The Kristof case fits. The Oregon Constitution says among other things that a person cannot serve as governor unless they “have been three years next preceding his election, a resident within this State.” Certain facts - the big one being his voter registration in New York state in 2020 - may counter his assertion that he has been an Oregon resident consistently for at least three years.The office also notes that he had a primary residence, was licensed to drive, files taxes and was employed, as well as voted, in New York, into 2020.

This is a coherent case. There also is a counter case.

The New York voter registration affirmation Kristrof would have had to make to vote there in 2020 says: “I am a citizen of the United States. I will have lived in the county, city or village for at least 30 days before the election. I meet all requirements to register to vote in New York State.” Remarkably, it doesn’t actually require he declares himself as a permanent resident of New York, or not a resident of any other state.

More significant may be that the Oregon Constitution does not define “resident,” and there appears to be no state Supreme Court case on point. Residency rules vary according to what you’re trying to do: oting, college enrollment, obtaining a driver's licence or a fishing permit, or running for different offices. The evidence for establishing residence for these things varies (and can be frustrating, as a trip to the Division of Motor Vehicles sometimes will show). In some of these cases you have to give up the permit for one state (a driver’s license, say) to get Oregon’s. Is that true for a candidate for office? We don’t know for sure.

Kristof’s advocates seem to be arguing an overall weight of evidence: A look at the big picture rather than specifics. Kristof can cite consistent family ownership of personal and business property (since 1971), a regular practice of returning to it, numerous statements referring to it as home, and more. His connections to the area clearly are deep.

There is a coherent case here as well.

What lurks in the fog: What criteria should establish a person as a resident of Oregon? An answer might bring more consistency to Oregon law, across a range of areas, on that subject.

That’s the kind of non-slam-dunk question the Oregon Supreme Court was made to answer, and not just for Nicholas Kristof.
 

Battle flags

January 23, 2022

meador

When I was in high school, I took a political science class. The teacher was a proud Democrat who made no secret of his leanings and allegiances. When his lecturing strayed from the neutrality of the curriculum — a common occurrence — he would vigorously deride anything with the red stain of the G.O.P.

This teacher repeatedly and publicly shamed me for my own party affiliation. I was only 16 but already a Republican. My instructor’s blunders, thankfully, were nothing I couldn’t handle.

This educator’s haughty disdain for the Republican Party and his attempts to publicly humiliate a juvenile student for not seeing things through blue-tinted spectacles was absolutely out of line.

As a teacher, it was his job to provide his students with academic information, help them understand it and guide them through the critical thinking processes they’ll need to function as healthy adults.

It was not his job to indoctrinate and humiliate. It was not his job to crank out lockstep Democrats.

This is precisely why we have an interest in keeping partisanship out of secondary school classrooms.

I’m pretty sure a fear of similar misdeeds sparked the greatest public conflagration in my 25 years in Yamhill County.

The most vitriolic, nasty public bickering I have ever seen here was galvanized by two innocuous banners, a Black Lives Matter flag and a rainbow flag. Of course, the impetus was broader than a couple of flags hanging in a classroom — it was the threat of political indoctrination that loomed over the fight. And those banners became useful symbols for events their designers never imagined when a group of conservatives took control of the Newberg, Oregon school board in an election to which hardly anyone was paying attention.

But soon enough, the small-town school board attracted national scrutiny. The board’s ambiguous ban on district employees displaying any sort of political or controversial symbols or images was met with outrage. The ban was followed by the summary dismissal of the district superintendent — well, summary doesn’t note the contractual $175,000 salary and health care benefits the district must pay the ousted superintendent. The board has been accused of acting in secret, acting illegally, acting grossly irresponsibly.

The aggressive recall campaign conducted to oust the board’s two most controversial members not only gathered signatures but was accused of taking steps to affect the employment of the volunteer members, and other ugly actions extending beyond the scope of the members’ official board functions. People participating in the campaign were accused of working not only to defeat the members, but also to destroy them.

No matter what side you took, this was a nasty fight.

While voter turnout was under 19 percent for the targeted members’ election, it was over 50 percent for their recall.

I intentionally stayed out of the Newberg situation and I am not weighing in now, other than this brief synopsis before proceeding to the point of this piece. Even if I wanted to, a 1,200-word essay couldn’t begin to parse this absolute mess of a public gutter-brawl.

