Like the initial vote on Proposition 1 where the Lopez/Shaw district bootstrapped its passage, the results in Tuesday’s primary were so skewed as to demonstrate the severe and disproportionate political power that that the Lopez/Shaw district now holds.
I communed with my not-so-inner geek and computed the following.
In districts outside of the advantaged Lopez/Shaw District Lovel Pratt garnered 2011 votes; Bob Jarman, 1561; and Marc Forlenza, 1011.
Another way of looking at this is for every 100 votes Ms. Pratt received, Mr. Jarman received 77; and Mr. Forlenza, 50.3.
In contrast, within the advantaged Lopez/Shaw district the break down was an absolutely stunning example of bloc voting power. Pratt received 747, Jarman 260, and Forlenza 102.
In other words, On Lopez for every 100 votes Ms. Pratt received, Jarman only received 34.6 votes, and Mr.Forlenza 13.6.
The strangeness of these results is magnified when it is remembered that in the November 2012 election on their home turf, Mr. Jarman beat Ms. Pratt handily 52.4% to 47%.
It is more than a bit odd that the voters presumably most acquainted with the candidates selected Jarman over Pratt, but now, a few weeks later with the inclusion of citizens more distant, the electorate now prefers Pratt over Jarman – perhaps proving the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”?
As for the Results of the Orcas District Race. The pattern exhibited above, was displayed even more starkly. In that race the fallout was as follows:Lisa Byers achieved front-runner status with 47.38% of the countywide vote. Rick Hughes earned a berth in the general election with 27.73%, and Greg Ayers was eliminated with 24.89%.
Excluding the Lopez/Shaw district: Lisa Byers received 2056 votes, Rick Hughes earned a spot in the general with 1474 votes, and Greg Ayers was eliminated with 1213 votes.
In other words, in non-Lopez/Shaw districts, for every 100 votes Lisa Byers received, Rick Hughes got 71.7 and Greg Ayers received 58.9.
But again, on Lopez/Shaw the results are stunningly anomalous: Lisa Byers won there with a landslide of 716 votes, Greg Ayers finished a distant second with only 243 votes, and Rick Hughes finished last with 148.
So there, for every 100 votes for Byers, Ayers only received 33.9, and Hughes 20.6.
Can the people of Lopez, proud of the independent ways, friendly personalities, "we can do it spirit", look their brethren on Orcas and San Juan in the eye and say with a clear conscience, "This system is fair"?
Or will they just try to slide under the radar, grab the power, and attempt to ramrod through the nasty "Luddite" streak so strong among some?
The Pratt/Byers blitzkrieg is out of ammo. They worked to get all their troops out on this vote. That's it, they ain't got no more people.
On the other side no comparable effort was made.
The sharp knife is who gets the voters who did not vote? This low turnout is the whole deal.
I'm talking politics to every working person now. Be subtle but firm: "You really need to vote!"
I don't know how articulate this guy McClerren is but he needs to get lots of rest this week because he is going to be the tree that gets hit by lightening.
McClerren is going to have to be like a union boss on the picket line. This is a class struggle for him and he is going to have to be outspoken and incredibly tough. And he is going to have to be a no hold barred competitor. He is the only one who can take Pratt/Byers down along with Stephens.
The old saying hold true: "I don't care what you say about me, just get my name spelled right."
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm writing a max check to McClerren. (And no, I don't even know what he looks like.)
My understanding from the scant resources I have is the real estate people are in on this one. Maybe they know this election is important for them. They do know some 1,500 acres got put in preserve in 2012 alone. Can't make money with that dirt anymore.
Have any of you noticed the IslandsSounder take on the primary?? They are totally, NOT, reporting the Lopez influence on the outcome. Hopefully those appealing the CRC issues will use this as ammunition for the case against 3 commissioners. We are doomed to be the test case for community owned property, if these fools get elected. Waldron, I am ashamed of you for giving up your independence. I had hopes of you taking care of our problem in a more direct manner. Boating accidents anyone??
The Pratt and/or Byers committees are not out of steam or ammo. That's a dream on your part.
Byers is approaching this election as she does any issue: calm, thoughtfully and steady.
