This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
News It's Election Day!
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:56 AM
...except in Oregon. We don't have our election until January and then there will be only two things on the ballot: the tax the rich ballot measures passed by the legislature last year. For nerds who care, the Oregon Center of Public Policy released some sexy flowcharts today visually detailing how the new taxes will raise $733 million for the state by taxing corporations and the top 1.7 percent of Oregon's wealthiest individuals.
So all eyes are on Washington today, as the state faces a couple tight mayoral races and a big referendum threatening to repeal same-sex couples' domestic partnership rights. Despite a strong campaign to approve the law and keep domestic partnership rights intact, polling has shown a thin margin of possible victory for the LGBT advocates.
Election returns aren't posted until 8PM on the Washington elections website but until then you can keep up with all the gossip on The Stranger's Slog.
Just over the river from us in Vancouver, Mayor Royce Pollard and challenger Tim Leavitt are fighting it out in a too-close to call election that hinges on the issues surrounding the Columbia River Crossing (CRC). In public debates I wrote about in September, Leavitt proclaimed that he would fight for no tolls the new CRC bridge, a position that other officials involved in the CRC process say is impossible as well as a being a terrible idea both environmentally and economically.
But Vancouverites hate paying tolls and Leavitt is a charming guy—he embarrassed Pollard when he came in first place during the city's primary and a poll his campaign conducted yesterday gave him 49.5 percent of votes to Pollard's 47.9 percent (with a three percent margin of error). Gah! The suspense! Pollard's campaign is optimistic, though. "That's a snapshot of the moment, it doesn't mean anything," says Pollard's campaign manager Marsha Manning of the poll. "Royce is gonna get this bridge built, the other guy has just been using it as a political football."
Update: Leavitt's campaign clarifies that they did not conduct the poll but instead it was done by "a local organization that has an interest" in the race by does not want to identify itself. So... that's bizarre. Way to sound like the poll was conducted by a cabal of imaginary shadow puppets...
- to the political football field!
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Whoever is elected Mayor has no bearing on tolls or no tolls. It will be decided by the legislature. My bet is there will be tolls, which is all right as long as they are reasonable. However, I do think they should disband the current CRC group and start all over again, as their ideas are just too grandiose.
I would like to state for the record that the cabal of imaginary shadow puppets that conducted the poll in vacouver is not the same cabal of imaginary shadow puppets that currently "doesn't" run /b/town.
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