From my perspective, it’s fitting that a self-appointed, amateur, one-man press took the lead on this one. Labeling anyone in a sleepy town like Newberg a Super Mafia Mutant Loser Teenage Satan Ninja Sex Cabal (or whatever it was) does tend to attract a certain wild-eyed demographic, if you don’t care who re-Tweets you. Throwing gas on the fires of public outrage is always good for a few laughs. Or clicks.

Back to the story at hand, conservatives were worried by the encroachment of political perspectives into the classrooms of their children. Forty years ago, I would’ve minimized, in spite of my left-lurching high school instructor. But in this new world of sharp relief — where black is black, white is white and shadows of grey nowhere to be seen — political persuasion can take on a hulking malevolence.

Currently, both political parties believe they alone hold the moral high ground, that the other side has morphed from simple opposition to extremist enemy, that an extremist enemy broaches no compromise, that the only option is to destroy the other side before it destroys us.

Hyperbole? Maybe that last bit could use “render irrelevant” or “emasculate” instead of destroy but, other than that, I see little exaggeration. Whatever the case, ideology has never been so narrow, and patience never so thin.

Fans of radical and rapid change fail to understand or accept that the bulk of the population — the bazillions of quiet people who almost never say anything — are not adaptable in radical or rapid terms. Bluntly put, alternative pronouns will enjoy universal and enthusiastic use only after a huge number of the unadaptable drop dead. It’s called attrition, it’s ponderously slow and, whether anyone likes it or not, most radical change has always relied on it.

Any school board would be well-advised not to quash its students’ and educators’ attempts to encourage racial harmony. It’s a fine line between banning ambiguously worded “controversial” political symbols and banning symbols of human unity. Frankly, I believe the phrase “Black lives matter” is one of the purest, most necessary and important phrases to catch the public consciousness in many decades. It’s a reminder to those who need to hear it that, yes, Black lives matter — and, sadly, there are plenty who need reminding.

But could a Black Lives Matter banner representing the BLM political organization be questioned, when placed by an educator?

What about the no-organization affiliation of the rainbow flag? School boards should remember that any group or class of people who courts of law or statutes are holding historically marginalized deserve careful and respectful treatment, regardless of the board’s personal feelings.

But it never really was about flags anyway.

So, the immediate fight is over. What are we going to do now?

Yes, another local recall is underway and several lawsuits still loom. But I find it difficult to believe either side wishes to continue in the vein we’ve seen, especially if the other side is willing to meet them halfway.

Surely the prudent course of action would be to make a real effort — both sides — to sit down and find common ground. Believe me, it’s there. Conservatives know we live in a pluralistic society. Most are comfortable with some compromise, acknowledging our plurality. Indeed, I know many conservatives who rather enjoy — gasp! — diversity, even if they don’t see eye-to-eye on every issue with their progressive counterparts.

Level-headed liberals know all conservatives aren’t nutcase Qanon acolytes who remain fixated on a stolen election. The image of angry white racists hell-bent on protecting Whitelandia from encroaching brownness or transness or whateverness is an inaccurate cartoon, unfair to many conservatives.

I’m hoping the two Newberg recallees recognize enough of their constituents are unhappy with them that they make an honest and vigorous effort to conduct a candid dialogue with those who opposed them.

It’s going to take both sides being honest, earnest, polite and willing to meet the opposition halfway.

Back to my high school teacher, imagine if the situation was reversed: a Republican educator shaming a Democrat student. Aside from the term “Republican educator” seeming to meet the threshold of oxymoron these days, the situation is equally unacceptable.

Right now, both sides should stand down, find common ground through honest conversation and remember we’re all human — and maybe start acting human again.

Matthew Meador is a former food and wine writer, senior editor and a rare moderate Republican who now writes political commentary. Previously, Matt was an award-winning graphic artist who often put his skills to use during election seasons. Matt has served in various capacities on political campaigns, for pollsters and for elected officials. Contact him at matthewmeador.com.

Photograph © Robin Jonathan Deutsch via Unsplash

The more things change

January 22, 2022

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When in the late spring of 1964 the United States Senate defeated the longest filibuster in Senate history and passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, the Senate’s majority leader Mike Mansfield called the matter of insuring fundamental rights to all Americans – the right to fair treatment in accommodations and employment, for example – “the most divisive issue in our history.”