Her committee is organized, deliberate, and methodical in their outreach to the community. You're dreaming if you believe she won't run the course and win this election.
It has nothing to do with her donors or how much she has raised.
She has proven herself time and again in this community. And people know it.
I tend to agree with the sentiment (@ 9:22) concerning Byers as a person. I don't agree with it in relation the Pratt Campaign and I believe Stephens has had plenty of time to prove himself, and has not been a spectacular performer.
I truly believe that Lisa Byers has the skill set necessary to move the council forward and knows the clear line between her Job and her beliefs. I can see a path that forms a council around Byers, Jarman and McClaren and it would be a good council.
I think you will find that Byers approaches her affordable-housing/land-reform mission with the cool calculation of an intelligence operative. These islands are filled with ex-CIA folks, and I admire them. But I don't think that many people here realize that Byers is the niece of a ex-CIA agent and her father was the Executive Secretary of the Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Her brother spent his entire career with SAIC, which has very close ties with the intelligence and homeland security.
Nothing wrong with any of that, but it is curious to note the stealthy way that Byers has advanced her Land Reform ideas ("all land should be common") under the guise of affordable housing because, in her words, "that's where we have gotten traction." It is curious to take note of all that and ponder how far the apple may have fallen from the tree. With the revelations about her economic ideas, it now feels like she's been playing us all along. She's been playing chess, and we've been playing checkers. We thought we were supporting affordable homes, and she's been advancing "new economics" that despises private ownership.
Makes me wonder if her father knew Ruckelshaus too. They were both in the Nixon Whitehouse. Small world. Large network. The subterranean connections around here are mind-blowing. Nothing is as it seems.
Wheaton Byers (Byers' father) has become a great conservationist back in Connecticut, just like Ruckelshaus is here. Of course, the elder Byers became a conservationist to save the family 200-acre farm from surrounding development only AFTER he sold the family mansion and an adjoining parcel to developers.
All these people who have new-fangled ideas about conservation and the economy, and when you dig into their background, you discover they have been the principal beneficiaries of the very system they now rail against.
Byers, like Pratt, northeast aristos. And we have had other scions of east coast foreign service families managing land trust projects in the islands some years back. Lisa is not unique.
I agree with the CIA observation, those folks love to retire in the islands, and north to Vancouver Island, that goes way back. Canadian intel folks do the same thing.
Lisa said in a forum that she was invited to the islands in the early '90s and her first job was with the Land Bank. Can anyone speak to this?
I had the opportunity to be a close observer of Clinton's President's Council on Sustainable Development in the early '90s and knew a number of folks involved in that. That body was established right after a certain United Nations conference, and led to federal funding to the American Planning Association to prepare manuals for land use planners. Once can howl about black helicopters, flying saucers and Agenda 21 all they want, but the facts are pretty clear what took place and the process was wide open and pretty transparent.
Its happened before. Rural folks are being forced off the "reservations" and told they must move to the big cities to be "assimilated." And the land will be acquired by dominate economic interests. The rhetoric of common property and public ownership is a smoke screen.
There was a lot of intellectual ferment in the early '90s around the communitarian philosophy promoted by Amitai Etzioni that carries through all this as a subtext and I am quite sure informs Lisa's work and many of her confederates. They believe in what they are doing. And, they are wrong.
One has to appreciate the folks who saw - and designed - the market distortions wrought by growth management, and planned ahead for the communitarian solutions to housing that would be created by these policies as people were displaced from rural lands. That Lisa was at the vanguard of some of these strategies and came to these islands as an early practitioner of them shows you how far back this goes.
But again, who invited her here and got her a job at the Land Bank? I want a name. I bet you it is someone active in this campaign, who may have been a former county commissioner around the time the county took the GMA bait.
Yes I admire Lisa's skills, I rather like her all in all. One could do far worse.
And yet one can play everyone for pawns in a larger game, but eventually it leads to hubris, complacency, arrogance and the pendulum swings against you right when you thought you were in your sweet spot. And the pendulum is swinging.
