Portland City Council candidate John Anton (left) has the”unofficial” support of Portland School Committee hopeful Kate Snyder. (photos/courtesy Anton, Snyder)
The support that dare not speak its name
Partisanship runs high in “nonpartisan” city campaigns
By Chris Busby
Portland School Committee candidate Kate Snyder is not “officially” supporting John Anton’s candidacy for the Portland City Council. Presented with the evidence, Snyder admits she’s quoted on the back of Anton’s campaign palm card extolling his virtues, saying he’ll “help put Portland back on the right track.” But that doesn’t mean she’s endorsing him, she nervously explained.
In answer to a question for The Bollard voters’ guide, Anton initially said he was not supporting any other candidates for city office this fall. But he later called back to ask that his answer be changed. He was, in fact, supporting Snyder, he sheepishly acknowledged.
Snyder’s print ads and campaign Web site, katesnyder.com, highlight a lengthy list of supporters. The online list includes political heavyweights like House Speaker Glenn Cummings, State Senator Ethan Strimling and his rival Congressional candidate, Mike Brennan. It also features “community leaders” like former Portland Public Market director Ted Spitzer and Portland Phoenixassociate publisher Marc Shepard. Despite his service on the Portland Planning Board and presidency of an affordable housing investment fund, Anton’s name is not among them.
What’s going on between these two? Is it something “values” voters should know about? Should someone alert the Christian Civic League?
Actually, it’s not that saucy – just simple, partisan politics.
Campaigns for the Portland City Council and School Committee are officially nonpartisan. Candidates rarely trumpet their political affiliations in public, and party membership is not noted next to their names on the ballot. It’s not supposed to matter whether city officials are registered as Democrats, Republicans, Green Independents or Socialist Workers. What’s important is their ability to serve the city.
But it does matter, at least to local Democrats afraid of losing more power to the Greens. That’s why Snyder got in trouble.
“I got my wrist slapped by even giving John a quote,” said Snyder, a Democrat making her first run for public office. Anton is registered as a Green Independent, but was formerly enrolled in the Donkey Party.
Snyder wouldn’t elaborate on the record, but other sources say her party’s leadership “took her to the woodshed” over the Anton quote, pointing out that she’s got the backing of a pack of prominent Dems. If she expects to stay in their good graces, the story goes, she would be wise not to publicly support Green candidates challenging party comrades – even if she believes a Green is the best person for the job.
The party boss holding the belt was likely Sive Neilan, chair of the Portland Democratic City Committee. Asked why Snyder was rebuked for the Anton blurb, Neilan said, “Kate and John have been friends for years. Based on what happened, I think Kate’s a better friend to have than John.
“He knew that putting that quote on his palm card was not going to serve Kate’s interest,” she continued. “I was taken aback that one friend would do that to another. She’s obviously new to the game, but it does make for some difficulties, especially for someone like me, who’s totally supportive of Jim Cloutier and Jill Duson,” the two incumbent city councilors, and registered Democrats, that Anton is challenging. (The fourth candidate for the two citywide Council seats, Mark Reilly, is an unenrolled independent.)
Asked if she was worried the blurb would hurt her at-large school board campaign, Snyder replied, “I hope not,” and added that she doesn’t think it will. Anton has not included the quote in subsequent campaign materials, though his party has not objected to his support for Snyder.
“I think John is a good candidate,” Snyder said. But though others’ endorsements of her are a big part of her campaign, she said, “I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to be endorsing anybody.”
Duson is publicly supporting Snyder (and, for the record, rival at-large school board candidate, and fellow Democrat, Jaimey Caron), but Cloutier, a Caron supporter, is not publicly in her camp. Curiously, Duson’s name is not on Snyder’s list of supporters. For his part, Caron said he’s not making any public endorsements, but will be “supporting” Cloutier.
Thanks for nothin’
Longtime Democrat Orlando Delogu is in this race, but he purposely left the party to run it.
“I think these local elections… should be nonpartisan,” said Delogu, who won a term on the Council in the mid ’90s. “I feel kind of sad that we’ve reduced these local elections into as partisan a character as we have. It’s made it almost impossible for an independent voice, or even a Republican, [to win].”
Delogu said he’d been a registered Democrat for nearly 40 years when he ran against then-incumbent City Councilor Karen Geraghty in 2003, but his party ties didn’t do him any good. He lost to Geraghty, a fellow Democrat supported by what Delogu calls “the new Democrats” in charge these days. “They treated me like I was from Mars,” he said.
(Despite his break with the party, the local Dems are promoting Delogu as one of their own this year – at least online. Delogu’s bio appears on portlanddems.org, the city committee’s official Web site, in the section highlighting Democratic candidates for municipal office.)
Of the two Greens in this race, one is the high-profile party standard-bearer and two-term incumbent Ben Meiklejohn. Meiklejohn has complained of partisanship on the school board (and in the jailhouse), but critics are just as quick to accuse him of the same. Asked if he was supporting any candidates this fall, he somewhat glumly replied, “nobody’s asked me for an endorsement.”
