Four years ago, your reporter undertook a sort of sociological analysis of the Eureka city elections (“City Asunder,” Oct. 26, 2006). The division I identified at the time — between old Eureka power and the lefty newcomers — continues to fester, at least in certain circles, as this year’s massive election in the city approaches. But to all appearances the great mass of active Eureka voters simply does not much care. This is, perhaps, to their credit.
A couple of months ago, one Arcata political type told me that the voters of Eureka had earned his grudging respect. The type’s analysis was this: You never know whether Eurekans are going to flop left or right, because regardless of ideology they always go for the candidate with the strongest pitch.
Example: For the last several years, the first order of business on the Eureka docket for political classes both left and right has been Marina Center — Rob Arkley‘s proposed Home Depot-anchored development on the site of the city’s defunct downtown rail yard. Well, history shows us that Candidate X may be strongly supportive of Marina Center and Candidate Y may be strongly critical of it. Yet both X and Y — Mike Jones and Larry Glass in 2006, Frank Jager and Linda Atkins in 2008 — win their respective races.
Why is this? I have a theory.
The Eureka public is savvy enough to know that when it comes to issues like Marina Center — issues that people spend money fighting over — both sides, to one degree or another, are full of shit. They know they are merely the battlefield upon which the interested parties conduct their political war, and they know those parties will do or say anything they can get away with in order to win their battles.
All this is natural, but the thing that makes the Eureka electorate special is that they are aware of the manipulation, and they reject it as unimportant. Thus, when an election rolls around they pay little attention to the position a candidate takes — pro- or anti-whatever — and much more attention to his or her justification for taking that position. They’re looking for intelligence, honesty, forthrightness, capability — any kind of quality that may come in handy during those occasional moments when the City Council or Board of Supervisors turns from the battles of the wealthy and well-connected to things that might more directly affect them, personally — crime, parks, water rates, roads, taxes, etc.
This indifference, of course, is immensely frustrating to the powers behind the curtain — the people who, being participants in the battle, can no longer directly run for office themselves (thank God). Unlike in Fortuna or Arcata, there is no litmus test, no ideological questionnaire that can predict a candidate’s chances with any degree of accuracy. There are no obvious chains to yank.
But political interest groups feel they have to try something. Lately, Arkley’s Security National has taken a tip from the Tea Parties and organized rallies inside the Arkley Center, filling minds with shock and awe at the socialist agenda that supposedly motivates their opponents, all the while delaying Coastal Commission review of the project so as to play the victim a while longer. Maybe it will take; probably it won’t.
On the other hand, the environmental groups standing in opposition to Marina Center paint pictures of a burbling toxic soup seeping into the bay from the Balloon Track, regardless of the fact that state water quality regulators have given the thumbs-up to Arkley’s proposed clean-up plan, and, in any case, there are much more toxic sites around the bay that no one cares much about. This line seems to have even less traction than Security National’s teabaggish fury.
Which, again, is to the Eureka electorate’s credit. They seem unwilling to be cajoled into confusing their own interests with the interests of the town’s unelected political players. To those, they are mostly indifferent. They’re looking for a strong candidate, and their definition of strength has little to do with how someone votes on a particular hot-button issue.
There are, of course, occasional exceptions to the rule — cases where the demonstrably vaguer and weaker candidate for Eureka office nonetheless prevails. Maybe they scuttle my hypothesis completely, or maybe they are to-be-expected vagaries of the sort that mock social scientists who long for iron-clad laws of human behavior. I don’t know. Whichever the case, in the interest of politeness I will leave identification of these exceptions as an exercise for the reader.
This article appears in Hooked.
Hank, your skills as an political analyst of all things Humboldt are sometimes spot-on. . . but not this time. In your zeal to tie this package up with a neat, glib little bow, I’d say you overlooked quite a bit of the obvious.
Here’s the real reason people don’t seem to care much anymore: this whole thing with the Balloon Track has dragged on for way, way too long. Why? Because Mr. Arkley, at a certain point, stopped getting it his way, and started throwing a big, fat temper tantrum. I’d say it started when he ran smack afoul of the law with a patently illegal cleanup plan and a state agency (the Coastal Commission) that he couldn’t lean on or intimidate. Up until that point, his carpet-bombing of a small town with literally millions in false and misleading propaganda seemed to really be working. Even, I daresay, on yourself. Once upon a time, the editor of the one print outfit that could hold an actor’s feet to the fire through long-form cover stories drawing attention to acts of perfidy, well, decided to hang it up – at least on this particular issue. That’s really unfortunate, because the perfidy hasn’t gone away.
It may be easier to be smug and point the finger all around to blame everyone, but that’s just . . . smug.
Where have you gone, Hank DiMaggio?
You have read way too much into the tea leaves Hank. My take is that on average, Eureka residents just don’t give a rat’s ass about any of it, and most likely don’t even know what you’re talking about. Not that this is a bad thing. It just is. Nice try though.
P.S. Watch out for Miles Slattery, I think he’s looking for a new job.
My my, this article seems to have touched one of Mr. Latt’s nerves. How dare a journalist not be in your ideological pocket! Such impudence!
The Coastal Commission has presented no information that would override the WQCB’s findings, and it is doubtful that they have the technical competence to do so. Their intervention in the SIRAP issue is purely political. Agree or disagree with the approach of Measure N, but it is a response to the Coastal Commission’s blatantly political intervention.
Thirdeye, you seem to have quite a dog in this fight yourself, or perhaps your ego was bruised by the fact that the Coastal Commission spoke up to identify the (at least) five ways the project, as proposed, violates State and federal law.