To the 9:57 post. You can't seperate your job from your beliefs. Your beliefs are a filter that everything you think and do goes through. We are voting for the filter that is most like ours. That filter is what we will get. History is full of great leadership skills, run through the worst of filters.
Do a search on Wheaton Byers Canaan, sounds like there is a family tradition of talking like you are doing good for others when its really all about you and what you want.
And so the best solution is to quickly organize, raise the money and push back really hard with every political hard ball tool in the box against this Money Machine, call it for what it is, and make sure the right people are elected to office this time, not the wrong ones.
Otherwise we will once again, enjoy the fruits of the elected leaders we deserve. And this is the last chance. Make no mistake, this local mafia ruling class will pull out the stops, pour cash into the Machine, lie, malign, coo and coax to stay in power.
Because for probably the first time, they are really afraid to lose power.
I would assume that an "anti-candidate" independent organization would have ZERO restrictions on the amount of money that could be raised and spent. Imagine a truck with a 102" TV on the side, driving around the Islands, with the video of Lisa saying,"all property must be made common" . Imagine tables in public places, handing out info, informing citizens, "DON'T VOTE FOR..."
All we need is cash. The Lisa/Pratt record is fertile ground for info, which if packaged correctly, should scare the hell out of the in-informed
Plus, it would be fun as hell to "piss off the network"
Actually pretty simple. Its called a Political Action Committee and the massively corrupt campaign finance laws have unchained them into Super PACs, as the national election revealed. There are plenty of folks ready to write checks now, but for obvious reasons are afraid of retribution if their names become known. Sad but true. A PAC solves that problem.
Don't have to support any particular candidate to do public education about who the candidates really are ...
I recommend a PAC. Immediately. If Steven Colbert can set one up so can we.
"Islanders for Nonpartisan Government" or something.
"Super PACs have emerged as a major influence in the 2012 campaign. Super PACs are independent political committees that support a candidate with unlimited, often anonymous, donations from companies, unions, or individuals. Super PACs can't contribute directly to a candidate, but they can run favorable ads about a candidate—or negative ones about their favored candidate's opponent. Most of the ads sponsored by super PACs are negative and take considerable liberties. The people running the PACs are typically closely connected to the candidate the PAC supports. Indeed, the PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, is headed by two former aides.
The PACs are required to release the names of donors, however, a technicality in the disclosure rules allows donors to remain anonymous for months. Disclosure can be completely circumvented by PACs that create affiliated nonprofit 501(c)(4) organizations, which are not required to release the names of donors.
Read more: Super PACs Explained — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/super-pacs.html#ixzz2Kto2oCHI
Always good to look back in the TH. Many good posts and analysis under the "Statistical First Impressions" heading. Note the one put there at 3:30 today, the 14th.
Also thanks to Kit Rawson for his forthright discussion of the water bottle plant several days back, and also, many times over, for the TH info, both blog and fantastic editor.
Interesting post of 5:44 on the 13th. Many people have complained the voters are confused and I'm starting to agree with that notion. If a whopping 14% only voted once because they thought they could only vote for someone running on their island, then that's a big deal.
I like our County Auditor, but have never been impressed with the layout, design and language of her actual vote mailings.
The attached You Tube link features the dance stylings of our 3 Orcas Island Candidates.
I know that the 3 of them are/were in competition, but I also know that they have a deep amount of respect for each other. While we all trash the various candidates based on our own biased view of what we believe is their bias, they at least have the willingness to put their personal time and energy into trying to get the thankless job of listening to us bitch at them.
Here's hoping that whoever ends up winning will still be able to dance when their term is over!
Looks like close to 14% either didn't know they were supposed to vote for two candidates or didn't know or care enough to do so.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOkeeedokeee. The numbers do not lie.
ReplyDeleteLike the initial vote on Proposition 1 where the Lopez/Shaw district bootstrapped its passage, the results in Tuesday’s primary were so skewed as to demonstrate the severe and disproportionate political power that that the Lopez/Shaw district now holds.
I communed with my not-so-inner geek and computed the following.
In districts outside of the advantaged Lopez/Shaw District Lovel Pratt garnered 2011 votes; Bob Jarman, 1561; and Marc Forlenza, 1011.
