Where’s effort by SLO County’s left?
Democracy stinks when you’re on the losing end of it. I should know — I’ve been at the butt end a few times.
I don’t like losing, but I think many of my local lefty friends do.
Because if they really didn’t like how the extreme right has burrowed under the political skin of this county, you’d think they’d do something about it.
Like show up — to voice their opinions in public or help get more candidates elected.
I’ve worked in a lot of local county supervisor campaigns. I’ve won my share, with multiple-term victories for folks such as Evelyn Delany, Peg Pinard, David Blakely, Shirley Bianchi and Bruce Gibson.
And I’ve given my all in losing efforts — such as the defeat of Jim Patterson by Debbie Arnold. I take it personally, even when I’m not part of a campaign, like Caren Ray’s.
That’s democracy: Somebody wins and somebody loses. Winners celebrate, and losers tuck tail and wait for the next one.
Except the right. When they lose, they throw lasting hissy fits, impeach presidents, shut down the government and make life miserable for everyone. I’ll save that subject for another day.
I must admit, the right in this county is pretty good at politicking. Even though I disagree with nearly everything they represent, I admire the Republican Party folk and their COLAB/Tea Party apparatchiks.
They’re wrong on the merits, but they show up. They’re organized. They work. They’re so united, in fact, that the chairman of the SLO County Republican Committee speaks for COLAB on The Tribune’s Voices page. It appears the local Republican Party and COLAB/Tea Party are one and the same.
And they’re winning.
My side, on the other hand, is utterly feckless, if I’m being honest. And I am.
Sorry lefties of SLO County, but it’s true: You’re better at posing than politics.
The left, of course, wants this county to remain pristine and delightful. But they seem to want someone else to do the heavy political lifting it takes to keep it that way.
The left seems to think because they’re right on the merits, somehow the correct result will magically appear. Like vaccine deniers, local lefties rely on others to keep them healthy and strong.
Unlike the right, my side doesn’t show up to contentious public hearings to voice support for their own kind or their values.
Unlike the right, my side doesn’t write multiple letters to the editor or defend their values in the rough-and-tumble world of online commentary.
Unlike the right, my side has no central strategy for local political activism, nor organized tactical measures to achieve local political goals.
Want to talk about the Keystone Pipeline, global climate change, fracking? Local lefties are all over it.
The big issues are easy. Members of the left can pontificate and feel like “activists.” But they don’t have to own the outcome — because it’s not local.
Want to talk about water crisis in the North County, an oil super-train depot on the Mesa, mega-development near Avila Beach?
Crickets.
Unless posting narcissistic photos on Facebook of yourself yucking it up at some out-of-town political fete counts as local activism.
Unless jumping a bus to yelp about fracking in front of the governor’s office building in Oakland counts as local activism. Sure, fracking here would be bad, and it’s unlikely to happen.
But fracking is nowhere near the immediate environmental threat to SLO County as are drought, oil “bomb” trains and ridiculous development proposals near Avila Beach.
Then there’s the antinuclear Sierra Club, which refused to endorse Patterson for re-election in 2012 because he had the effrontery to support solar projects on the Carrizo Plain.
As the novelist Arthur Miller wrote, “Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”
How’s Arnold working out for you now, local Sierra Club?
“Our side doesn’t like controversy,” a colleague quipped the other day.
Mmm-kay. It clearly doesn’t like winning elections or critical local issues, either.
There are exceptions, of course, individually and en masse. When controversy lands in their own backyards, like the Price Canyon development project or the Santa Margarita gravel quarry, you’ll see some folks rise up.
Most often, however, go to any Board of Supervisors meeting and you’ll see lefties — if they’re there at all — outnumbered by their “energetic” counterparts on the right. Every week.
The local left will continue to lose until it lives the cliché: “Think globally, act locally.”
That means showing up.
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight,” Mark Twain said, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
This story was originally published March 1, 2015 at 5:24 AM with the headline "Where’s effort by SLO County’s left?."