Much as that might be an inconvenient truth, for you and other project proponents, it remains one thing: a fact. And facts tend to transcend ideology, whether it’s mine, yours, or Hank’s.
If you care to discuss it further in a reasonable and credible manner, please read the staff report from the Coastal Commission that specifically identify the project’s violations of law. Here’s the link:
http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2009/12/Th14c-12-2009.pdf
(read first 11 pages of the 82 page document)
P.S. Hank, I’d say it’s high time for you to read it, too. That way, you might be able to speak more knowledgeably(rather than speculatively) on the subject.
You’re saying, o sage, that this is the reason people don’t care anymore? When did they ever care? Here’s the list of winners from 2006: Neely, Bass, Glass, Leonard, Jones. You’re telling me that this is an electorate preoccupied with matters Arklish? I think not.
Hank, as a long time resident and voter in the city of Eureka you ARE spot-on. Some folks hate blinds them from reason.
I’m saying nothing of the sort, Hank. I agree with the second poster, that you’re reading way too much into the tea leaves in your search for content for your Dandy column. Sit back, take a chill pill – sometimes, there’s just no rhyme or reason to it. Relax. Much as you relish spanking one side or the other (perhaps so you may feel superior to both), you can’t always draw hard-and-fast rules from the electoral facts (at least not in your alloted ten-odd column-inches). All I’m saying is, I respected you a lot more when you focused, without fear or favor, your long-form energies on the most controversial and topical issues of the day in the county – from which you evidently have retreated since becoming editor.
IMHO.
See what I mean?
Mr. Latt:
The Coastal Commission report may impress a dilettante like you, but it does not impress me.
Don’t stop at page-11, read page-12 also. And then ask yourself “what the hell do those 11 questions have to do with cleaning up the B.T.?”…So the C.C. wants to buy the B.T. from the Arkly’s???
Fellas:
You can shut your eyes, stamp your feet, and scream “I don’t like it!” as much as you please – this is America, right? But that won’t change the law, nor its enforcement. If you have a problem with the CCC staff’s report identifying numerous illegalities with the proposed development and its cleanup plan, I would urge you to contact Security National and tell them to provide the simple information requested by staff so the process may continue to move forward. Getting mad at me ain’t helping your case, and actually makes you look rather petty and pathetic.
Just sayin’.
Neal;
Did you read page 12? Are did you stop on page 11, like you want everybody else to do ?… Like I asked before, what do those 11 questions on page 12 have to do with cleaning up the B.T.? If the C.C. asked me “how much did you pay for that peice of land?” My answer would be ” none of your F’n business!”… This is America?…right?
Actually Brian, there are 14, not 11, requests for information, running onto page 13 of the document, which I’m sure you perused in its entirety. As you may know in regard to development disputes in the coastal zone, the historic chain of title, as well as purchase price, boundaries, and other information related to zoning, are all germane to dispute resolution, not only with the Coastal Commission, but the California State Lands agency (which regulates public trust issues in regard to beaches, tidelands, etc). If the proposed development, which the law specifies in this particular zone, must be Coastal-Resource-Dependent (as the Arkleys undoubtedly knew when they purchased the Balloon Track), then the purchase price must be known should other laws mandating State owner-compensation kick in, if the development in question is prohibited. Questions about this may be answered by reading the Coastal Act and other relevant laws.
And by the way, the purchase price of California properties are generally publicly-accessible information. This is why the secrecy in regard to title information (and potential contract contingencies between Union Pacific and Security National) have raised so many eyebrows.
Good luck in your search for missing pieces of the pie.
Neal; your right about the there being 14 questions, my bad. So let me get my little head around this. The C.C. wants this info. so that the State can give money (‘laws mandating State owner-compensation”) to Arkey if “the development in question is prohibited”?
Also, what will the passage of Measure-N mean in all of this mess?
Brian,
That’s a great question whose answer I don’t know (but am definitely interested in getting to the bottom of). It does sound counter-intuitive that the State would have to pay people who buy land knowing that only certain developments may be permitted there when they plan to build something that doesn’t comply. But, that is how it was (inadequately) explained to me: that the State must sometimes work out a compensation package for the owner in certain cases. Perhaps it is if the zoning changes after someone already owns it, making it more restrictive (and thereby, less valuable)? I think that may be it.
In regard to Measure N, it was written rather deceptively. If you read the actual text of the ballot measure (which will become city law if it passes), it would prohibit a Wal-Mart Supercenter, but allow a standard-size Wal-Mart. Proponents of Measure N are doing everything they can to obfuscate that fact (Virginia Bass among them, very recently). Personally (and I said it publicly at a council meeting several months ago), I believe this is a Trojan Horse escape-mechanism for the Arkleys, who realize that their project, as proposed, will never get built because it literally is in violation of at least five State and federal laws. Wal-Mart is one of the few actors that has the dough to do the necessary cleanup compliant with law (estimated at perhaps $10 million), and it’s no secret that they’ve had their eye on the site since they bought their own ballot measure back in ’99 to try and get it (of course, overwhelmingly defeated by Eureka voters back then).
The trump card (and why you don’t see project opponents doing much campaigning against Measure N) is that, again, the CCC will have final say over the zoning change. Also, it is unlikely that Wal-Mart would be able to scoot into the site without a new EIR, which would then require certification from the Eureka City Council, a majority of which has gone on record to say they oppose Wal-Mart siting there.
Good questions, and stay tuned, this loaf of bread’s a long way from coming out of the oven.
See that? I observe that Eureka bullshit detectors are set to high, and productive dialogue ensues.
My work here is done.
Four respondents – real scientific, Hank – but consonant with your extremely speculative M.O.
crickets chriping……………