Montana’s Mansfield, a westerner of few words who always chose them well, called passage of the legislation over the committed opposition of southern segregationists and a few very conservative Republicans an “exceptional accomplishment.” It had been the work of both political parties. The bill, years in the making, passed with a large bipartisan majority.

Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who rallied Republicans to the cause of civil rights, hailed the historic accomplishment as “an idea whose time has come.” One holdout who refused to follow Dirksen’s lead was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who became the GOP presidential candidate later in 1964. Goldwater’s refusal to embrace civil rights legislation – he argued it was an unconstitutional federal power grab – is an attitude that still echoes through the Republican Party nearly 60 years later.

What Mike Mansfield, who played a pivotal role in passage of the Civil Rights Act, rarely acknowledged during the often-bitter fight around the legislation was the depth of opposition to the measure from his own voters, not to mention the misguided vehemence of arguments opponents fielded in defense of discrimination.

A Eureka, Montana constituent wrote Mansfield early in 1964, “It is my firm conviction that the Civil Rights Bill is a radical, unconstitutional and thoroughly unacceptable proposal, in that it will destroy the basic rights of all individuals through federal intervention.”

A Billings couple wrote Mansfield, “Individual freedoms cannot be removed, either collectively or one at a time, without leading us along the road to socialism which will enslave us all, black and white alike.”

In what was clearly a coordinated lobbying effort, several anti-civil rights letters to Mansfield used the same language: “The Civil Rights Bill before the Senate now, is 10% civil rights and 90% take-over of all activities of life.”

Western states in the 1960’s seemed far removed from the civil rights protests and demonstrations in distant Selma or the massive march on Washington in 1963 that helped set the political stage for the legislation that followed.

But the West was, in many ways, a key to passage of both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Idaho’s then-bipartisan Senate delegation – Len Jordan, a very conservative Republican, and Frank Church, a liberal Democrat – voted for both pieces of legislation, even amid a drumbeat of local opposition.

When Jordan, who ran sheep in Hells Canyon during the Great Depression and later became Idaho’s 22nd governor, announced he would vote to end the filibuster that was preventing a Senate vote on a civil rights bill, his comments ran side-by-side in the Idaho Statesman with a story from Baldwin, New York, a community on Long Island. That story reported that the home of a Black family had been defaced with a red swastika and “insulting lettering” that demanded the family “get out now.” Neighbors – all of them white – showed up to repaint the house and signal the community’s “shame” for what had been done.

Senator Jordan indicated his mail was running heavily in favor of support for civil rights, but the sentiment was hardly universal. A doctor in Burley said in a public meeting that he opposed efforts to outlaw racial discrimination because it “would rob doctors and professional men of their rights to refuse service to anyone for any reason.” A John Birch Society sponsored meeting in Boise drew a hundred people who were told a civil rights bill was part of a Communist plot to promote strife. A letter writer to the Twin Falls Times-News said he opposed integration because it was a “stepping stone to mongrelization.”

The country is now locked, as it arguably hasn’t been since 1965 when the Voting Rights Act passed, in a battle over who votes and how in America. One party – Democrats – are trying to make it easier for many Americans to vote. The other party – Republicans – are operating at every level of government to make voting more difficult. The bipartisan consensus represented in the 1960’s by Mansfield and Dirksen and Church and Jordan is as unimaginable today as it was enlightened then.

“The ‘bipartisan tradition’ backing voting rights is, in many ways, a mirage,” Princeton history Kevin Kruse wrote recently. “The liberal and moderate Republicans who helped create the [Civil Rights and] Voting Rights Act are long gone, as are the prominent conservatives who saw no conflict between their ideology and democracy and who were confident their party could win elections even if everyone voted. What remains in the Republican ranks is a core that sees voting rights as a clear and present danger to the party.”

Need proof? Republican legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Georgia have all enacted new restrictions on voting since the last presidential election. One rural county in Georgia is close to deciding to have only one polling place in the entire county. Democrats have been booted off election boards and one newly reconstituted board eliminated Sunday voting during a recent municipal election, a decision aimed squarely at Black churchgoers, a key Democratic constituency.

The Republican rationale for opposing new federal voting rights legislation is remarkably similar to what passed for arguments against civil rights and voting rights in the 1960’s. “Every single proposed change,” former vice president Mike Pence said recently, “serves one goal, and one goal only: to give leftists a permanent, unfair, and unconstitutional advantage in our political system.”

