AN ASIDE: SHOULD I RUN FOR COUNTY COMMISSIONER?

Well, I could. Run for county commissioner, that is. There are two seats (out of three) open and one of the incumbents is running unopposed, even. I don’t have to decide until March—that’s when I’d have to have papers in. Election’s in May.

Why would I want to do something like that? Well, county commissioner here is a paid job, and (as I’ve noted before) I could really use a paying job. It is also work I can do and have done (though not for a county before). The operative question is whether I could have enough name familiarity by election time to be successful. I would not be entering the race to lose. I don’t like losing.

For one of the commissioner seats, there’s presently a five-way race, and I know personally three of the candidates and have talked to a fourth, and would be hard pressed to tell any voter why they should pick me over any of them. I might not vote for me myself under those conditions. All the other candidates announced some time ago—one can start as early as September, here, and some of them did. But the other seat (and these are “at-large” positions—county commissioners are elected county-wide) has an incumbent who’s running for re-election unopposed. Oh, it’s tempting.

I have nothing against the guy; he’s an ex-state bureaucrat, a little conservative (I am a lot conservative), gets around a lot, and appears to know what he’s doing. I’d probably vote for the guy even though I don’t know him well. I do hate to see anybody unopposed, though; you never get a discussion of issues because there’s no one to debate them with.

Could I do a better job than him? Maybe; that’d be the main reason people would want to vote for me, after all. I am one of the tightest people I know with a dollar, and the county is running short on money—the county treasurer has been complaining about that for years. No, I don’t have many specific ideas for saving money—I’d just keep my eyes open and grab every opportunity I could. I have the budgeting experience, the personnel management experience, and I know the laws and regulations the county has to operate under. From being a small-town mayor, a lobbyist, and a city manager, I know a lot of useful people in state and Federal government—probably the incumbent fellow knows a lot of the same folks. And I’m accessible (yes, I think the other guy probably is, too). I consider that important.

There are a few “issue” things we could talk about. I’d like to re-structure county government, replacing the three full-time paid commissioners with a volunteer board elected by district and a county manager; big change (only one rural county in Oregon has done it), but it does save money, as well as getting government closer to the voters. (I would be eliminating my own job in the process—but I’ve done that before.) I’d like to force one or more of the population centers in South County to incorporate as cities—controversial, to be sure, and it would cost those folks some bucks, but it’d save the county money. And I could give ‘em reasons why it’s a good idea. I like the idea of a sales tax on tourists to bring in extra money (and that one’s guaranteed to be controversial, with so many jobs in the county dependent on tourist traffic). I can talk passionately about all these things and not be heartbroken if I don’t get my way. That’s how politics works.

Name familiarity is a key to getting elected to anything (there’s the “household word” problem again, just like in the music business). With no money for advertising, and not much for promotional materials (though I can design those myself), I’d be doing most of my campaigning by talking to people—following the old Biblical dictum: “Whenever two or three of you are gathered together, there am I.” In a rural area like this, one reaches people through the organizations they belong to (and there are a lot of them). On the plus side, I obviously have the time. On the minus side, I am really not sure I know enough people to be able to pull it off.

So think of this as an Exploratory Question. Is there support out there for me to run for county commissioner and not waste my time? I won’t decide for a while, but I’d like to hear from people.

Joe