Another way of looking at this is for every 100 votes Ms. Pratt received, Mr. Jarman received 77; and Mr. Forlenza, 50.3.
In contrast, within the advantaged Lopez/Shaw district the break down was an absolutely stunning example of bloc voting power. Pratt received 747, Jarman 260, and Forlenza 102.
In other words, On Lopez for every 100 votes Ms. Pratt received, Jarman only received 34.6 votes, and Mr.Forlenza 13.6.
The strangeness of these results is magnified when it is remembered that in the November 2012 election on their home turf, Mr. Jarman beat Ms. Pratt handily 52.4% to 47%.
It is more than a bit odd that the voters presumably most acquainted with the candidates selected Jarman over Pratt, but now, a few weeks later with the inclusion of citizens more distant, the electorate now prefers Pratt over Jarman – perhaps proving the old adage, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”?
As for the Results of the Orcas District Race. The pattern exhibited above, was displayed even more starkly. In that race the fallout was as follows:Lisa Byers achieved front-runner status with 47.38% of the countywide vote. Rick Hughes earned a berth in the general election with 27.73%, and Greg Ayers was eliminated with 24.89%.
Excluding the Lopez/Shaw district: Lisa Byers received 2056 votes, Rick Hughes earned a spot in the general with 1474 votes, and Greg Ayers was eliminated with 1213 votes.
In other words, in non-Lopez/Shaw districts, for every 100 votes Lisa Byers received, Rick Hughes got 71.7 and Greg Ayers received 58.9.
But again, on Lopez/Shaw the results are stunningly anomalous: Lisa Byers won there with a landslide of 716 votes, Greg Ayers finished a distant second with only 243 votes, and Rick Hughes finished last with 148.
So there, for every 100 votes for Byers, Ayers only received 33.9, and Hughes 20.6.
Holy Cow.
Great analysis.
ReplyDeleteCan the people of Lopez, proud of the independent ways, friendly personalities, "we can do it spirit", look their brethren on Orcas and San Juan in the eye and say with a clear conscience, "This system is fair"?
Or will they just try to slide under the radar, grab the power, and attempt to ramrod through the nasty "Luddite" streak so strong among some?
OK Nick, but we have a shot, and here's why.
ReplyDeleteThe Pratt/Byers blitzkrieg is out of ammo. They worked to get all their troops out on this vote. That's it, they ain't got no more people.
On the other side no comparable effort was made.
The sharp knife is who gets the voters who did not vote? This low turnout is the whole deal.
I'm talking politics to every working person now. Be subtle but firm: "You really need to vote!"
I don't know how articulate this guy McClerren is but he needs to get lots of rest this week because he is going to be the tree that gets hit by lightening.
McClerren is going to have to be like a union boss on the picket line. This is a class struggle for him and he is going to have to be outspoken and incredibly tough. And he is going to have to be a no hold barred competitor. He is the only one who can take Pratt/Byers down along with Stephens.
The old saying hold true: "I don't care what you say about me, just get my name spelled right."
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm writing a max check to McClerren. (And no, I don't even know what he looks like.)
My understanding from the scant resources I have is the real estate people are in on this one. Maybe they know this election is important for them. They do know some 1,500 acres got put in preserve in 2012 alone. Can't make money with that dirt anymore.
ReplyDeleteCome-on Chita, a BIG check please.
Re, the 7:43 post
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me the Lopez people made their decision to play boss dice with their CRC vote.
Amazing, the fire of community in that neighborhood. If you have a baby, you must get a ton of flowers.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful, until that wonderful community gets coopted by FOSJ which it seems to be right now.
Have any of you noticed the IslandsSounder take on the primary?? They are totally, NOT, reporting the Lopez influence on the outcome. Hopefully those appealing the CRC issues will use this as ammunition for the case against 3 commissioners. We are doomed to be the test case for community owned property, if these fools get elected. Waldron, I am ashamed of you for giving up your independence. I had hopes of you taking care of our problem in a more direct manner. Boating accidents anyone??
ReplyDeleteThe Pratt and/or Byers committees are not out of steam or ammo. That's a dream on your part.