Other Republicans worry about a federal takeover of elections, a specious argument since the Constitution speaks to a clear federal role in how elections are conducted, and a federal role in elections was precisely why Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in the first place.

Idaho Republican Senator Mike Crapo, like so many in the past who tried to limit voting, invoked the old “state’s rights” argument, channeling the segregationist talking points of the 1950’s and 1960’s. You wonder if these guys know anything about the kind of voter suppression that took place in so many places for so long. Or, more likely they just don’t care.

Some conservatives have been more honest with their objections to the idea of more Americans voting. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an architect of the modern conservative movement said in 1980. “Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

The structure of the American system is under assault and restricting voting is at the heart of the attack. The assault is just as real now as it was in the 1960’s. Bipartisan good faith triumphed then. What now?

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Getting schooled

January 21, 2022

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Among the many heated Republican primary elections in Idaho in coming months, one of the most intriguing - from a political scientist’s point of view - may be the contest for superintendent of public instruction.

And at the legislature last week, we got some additional insight into how that may unfold.

The backdrop is this. Sherri Ybarra is the two-term Republican (of course) incumbent, with background as a school teacher and administrator at Mountain Home; critiques of her work as superintendent have varied (the legislature doesn’t seem especially enamored) but she has been generally non-ideological. She hasn’t declared whether she will run again, but seems likely to.

Two others have specifically announced. One is Debbie Critchfield, a former president of the state Board of Education who also has some professional background in local schools. She too seems relatively non-ideological (the apparently now de rigeur note against critical race theory seems just tucked into her website) and her basis for challenging Ybarra seems grounded mostly in questions of how capably the incumbent is doing her job.

Her response to Ybarra’s budget request provides some of the flavor: “In a budget cycle, with record state surpluses, we might have expected the State Superintendent to request support for all kindergarteners, rather than a limited and unclear approach to a real need. We might have expected to see a request to take on the ongoing issue of health benefits for educators or facilities needs. Once again, our educators, parents, and students will need to look to the Governor and the Legislature for leadership in addressing serious issues, including empowering parents, schools' challenges for retaining educators and staff, and delivering student-centered solutions to learning."

Education enthusiasts might respond to that (or not) but that professional-sounding (okay, professional) approach isn’t likely to get juices running in a Republican primary.

Having said that, Critchfield has pulled in some serious support organizationally and in fundraising, and for her part Ybarra, the winner in two seriously-contested election cycles, should not be at all discounted.

Then there’s the third candidate, more of a wild card than the other two.

Branden Durst is a former Democratic state legislator who quit, moved to Washington state, came back to the Boise area and declared himself a Republican - an ideologically activist one, the kind quick to slap the “liberal” label on other Republicans who happen to disagree with him about something. The splash page on his website says, “Continue if you want to stop critical race theory, end common core, fund students not systems.” He has located the talking points on the right and is employing them enthusiastically.

A Facebook post from him last week said, “There is a battle waging for the soul of our country, and the epicenter of that battle is our schools. Yesterday in the Senate Education Committee, we came face-to-face with those who wish to continue to undermine parent's rights.”

A former Democrat now playing hard to the Trump loyalist Republican wing, against two relatively establishment-oriented educators? How is this going to play out?

An early indicator of the shape of campaigning to come came last week when a bill proposed by Durst and Senator Christy Zito, R-Hammett, was turned down (on a tie vote) by the Senate Education Committee. As the Idaho Ed News described the “Idaho Parental Freedom in Education Act,” it “would have allowed parents to review all documents pertaining to their child’s education, visit schools and classrooms ‘without prior consent or notification,’ and refuse medical devices or treatments.” (It could have been called the Chaotic Mobocracy in Schools Act - you can see where this would lead - but that’s another story.)

After the vote, Durst and one of the Republican no votes, Senator Jim Woodward (who Durst later of course described as a liberal), had an apparently profanity-laden and physical-contact confrontation (the details are a little murky and contested) serious enough that capitol police got involved.

In cycles past this might have been terrible publicity for Durst. In 2022, it’s called exciting the base - very Trumpian.

You can only imagine what this will look like two to three months from now. But I have no guess who will be sworn in as the state’s superintendent of public instruction next January.

Sorry Mark

January 20, 2022

schmidt

I have found Facebook (now, I guess, Metaverse) at times helpful. It kept me in touch with an few old friends and it let me know folks were looking for some lost dogs. But I have deleted my account.