The other Green is first-time candidate Leslie Minton, who said she registered as a Green Independent by mistake, thinking she was enrolling as an “independent.” She is not endorsing anyone.
Pick me, I’m blue!
Duson wears her partisanship like a badge of honor. In a typo-riddled campaign fundraising letter sent to Democratic Party contributors last month, she linked the success of her City Council reelection campaign to that of fellow Democrats running for state and federal office next year.
In an unfortunate collision of metaphors, she wrote, “I have thrown open the doors [of] City Hall and kept them open to residents, agencies, entrepreneurs, business and social service organizations.” At the end of the appeal, she warns Democratic donors: “What happens in Portland will not stay in Portland unless you help to close the door [her emphasis]. Let’s not let a certain upstart party strengthen its foothold.”
(Earlier this year, Duson considered formally joining the race for Congress, but dropped out of contention, citing the difficulty of raising enough money to compete in the primary.)
“I think the Green Party is working very closely together in a partisan way,” Duson told The Bollard. “My own party needs to wake up and be as aggressive Democrats as the Green Independent Party is aggressively its own entity. In the end, I think we will get better decisions.”
Duson’s zest for partisan jousting does not extend to the ballot box. “I actually like that on the ballot we do not declare our partisan allegiance,” she said. And Duson’s glad there are no primaries at the municipal level. “This way, anybody can decide to run,” she said. “I think that’s important.”
Neilan makes a similar argument in favor of party primaries for city offices. “I would like to see primaries because there’s a tremendous interest, thank heavens, in serving the community. That way, you can have a great number of people involved in the process, and presumably get the best candidate through that process.”
Neilan is also in favor of putting party affiliations on the ballot, though that’s not surprising given that Portland has many more registered Democrats than Greens or Republicans. “It would be great,” she said. “Democrats would love it. I’m not sure other parties would like it.”
She’s right about that. Ben Chipman, a veteran Green Party organizer who serves on the party’s county board, said he thinks there’s too much partisanship in city elections already. “On a very local level like this… it should be more about the person and more about the issues they stand for,” he said. Chipman added that in his experience, it’s rare for voters to ask what party a candidate for municipal office belongs to.
Then again, maybe they already know. “Is there anybody under 70 who thinks these elections are nonpartisan?” Neilan asked rhetorically. “Of course they’re partisan. That’s what makes them fun.”
“I’ve always found it humorous when people refer to city elections as nonpartisan, because it’s obviously been very partisan [for] quite a long time,” said Reilly, a former Republican making his fourth attempt to win a Council seat.
Partisan today, nonpartisan tomorrow?
In District 3, first-time City Council candidate Dan Skolnik broke the taboo against overt partisan politicking by putting his party affiliation atop his palm card: Democrat. “I don’t fully comprehend what keeping these races nonpartisan is supposed to achieve,” said Skolnik. “I don’t think it achieves as much as it limits.”
Skolnik, who’s scooped up support from Duson and Strimling, said he’s running on a platform of “collaboration.”
“I heard some people suggest that it runs counter to my theme of collaboration to self-identify as a Democrat,” he said. “I don’t agree with that. I’m going to say I’m a Democrat and we should be working with the Greens. They have good ideas they need help getting across. I want to provide that help.”
Which is not to say Skolnik wants to help any more Greens get on the Council. He’s endorsing Cloutier and Duson.
Skolnik faces a Green and two fellow Dems in his quest to represent the western Portland district. The Democrats include Tony Donovan, with whom Skolnik sparred over party loyalty last July, and Dick Farnsworth, who’s largely stayed out of the partisan fray.
The Green is Capt. Bill Linnell, a former Cape Elizabeth Town Councilor making his first run for office here. Linnell said he’s supporting his fellow Greens this year, but does not feel it’s “appropriate” to make party affiliation an issue in nonpartisan campaigns.
Though party politics shapes and influences campaigns for city office, there’s wide agreement that once elected, city officials are expected to check their political affiliations at the door. Whether that actually happens is another source of debate – witness the two consecutive party-line votes that have kept Meiklejohn from attaining the school board chairmanship despite his seniority on the board.
“Partisanship is great up to elections, but past the election, it should not be that operative,” said Neilan. “The party doesn’t dictate what they do in office. We’re just trying to find the candidate with the best credentials to do the best thing for the community.”
Voters can be excused for being skeptical of such claims. After all, what’s the point of promoting a candidate if you have no expectation that person will promote your political views once in office? And how can candidates claim with a straight face that their decisions in public office will be free of political influence when their decision to publicly support fellow office-seekers is dictated by party politics?
Having kowtowed to party leadership over her pro-Anton quote, Snyder was asked whether voters can expect her to do her party’s bidding should she win election on Nov. 6.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
