Boise elections: When a vote isn't a mandate
I'm not sure 17.6 percent of the voters can deliver a mandate.
This sliver of the Boise electorate resoundingly re-elected City Council incumbents Vern Bisterfeldt and Maryanne Jordan and gave TJ Thomson a comfortable win in an open council race. And I suppose the 82.4 percent who stayed home offered a form of tacit approval to Mayor Dave Bieter and the council.
Pathetic turnout? No doubt. Mandate? I doubt it. A disaffected shrug? That's my guess.
Opponents tried to shake the candidates out of their slumber. They rallied behind the $60 million Downtown streetcar project — with Thomson opponent Dave Litster attempting to present the proposal as symptomatic of a City Hall that spends too much and listens too little.
The opponents tried to make this election a referendum on the streetcar, but voters didn't hop on board.
My theory is that the more conservative candidates really were hurt by the low turnout. They needed something that would motivate casual voters, and the streetcar issue didn't deliver.
As we have systematically seen in every Boise election since the May 2001 Foothills levy, the city has a motivated and mobilized core of moderate to left-leaning voters. These voters have supported Bisterfeldt and Jordan in the past — and with Thomson running with the blessing of Bieter, these voters lined up Thomson's way. Chalk this race up to good, sound campaigning.
Calling it a mandate, especially for the streetcar, is an overreach. Especially considering a recent survey, commissioned by the Statesman and conducted by the Boise firm POPULUS.
In a survey of 670 Boiseans, weighted against demographic data, 36.7 percent of respondents supported the streetcar, with 50.3 percent opposed. The remaining 13 percent were undecided. The survey has a 5 percent margin for error and a 90 percent confidence level — meaning similar survey results would be expected 90 percent of the time.
And it's worth noting that, while the POPULUS survey was running, Bisterfeldt, Jordan and Thomson were distancing themselves from the streetcar project. And none more than Thomson, who said during the campaign that he supported a public vote on the streetcar. File that quote away for January, when he takes office.
Tuesday's winners didn't promise to push a streetcar. It is difficult, then, to reframe the election results into a streetcar mandate.
Forgive the sports metaphor, which I'll attribute to post-election sleep deprivation. Sometimes, in football, the faster and stronger team just wins. Sometimes, in elections, the better-funded and better-mobilized campaign just wins. I think that's what we saw Tuesday.
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Is statesman so threatened
by the GOP... it publishes races identifying them only as "incumbents" without any Party Affiliation? Perhaps statesman is a misrepresentation... definition statesman :a senior politician, especially one who is widely respected for integrity and impartial concern for the public good?
They're Borg, you realize. They are one.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Where are the comments on the election?
For that matter, where are the articles on the election results? There is one headline today which claims to offer election results, but it turns out to be nothing more than links to pre-election stories the Statesman ran days/weeks ago.
I also observed last night the lack of Statesman/McClatchey coverage on the national scene. While the rest of the MSM were announcing gubernatorial winners in VA and NJ, the Statesman/McClatchey editors were featuring a story about a mayor's race in Charlotte, N.C. as if Boise readers had been waiting breathlessly for news on that race. Finally, after the NY-23 race was decided they posted a headline, "Dem wins in NY" or something to that effect. It's not that the news wasn't available to us from a wide variety of other sources, but it comes down to whether the Statesman is a reliable and convenient source of information not emanating from the BP blotter and Ada County jail. Do you want us to read your rag first, last, or not at all?
As for the local election returns last night, this was the worst reporting I have ever seen in the Statesman. The format looked like something a 6th grader devised on MS Word, and it wasn't being updated often enough to be useful to anyone. Okay, so this wasn't a big election night in Idaho, but I'm reminded of a scripture in the Bible that suggests if we want to be trusted with big responsibilities, we must first exhibit due diligence with the little ones entrusted to us.
ByTheWay...
It’s obvious the UNstatesman, is very threatened by a venture outside an agenda which is threatened by all things from independents & conservative.. Until the the ObaMao destroys them as well. Well it is a California Company and they are bankrupt and taxing people to cover up their failure now... but of course that isn't going to be reported... is it!!!
None of the MSM know these politicians, not even Gloria.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
"Chalk this race up to good, sound campaigning."
And I would add excellent fund raising by and for the establishment's candidates, which will make it harder and harder for an Eardley or an Amyx to ever be elected in Boise again.
Establishment?
Funny, Bieter won in 2003 and he was definitely not the establishment candidate. Don't you remember how the Statesman rallied to Winder because ol' Chuck promised to get some Federal pork to pay for the East Parkcenter Bridge?
It got here finally, didn't it?
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Dick Eardley could and would
Dick Eardley could and would be elected. Jay Amyx - never.
Re Amyx
You're probably right but that says more about Boise's current crop of elites than it does Mayor Amyx. As still somewhat of a newcomer to Idaho in 1966, I regret having to admit I was one of the people who looked down my nose at Amyx as a representative of the city's unwashed masses. Shame on me! I forget whether it was his 1st or 2nd acceptance speech that made me cringe when he stated his victory was due "to a lot of hard work on people's parts." LOL. That was Jay, an unsophisticated man of the common folk in Boise, most of whom were opposed to urban renewal. Forty years later I'm hard pressed to say that generation of Boiseans were wrong. They were less interested in appearances of false prosperity than in preserving the real thing (private property rights). Boise after all was not a dying city in 1968. Downtown Boise wasn't at all attractive and didn't have any cultural amenities to please a growing corporate elite of MBAs and their restless spouses, but it was a functional market place. So the new kids on the block pushed for change and look what we've got now in downtown Boise. A mere appearance of prosperity! The old fat lady who used to strip at the Buffalo Club held her job longer than the small proprietor of a downtown Boise business does today.
KR, you'd better hope the Obama administration ........
bails out newspapers like the Statesman -- the quality of work, or lack thereof, (reference: the article above) that goes into this paper is turning people away in droves!
tetpilot, you're dreaming
The statesman & KR have no conscience …. Their only agenda continues to be based on that same old newsprint media of presstitution,,, go figure
I don't wanna pile on
but the Statesman did sink to a new low with that poll. Commission a scientific poll but stop with the push polls.
The takeaways from the election are that the challengers' campaign successfully focused the issues solely upon city mismanagement and the streetcar. They made this a referendum on Bieter and the streetcar. That strategy failed.
Going to have to agree to disagree
I have just blogged about the "push poll" allegation. I think you're off base.
Kevin Richert
editorial page editor
Then he can't be grounded and draw B+ on his filament, can he?
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Barker-itos
Kevin,
Could you explain what "...the remaining 13 percent were unopposed" means?
Maybe you shouldn't write when you are sleep deprived.
*****
..rather than just 36.7 percent of respondents supported the streetcar, with 50.3 percent opposed. The remaining 13 percent were unopposed.
Nobody stopped them. NEXT!
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...