You should too. Mark Zuckerberg has enough of our money. He’s one of the many billionaires, a new one is made every day. And I don’t remember sending him a dime. Maybe that’s how we get sucked into vile stuff. We swipe our card or click on “buy now” and they send an armored car to our bank.

It’s not armed security people robbing us, it’s more like the guys in Office Space who figured out how to round up the decimals and become millionaires. Back then, in the 1990’s, millionaires was a big as it got. Now we have a new billionaire every day. The worth of these folks (though it’s hard to consider someone with more wealth than I could accumulate in a lifetime as a “folk”) has more than doubled in the past year. And we, the sheep of the world, keep sending our money their way.
We just can’t see why they get the bucks and we lose it. They are so smart they can somehow tap into our measly median salary and then buy a rocket trip to space. All hail the job creators.

Do you happen to know what the median household income is in Idaho? If you ask Google (there’s some more rich guys who don’t charge you a penny) it’s about $56K. The same data mining site (who pays those guys to mine data?) tells us the AVERAGE (not median…remember high school statistics?) is $74K.

A little high school statistics reminder. The average is everybody added together, then you divide by all the people. The median is all the people lined up and you pick the guy in the middle. So here in Idaho, and in this country and the world, there’s a lot of us below average.

Do you happen to know what is calculated to be a living wage in Idaho? MIT has these calculations for you, but Google helped me find them and I didn’t have to send them any money. If you are a single adult with one child, or two adults, one working with one child, it’s right at $57K.

Back to high school statistics: half the folks in Idaho, if they have a child, are living at or below what is considered the living wage.

Some of these poor folks are spending too much money on their cell phone plans. Some should consider spending less on their car payments, and maybe trying to earn more. Maybe we should all be buying less beer.

But it’s a good bet, here in this beautiful state, most of these folks either don’t vote, or vote Republican.

I don’t. I sure wish it mattered.

And I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg will feel any pinch at all that I fled his Meta Morass. He’ll figure lots more ways to siphon off way too much money. Those “likes” and clicks and seconds you spend scrolling will go into their data mining machine and they’ll sell you to somebody who wants your profile.

Step off the carousel and walk around the park.

All the small-town local papers use Facebook in an attempt to drive folks their way. They require you to use Facebook, oops, MetaVerse, to comment of see their up-to-date postings. It may not cost them anything, it may be a service Facebook offers. Sorry, nothing is free.

I’m glad I’ve stepped away from the loud music and flashing lights. I think I’ll just walk around the park and say “hi” to the folks I meet.

Recall

January 19, 2022

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The months-long campaign to recall Yamhill County Commissioner Lindsay Berschauer, alongside the school board recall efforts in Newberg, may suggest to some people in the county the impression that recalls are a commonplace part of the political scenery.

They’re not. In the bigger picture, they’re an unusual feature of democracy, and in most places they aren’t used all that much or at all.

But in some places they do pop up repeatedly, and Oregon is one of those places.

And where they are used, they tend to get a lot of attention.

You probably don’t know much about the municipal politics of North Pole, Alaska, but in 1998 it came to the world’s attention when its mayor was recalled.

And you might have heard last month about one aspect of Seattle city politics. A council member there, Kshama Sawant, was nearly recalled on December 7, she survived by 310 votes (razor-close in a city the size of Seattle). One of the charges against her, Yamhill countians may be interested to know (with some echoes of local politics), had to do with an incident in which Swant opened the locked doors of city hall to a protesting crowd, in her case Black Lives Matter participants.

In the Northwest, the highest-profile recent successful recall was in 2005 when Spokane Mayor James West was ousted by the voters.

Around the world, most democracies only allow for replacing elected officials at the next election. Apart from the United States - and not in all states - recalls are common features in just a few countries, including Japan, Peru, Ecuador and parts of Germany and Canada, and some other scattered places. Worldwide, it’s the exception rather than the rule.

It wasn’t an original feature of American government, though it was used in some places in colonial and revolutionary America. It was unheard of in America in most of the 19th century, and only as the 20th arrived did the progressive movement of a century ago start to propose it.

This is strictly a state and local government feature, by the way, and 10 states (Utah is the only one in the west) have no provisions for recall. There is no way to recall a member of Congress. People have tried to take up the effort at times over the years, only to learn it isn’t legally possible.

Oregon, famously, was a national leader in this, when voters in 1908 amended the state constitution to allow for the recall (just a few years after approving initiatives, referenda and direct primaries).

