My first real exposure to contentious political campaigning came when I was a young reporter for a community newspaper in another part of the country.
Our longtime local congressman had, most people on both sides of the political aisle seemed to agree, served the district well. He’d been re-elected multiple times.
Shortly after I joined that newspaper staff, the primary election rolled around and a challenger appeared: a multi-millionaire who had decided to get into politics.
Suddenly we were watching a barrage of television commercials tearing down the local congressman and promoting the challenger. After a few weeks of this, I started becoming concerned because I knew a lot of what was being said in the commercials was innuendo – not really outright lies, but definitely leaving a false impression. These were high-dollar productions and it’s an understatement to say they portrayed the incumbent in an extremely negative light.
My editor and I discussed the situation – it was far beyond the normal mudslinging that occurs in contentious campaigns. We decided I should do a story on what the campaign had become, digging into some of the facts that were being twisted to make the sitting congressman look like a loser. I went ahead and put a story together, which ran.
Notably, the large daily that covered our entire region also ran a very similar story, which appeared almost exactly when ours did. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one bothered by these commercials.
The rich guy won.
Elections, particularly the ones for higher offices, are very often an exercise in manipulation of facts and strategic moves intended to besmirch opponents and raise a candidate’s stock with voters. It’s the vote that counts in the final tally, and the dark reality is that many politicians do whatever it takes to get yours. If that involves simplistic, inherently false quick-and-dirty slogans to get our attention and put the thoughts in our heads they want us to think, the doubts they want us to feel, so be it.
That makes it hard for us voters. How are we supposed to know whom we’re really voting for when all this obfuscation is taking place?
Note: There’s a difference between negative campaigning and “dirty tricks.” Dirty tricks are usually based on complete lies, doctored videos/photos/recordings – the tools for lying are commonplace now in our wild west of social media and saturation self-promotion.
Alternatively, negative campaign strategies are generally based on true facts, often information that’s in the public record, which might turn voters off on a candidate. It might be offensive and annoying, but it’s – at least technically – true. You’re given what they want you to know, usually without context, with shading that they intend to convince you.
We have some very competitive primary races this year, particularly between Republicans aiming to win our local state House and Senate seats.
Negative campaigning comes with the territory in competitive races. If you have a candidate you like, you might feel some outrage when you see attacks on your chosen one, but that’s the nature of the game. We’re geared to respond to insults – implied or real, mudslinging and distortions of the facts, and candidates know it. And since they’re there to win, no matter how fervently they might swear they’re going to run a nice, clean campaign, it generally ain’t so. Negativity works, as illustrated by our opening tale. Candidates often have well-researched data identifying the most promising fears they can exploit, which hot-button issues they can play to get our attention.
So where does that leave you as a voter? It’s tricky, trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not, how we should really feel and what we should believe, when we see that stuff. Who’s the real deal? Who’s telling the truth?
Frankly, I’d love to delve deep into some of the candidates we’re seeing, try to find out who they really are, but, speaking very frankly, the grim reality for newspapers these days is that the staffing levels we’re able to afford make it a challenge just to cover all the other community events, government, schools, sports, cops and day-to-day activities readers want or need to know about. As I’ve said before, every advertiser, every subscriber who jumps on board contributes to our ability to cover news – and that’s straight talk.
But you don’t have to be a journalist to do research. You can:
- Look at the candidate’s website for his or her platform, then look beyond the candidate’s website. Google their name and try to find legitimate sources that tell you about this person and what they stand for.
- Check out that quote, that vote. The internet provides us with information resources that were barely wild imaginations when I was that young reporter. We barely had computers to type on. You can look up that vote, that quote. Put it in context.
- Talk to people in the community whose views might align with yours and whom you respect – promise confidentiality, if necessary, and ask them whom they support and why.
- Read the newspaper, watch the forums posted online. Those cards you’re getting in the mail from candidates generally are more “hit-and-run” than in-depth explanations of the candidate’s own stance or criticism of opponents’. The cardboard may give you a starting point, but there are ways to go deeper.
* * * * *
So, now that the ballots are actually in the mail, let’s talk measures.
Sweet Home voters are seeing two ballot measures, one asking for approval of the rewrite of the city charter, and the other a $40 million bond measure asking them to extend the current bond, approved in 2017, in exchange for nearly $12.3 million in Oregon School Capital Improvement Matching Program (OSCIM) funding. That’s roughly 30% of the outlay – like agreeing to borrow $100 to get a $30 rewards check.
I’ve written enough about taxes that it should be clear that I’m not usually an advocate for new ones. But this is a very good deal for Sweet Home residents and it’s not new – it’s an extension (for another 30 years) of what they already pay, currently scheduled to mature in 2029, rather than an increase.
It’s worth considering that Sweet Home district officials, Business Manager Kevin Strong in particular, have demonstrated significant prowess in handling the past bonds approved by voters, Strong on a number of occasions finding ways to shorten the term to maturity of previous bonds.
Public schools are exactly that: public. We pay for them regardless of whether we have kids attending them, and ultimately, the community is responsible for their condition.
Sweet Home High School has genuine security issues – some 40 of them, to be specific. It lacks facilities for a growing CTE program. It needs some serious restructuring. It needs to improve its transportation patterns.
But the biggest issue is that security: In today’s world, what was acceptable, safety-wise, in 1934 is no longer OK. Plus, some of those buildings, even to the untrained eye, have outlived their usefulness and need to be gone.
Strong and others have stated that this bond, together with that extra $12.3 million, would bring all of Sweet Home’s schools to the point that they should be good for current voters’ lifetimes and beyond.
Sweet Home could certainly “kick the can down the road,” to use a phrase that’s been popping up in neighboring Lebanon. There, as has been reported in this newspaper, that is exactly what has happened – described as such by school officials themselves. And now the school district, already facing major budget cuts, is also looking at roughly $100 million of needed repairs to school facilities that aren’t even as old as those in Sweet Home for which this money is intended.
Pay now or pay later (a lot more, as Lebanon has learned). Either way is painful, but now will be a lot cheaper than later, and it’s not dumping that responsibility on the next generations – if the facilities last that long.
The city charter measure is an easy choice: Do you agree with the changes or not? Enough said.
Your vote counts. If you’re registered, fill out that ballot.