Bennett: Compromise is key in politics

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This year’s city council election will see a pitched battle between the local “progressives” and a field of largely moderate opponents. This local electoral scenario has been enacted every two years for a couple of decades.

Unlike other communities, where battles are between so-called liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, our local contests are largely defined as struggles featuring Democrats versus Democrats. That is certainly the case this year, with most of the candidates being “Ds.” An exception is the Mayor’s race, featuring “R” challenger Mike Harris, but even here, we have an “R” who is so moderate the rank and file of his party often voice displeasure at his record.

From time to time, readers of this twice-monthly scribbling ask why my writings are so critical of the “progressives,” and many ascribe my motives to deep conservative views. One of the more prominent of the “progressives” once called me a “right-wing nut.”

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I’m a lifetime Democrat who has served on the staff of two Democratic members of the State Assembly. In the real world, I have learned that problems get solved when opposing viewpoints move to the center to reconcile differences and find common ground for the common good.

That is called compromise, and to the radicals of both political extremes, compromise is a dirty word, but without it, nothing of note gets accomplished. Welcome to the current era of American politics.

My aversion to the current crop of “progressives” has not so much to do with their philosophies, though we do have differences in some areas, as it has to do with their tactics, their reliance on bare knuckled hardball politics.

Somewhere, some place, the party line gets handed down, and those who don’t hew to the “progressive” orthodoxy soon find themselves on the outs. The most notable instance of this controlling approach manifested itself a few years back when the majority engineered a maneuver to fire the entire planning commission and replace it with “progressive” supporters.

That turned out to be a major political mistake, and presaged the end of that bloc’s control of the city’s government.

This year, once again, the bloc’s candidates are running as a slate – David Glass, Teresa Barrett, and Janice Cader-Thompson, while all the other candidates are pretty much running on their own individual merits.

One of the problems I have with this group is that quite often what they profess to believe at campaign time doesn’t necessarily jibe with their past expressions and actions. Mayor Glass is a prime example this year. He claims to be “committed” to the construction of a new cross-town connector at Rainier Avenue, although he has been one of the most vocal and steadfast opponents in the past.

Ten years ago, when the city’s voters were asked, via advisory Measure S, whether or not they wanted Rainier built, Glass and Cader-Thompson signed the ballot argument against and the rebuttal to the ballot argument for the measure. Even so, the public voted for Rainier by a whopping 72 percent.

A few weeks back, when the council was discussing Rainier, Glass once again argued that completion of Rainier would bring no appreciable relief to the city’s east-west traffic congestion.

My question is this – if one truly believed that Rainier won’t do any good, why would one be “committed” to spending many millions of dollars to get it built?

And, since opposition to the construction of the Rainier crossing has been a cornerstone of the unofficial “progressive” platform since the construction of the factory outlet project decades back, and since Glass is running in lockstep with Barrett and Cader-Thompson on a “progressive” slate, what are you going to believe?

Are you going to believe that all three of them oppose Measure Q, the proposed sales tax measure, because it won’t guarantee funding for Rainier, as they profess? Or are you going to think that just perhaps all three of them oppose Measure Q because it could be the final solution to getting the funding to construct the freeway crossing after a half century of planning and promises?

(Don Bennett, business writer and consultant, has been involved with city planning issues since the 1970s. His email address is dcbenn@aol.com.)