The rules surrounding recall vary in detail and overall reach. In Washington state, for example, recall is allowed but proponents have to officially state grounds for recall - and not just any grounds will do. State law says they have to show “Commission of some act or acts of malfeasance or misfeasance while in office, or who has violated his oath of office.” Hard facts are needed to support all that, because a court will review the grounds, and will reject the recall effort if the stated grounds don’t meet the legal requirements. Judges sometimes have done just that. Washington is not alone in setting a moderate-to-high bar for recalls. Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Virginia also place specific requirements on recalls; only certain types of violations will qualify.

Oregon is looser in that regard: No grounds are required.

Oregon also allows for recall of every public officer in the state; many states only allow certain officials to be recalled, in some cases only a few categories of them.

You do have to wait at least six months after the official is sworn in to try to recall them. (The law is saying the public has to give the official a chance to do the job properly.)

Oregon also does have (as recall backers in the Yamhill commission case have learned in detail) highly specific requirements for petition signature collections and numbers of signatures, and a deadline for submission.

And maybe because the recall option goes back so far in the state’s history, it has become in the state a relatively often-used device. In the last five years, at least 37 attempted recalls, most at the city and county level but a few aimed at state officials, have been tried. In the last couple of decades, many of Yamhill County’s cities have seen recall attempts, usually unsuccessful.

Some Oregon recalls do succeed. In 2018 Toledo Mayor Billy Jo Smith and a couple of council members were ousted over complaints about how city business was being managed. In 2011 Cornelius Mayor Neal Knight and two council members were recalled after a squabble related to the city manager.

Most such efforts never get as far as actual elections, though. One good example - or several, depending on how you count - would be the recurring effort in recent years to recall Governor Kate Brown.

Recalling an elected official isn’t easy, and it shouldn’t be: Set the bar too low and any official with a critic will face endless attempts at a recall, and a government can’t function. The legal requirements generally are intended to ensure that a large portion of the electorate really wants to undo what the voters not so long ago did. That’s also the reason for the “grounds” in states like Washington, to ensure that the problems generating the recall actually are serious enough that the city, county or state really can’t wait until next time around.

Still, the recall is there for a reason. Sometimes mistakes are made in elections, as they are everywhere else. It’s there, as a last-resort safety valve.

As in the case of regular elections, it’s up to the voters to decide whether to exercise it.

This article originally appeared in the McMinnville (OR News-Register.

An almost perfect campaign speech

January 19, 2022

malloy

Gov. Brad Little has not yet announced his re-election plans, but it’s not much of a mystery. As he has told reporters, “Don’t bet against it.”

And if (or when) he does run, don’t wager against him using more than a few lines from his State of the State address that kicked off this year’s legislative session. As State of the State messages go, it was a pretty good campaign speech.

He called his plan, “Leading Idaho,” which is the kind of bold talk that plays well in a campaign – but not as well before a crowd of skeptical (if not hostile) politicians. Seated behind him, and peering over his shoulder, were Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who wants Little’s job, and House Speaker Scott Bedke – who is running for lieutenant governor. In the audience, there was Rep. Priscilla Giddings, who is running against Bedke, and two candidates for secretary of state – Sen. Mary Souza and Rep. Dorothy Moon.

Spoiler alert: There will be a lot of politics happening in this year’s session.
But there was more to this tough crowd. It included a b and of conservatives who think the governor should be returning more of a record surplus to taxpayers and Democrats who think Little wants to cut taxes too much. It’s a nice backdrop to a messy legislative session. They’d probably be here through July if this were not an election year.

But for now, with his State of the State address out of the way, Little can leave the heavy lifting to lawmakers. Little’s big decision in the immediate future is picking a time, place and date for his re-election announcement and choosing his favorite lines from his State of the State message.

He has a nice list of talking points.

“Idaho’s economy is stronger than ever before. We’re one of only four states with more jobs today than before the pandemic. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. Our budget is balanced. We have robust reserves. Idaho businesses and citizens benefit from living and working in the least regulated state in the nation.”

The list goes on. The state is spending more money for education, while providing tax cuts. Again, it’s not enough to satisfy Democrats or right-wing Republicans. And editorial writers will continue to remind us that despite the increases Little is proposing for education, Idaho ranks at or near the nation’s bottom in most education-funding categories. Critics also will point out that Idaho’s record surplus was not entirely the result of skillful management on the part of state government, as Little implies with this comment: “While D.C. is digging the country into a $29 trillion hole, Idaho has a record surplus of $1.9 billion and counting.”

