the town dandy / By Eric V. Kirk

Geography Trumps Ideology

(July 3, 2008) “Ideologies have no heart of their own. They’re the whores and angels of our striving selves. — John Le Carre

Transcendence be damned. Nuances notwithstanding, most politics can be reduced to stereotypes of liberalism vs. conservatism. When I moved to Humboldt County in the ’90s, the ideological lines of the North Coast were clear and pronounced. Fresh on the heels of Redwood Summer, none of the politics surprised me. Rallies at Stafford. Tree sits. Pepper spray. “U.S. out of Humboldt County.” Wal-Mart. Marijuana. It all culminated in 2002 with the first election of Paul Gallegos as District Attorney, revealing progressive politics as a burgeoning force countywide, as conservatives dug in for a siege.

But the siege never came, and politics have never been the same.

At first the lines held strong. Bonnie Neely, longtime Republican pol and wife of the vanquished D.A. Terry Farmer, jumped all over Gallegos in the aftermath of the initial filing of the Palco suit. “You’re all alone,” she told him coldly at a meeting stacked by Palco employees who had circled the Courthouse in a demonstration with images reminiscent of the Chilean truckers strike, circa 1972 — as the Board voted to decline Gallegos leave to farm the case out to private counsel.

But then came the recall. Robin Arkley, Sr., ponied up five grand to prime the Palco cash pump. But then Arkley, Jr., no raving liberal, trumped him with 12 g’s to oppose the recall. Palco and its parent Maxxam threw down $85K for a campaign that went down in a thud with numbers so convincing that one has to assume at least a portion of the “old guard” had broken solidarity. Conservatives, who had not voted for Gallegos, and would not vote for him in the subsequent election, didn’t like recalls, or perhaps distrusted Palco more than they despised the upstart.

A minor, and perhaps fleeting, shift. But it didn’t end there.

Three years later Bonnie Neely embraced Gallegos at his reelection party. She also celebrated her own victory taking her to a runoff election with a fellow Republican, beating out the lone Democrat with the blessing of local Democratic Party activists. She was deemed the “liberal” candidate. In that same election moderate Republican Virginia Bass was elected Mayor of Eureka with the help of a progressive activist campaign manager (who had opposed Wal-Mart) on a de facto slate opposite Neely’s coalition, in which Neely informally caucused with unmistakable liberals like Larry Glass and Chris Kerrigan.

The engine of reshuffling was probably the General Plan process, as some of the “old guard” and Chamber types began to concede that changing local economic realities might require more planning and environmentalists were invited to the table to discuss comprehensive county policy. Environmentalists all of the sudden found themselves with institutional voice and governing responsibility.

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