ReplyDeleteByers is approaching this election as she does any issue: calm, thoughtfully and steady.
Her committee is organized, deliberate, and methodical in their outreach to the community. You're dreaming if you believe she won't run the course and win this election.
It has nothing to do with her donors or how much she has raised.
She has proven herself time and again in this community. And people know it.
I tend to agree with the sentiment (@ 9:22) concerning Byers as a person. I don't agree with it in relation the Pratt Campaign and I believe Stephens has had plenty of time to prove himself, and has not been a spectacular performer.
ReplyDeleteI truly believe that Lisa Byers has the skill set necessary to move the council forward and knows the clear line between her Job and her beliefs. I can see a path that forms a council around Byers, Jarman and McClaren and it would be a good council.
I think you will find that Byers approaches her affordable-housing/land-reform mission with the cool calculation of an intelligence operative. These islands are filled with ex-CIA folks, and I admire them. But I don't think that many people here realize that Byers is the niece of a ex-CIA agent and her father was the Executive Secretary of the Presidential Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Her brother spent his entire career with SAIC, which has very close ties with the intelligence and homeland security.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with any of that, but it is curious to note the stealthy way that Byers has advanced her Land Reform ideas ("all land should be common") under the guise of affordable housing because, in her words, "that's where we have gotten traction." It is curious to take note of all that and ponder how far the apple may have fallen from the tree. With the revelations about her economic ideas, it now feels like she's been playing us all along. She's been playing chess, and we've been playing checkers. We thought we were supporting affordable homes, and she's been advancing "new economics" that despises private ownership.
Makes me wonder if her father knew Ruckelshaus too. They were both in the Nixon Whitehouse. Small world. Large network. The subterranean connections around here are mind-blowing. Nothing is as it seems.
Wheaton Byers (Byers' father) has become a great conservationist back in Connecticut, just like Ruckelshaus is here. Of course, the elder Byers became a conservationist to save the family 200-acre farm from surrounding development only AFTER he sold the family mansion and an adjoining parcel to developers.
All these people who have new-fangled ideas about conservation and the economy, and when you dig into their background, you discover they have been the principal beneficiaries of the very system they now rail against.
Byers, like Pratt, northeast aristos. And we have had other scions of east coast foreign service families managing land trust projects in the islands some years back. Lisa is not unique.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the CIA observation, those folks love to retire in the islands, and north to Vancouver Island, that goes way back. Canadian intel folks do the same thing.
Lisa said in a forum that she was invited to the islands in the early '90s and her first job was with the Land Bank. Can anyone speak to this?
I had the opportunity to be a close observer of Clinton's President's Council on Sustainable Development in the early '90s and knew a number of folks involved in that. That body was established right after a certain United Nations conference, and led to federal funding to the American Planning Association to prepare manuals for land use planners. Once can howl about black helicopters, flying saucers and Agenda 21 all they want, but the facts are pretty clear what took place and the process was wide open and pretty transparent.
Its happened before. Rural folks are being forced off the "reservations" and told they must move to the big cities to be "assimilated." And the land will be acquired by dominate economic interests. The rhetoric of common property and public ownership is a smoke screen.
There was a lot of intellectual ferment in the early '90s around the communitarian philosophy promoted by Amitai Etzioni that carries through all this as a subtext and I am quite sure informs Lisa's work and many of her confederates. They believe in what they are doing. And, they are wrong.
One has to appreciate the folks who saw - and designed - the market distortions wrought by growth management, and planned ahead for the communitarian solutions to housing that would be created by these policies as people were displaced from rural lands. That Lisa was at the vanguard of some of these strategies and came to these islands as an early practitioner of them shows you how far back this goes.
But again, who invited her here and got her a job at the Land Bank? I want a name. I bet you it is someone active in this campaign, who may have been a former county commissioner around the time the county took the GMA bait.
Yes I admire Lisa's skills, I rather like her all in all. One could do far worse.
And yet one can play everyone for pawns in a larger game, but eventually it leads to hubris, complacency, arrogance and the pendulum swings against you right when you thought you were in your sweet spot. And the pendulum is swinging.