Of course, more than half that amount came from the federal government in COVID relief, thus contributing to the $29 trillion national debt.

But there’s nothing unusual about smoke and mirrors in a campaign speech. Yes, we have problems with growth, exploding housing costs and rising property taxes that are not sustainable for many Idahoans. His speech focused on the positives and, to Little’s credit, Idaho is in relatively decent shape.

It’s always good for a Republican in Idaho to take swings at President Biden and those pesky Democrats ruling the roost in Congress. Little offered a few well-timed digs.

“While President Biden divides Americans in his attempts to elevate the role of government in citizens’ lives, coercing Americans with government-imposed vaccine mandates, Idaho says ‘no,’” Little said. “Our lawsuits challenging Biden’s polarizing vaccine mandates are working. I banned divisive vaccine passports. I never mandated masks or vaccines. We responded to a crisis with a balanced approach and kept Idaho open. And while President Biden continues to dismiss the catastrophe at the U.S.-Mexico border, Idaho is banding together with other states to act.”

And, of course, no campaign speech can be complete without talking about children, grandchildren, the love for his wife and the people who have made a difference in his life. He checked all those boxes.

The only thing missing was a thumbs up from former President Trump, which is the Holy Grail of political endorsements. McGeachin managed to land that one.

ctmalloy@outlook. Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook. com

Worried Republicans

January 18, 2022

rainey

I feel sorry for Republicans. Yes, I really do.

Oh, no! Not the crazy, immoral, sex-abusing, race-baiting, publicity-seeking, ignorant ones who show up in the headlines, day-after-day. No. Never them!

I mean the thoughtful, concerned, conservative-leaning, socially responsible, God-fearing, centrist, compromise-believing, all-around good people like Bob Dole, Howard Baker, Everett Dirksen, John McCain, Michael Steele, Jerry Ford, the Bushes, etc., etc., etc.. Where have Republicans like that gone? Are all the “normal” ones dead?

If so, where the Hell did their descendants go?

I’m sick and tired of McCarthy, Cruz, Paul, Taylor-Greene, Boebert, Gosar, Biggs, Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Sessions, Scaliese, et al..

McCarthy’s latest misadventure is loudly and repeatedly claiming he’ll fight the January 6th Committee every step of the way. He’ll refuse the official “request” to appear - he’ll reject any subpoenas on his doorstep - ignore the Constitutionally-authorized power of the Committee.

His words: “As a representative and leader of a minority party, it is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have concluded to not participate in this select committee’s abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward. The Committee is not conducting a legitimate investigation ... and is not serving any legislative purpose.”

A load of B.S.. Any high school civics class could tear McCarthy’s full statement apart and highlight the lies - if not the historical ignorance - therein. With little effort.

That’s what I’m talking about when I write “I’m sick and tired” of (r)epublicans. Yes, Virginia, small “r.”

But, at the same time, my heart goes out to anyone in this country who lays an intellectually positive claim to the name “Republican” - large “R!”

Day after day, after seemingly endless day, those good, honest, God-fearing, responsible, conservative people listen to their small “r” brothers-and-sisters lie, misrepresent facts, shout their idiocy with meaningless drivel while showing their deep ignorance. Like McCarthy. They find little-to-no support or even acknowledgment of/for their good Republican hopes, aspirations and dreams.

Nothing in the headlines - or on the “telly” these days - represents what normal, right-thinking Republicans among the citizenry expect of their Party. I’m sure many go to bed each night, sick of what has happened to the GOP, hoping tomorrow will be the day civility, honesty and responsibility return. And the next day. And the next. And the next. That’s gotta be tough.

But, there are some small glimmers of hope. The January 6th Committee, for example, so far appears to be hard-working, diligent, smart and very, very professional in what activities we can see. It’s beginning to feel the Committee’s final report will be a blockbuster with investigation details of nearly hourly happenings from before the 6th to well after.

The Committee has been very, very smart, so far, publically revealing snippets of information a bit at a time. If one D.J. Trump isn’t feeling the pressure mounting, and a spear jabbing him in the ribs, he’s either more factually-challenged than we thought or living in some dream world in which he thinks his followers will rush into the streets to save him. Some will. Most won’t.

Right-thinking, caring and responsible Republicans face a huge decision come primary election time. They’ve either got to stay and fight to keep the nut cases off the November ballot (if they have the strength to do so) or, jump over the fence and vote with Democrats. If, in their Party, the current crop of liars, politically-ignorant, McCarthy types survive to “fight another day,” GOP politics will become “sewer” politics. And it won’t get better for many years.

There are two ways to beat the “bad guys.

One is the ballot box. The other is for elected Republican leaders to finally show some sense of responsibility and punish the miscreants themselves. But, don’t hold your breath, waiting for the second method to come forth. It won’t. It’s the “leadership” (McCarthy, Scaliese, Elise Stefanic, McConnell, Barrasso, et al.) that are the problem. As long as these people serve in those “leadership” positions, there’ll be no house cleaning and no diversion from the loud, raucous, truth-denying bunch we presently have.

So, my thoughtful, truth-telling, honest, civically-responsible Republican friends, there IS hope. And that hope is YOU! We want to see you and your progeny survive and prosper to become the “Republican Party that was.” Ready to offer to meet at the table on any issue, to talk, to compromise and to work for better government and a better America. We want you to succeed! We really do!

‘Cause if you don’t, our Democracy - our Republic - our entire nation can - and most likely - will be lost. That’s how important you are!

Tell us what we can do to help.

Constitutional shirking

January 17, 2022

jones

Idaho has an historic $1.6 billion revenue surplus, much of which can and should be used to finally satisfy the Legislature's constitutional duty to provide adequate funding for Idaho’s public school system.

Article IX, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution commands that “it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform, and thorough system of public, free common schools.” This is one of the most important responsibilities of the State.

The Idaho Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that these are not idle words. Rather, the Legislature must provide sufficient funding to properly operate our public school system. There can be no argument that the Legislature has failed to carry out this solemn obligation for many years. The issue was considered by the Supreme Court in a long-running case, titled Idaho Schools for Equal Educational Opportunity v. State, often referred to as the ISEEO case. The case was filed in 1990 and came before the Court on five occasions, producing five decisions.

In its second decision in 1996, the Court suspected that the State was not adequately funding the instructional side of the education system and sent the case back to the trial court for further consideration of that issue. The Legislature did increase school funding for a while but that did not last long.

In the third round of the litigation, the focus became the proper meaning of a “thorough system” of public schools. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that “a safe environment conducive to learning is inherently part of a thorough system of public, free common schools.” The Court said that further litigation was necessary to decide whether school facilities--buildings and fixtures--were being adequately financed by the State. The case was sent back to the trial court to find whether dilapidated school facilities were harming the work of educating our kids.

When the case came back in its fifth iteration in 2005, the Court ruled that the Legislature had not met its constitutional duty to provide a thorough system of education with regard to school facilities. The ruling specified, “it is the duty of the State, and not this Court or the local school districts, to meet this constitutional mandate.” It was made clear that the Legislature could not place the primary funding responsibility for school facilities upon local property tax payers. The Court approvingly quoted an Ohio Supreme Court decision for the proposition that property taxes are not the answer for satisfying the constitutional mandate: “The valuation of local property has no connection whatsoever to the actual education needs of the locality, with the result that a system over reliant on local property taxes is by its very nature an arbitrary system that can never be totally thorough.”

In a special session of the Legislature in 2006, legislation proposed by then-Governor Jim Risch was approved to reduce reliance on property taxes and shift the burden to sales and income taxes. In the last ten years, the burden on property tax payers has substantially increased because the Legislature has failed to carry out its responsibility to provide adequate funding for either school facilities or instructional operations. Supplemental property tax levies amounted to $218.2 million in 2021-2022. Plant facilities levies were about $53 million last year and may well be more this year. These are obligations that the Legislature should pay out of general tax revenues. Local property tax payers should not be saddled with these costs.

The Legislature is clearly shirking its constitutional duty to provide a thorough system of public schools. Ever since the deep recession of 2008, public leaders, including former Governor Otter and any number of legislators, have admitted this to be the case. Instead of falling all over themselves to figure out how many hundreds of millions of the present surplus should be dished out in tax cuts, legislators should finally take the opportunity to meet their constitutional duty of adequately funding public school operations and facilities.

We clearly have the money so let’s require the legislators to carry out their responsibility under the Idaho Constitution. Our kids' education depends on it.