One could do far worse. How comforting, let us set our sights low.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing worse than someone with great leadership skills leading us down the wrong path.
ReplyDeleteTo the 9:57 post. You can't seperate your job from your beliefs. Your beliefs are a filter that everything you think and do goes through. We are voting for the filter that is most like ours. That filter is what we will get. History is full of great leadership skills, run through the worst of filters.
ReplyDeleteDo a search on Wheaton Byers Canaan, sounds like there is a family tradition of talking like you are doing good for others when its really all about you and what you want.
ReplyDeleteAnd so the best solution is to quickly organize, raise the money and push back really hard with every political hard ball tool in the box against this Money Machine, call it for what it is, and make sure the right people are elected to office this time, not the wrong ones.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise we will once again, enjoy the fruits of the elected leaders we deserve. And this is the last chance. Make no mistake, this local mafia ruling class will pull out the stops, pour cash into the Machine, lie, malign, coo and coax to stay in power.
Because for probably the first time, they are really afraid to lose power.
I would assume that an "anti-candidate" independent organization would have ZERO restrictions on the amount of money that could be raised and spent.
ReplyDeleteImagine a truck with a 102" TV on the side, driving around the Islands, with the video of Lisa saying,"all property must be made common" .
Imagine tables in public places, handing out info, informing citizens, "DON'T VOTE FOR..."
All we need is cash. The Lisa/Pratt record is fertile ground for info, which if packaged correctly, should scare the hell out of the in-informed
Plus, it would be fun as hell to "piss off the network"
Actually pretty simple. Its called a Political Action Committee and the massively corrupt campaign finance laws have unchained them into Super PACs, as the national election revealed. There are plenty of folks ready to write checks now, but for obvious reasons are afraid of retribution if their names become known. Sad but true. A PAC solves that problem.
ReplyDeleteDon't have to support any particular candidate to do public education about who the candidates really are ...
I recommend a PAC. Immediately. If Steven Colbert can set one up so can we.
"Islanders for Nonpartisan Government" or something.
"Super PACs have emerged as a major influence in the 2012 campaign. Super PACs are independent political committees that support a candidate with unlimited, often anonymous, donations from companies, unions, or individuals. Super PACs can't contribute directly to a candidate, but they can run favorable ads about a candidate—or negative ones about their favored candidate's opponent. Most of the ads sponsored by super PACs are negative and take considerable liberties. The people running the PACs are typically closely connected to the candidate the PAC supports. Indeed, the PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, is headed by two former aides.
The PACs are required to release the names of donors, however, a technicality in the disclosure rules allows donors to remain anonymous for months. Disclosure can be completely circumvented by PACs that create affiliated nonprofit 501(c)(4) organizations, which are not required to release the names of donors.
Read more: Super PACs Explained — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/us/government/super-pacs.html#ixzz2Kto2oCHI
It looks like were headed for a "San Jaun Spring". The uprising has begun.
ReplyDeleteAlways good to look back in the TH. Many good posts and analysis under the "Statistical First Impressions" heading. Note the one put there at 3:30 today, the 14th.
ReplyDeleteAlso thanks to Kit Rawson for his forthright discussion of the water bottle plant several days back, and also, many times over, for the TH info, both blog and fantastic editor.
Interesting post of 5:44 on the 13th. Many people have complained the voters are confused and I'm starting to agree with that notion. If a whopping 14% only voted once because they thought they could only vote for someone running on their island, then that's a big deal.
ReplyDeleteI like our County Auditor, but have never been impressed with the layout, design and language of her actual vote mailings.
On a lighter note:
ReplyDeleteThe attached You Tube link features the dance stylings of our 3 Orcas Island Candidates.
I know that the 3 of them are/were in competition, but I also know that they have a deep amount of respect for each other. While we all trash the various candidates based on our own biased view of what we believe is their bias, they at least have the willingness to put their personal time and energy into trying to get the thankless job of listening to us bitch at them.
Here's hoping that whoever ends up winning will still be able to dance when their term is over!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYFP688BGfc&feature=youtu.be
PS