For your consideration and mine, I offer this recap of the May 2023 special election for Silver Falls School District School Board Zone 7.
Party Affiliation Demographics
First of all, this is a very conservative district. Last year, running as a Democrat, I lost the 2022 election for the Oregon State House of Representatives by a landslide margin that very, very closely mirrored the party affiliation of the registered voters of the district: a margin that was, not coincidentally, nearly identical to the margin by which previous Democratic candidates for the same seat had lost in past election cycles. The School District is much smaller than the State House district; but similar principles apply. (See numbers below.)
The School Board is a non-partisan contest, but anyone who is politically involved in this district is well aware of the political leanings of the various candidates. Although the results are not yet certified, it appears that I lost my 2023 race for the School Board by a margin comparable to my earlier State House loss — a landslide in favor of my opponent.
And it wasn’t just me. Despite doing everything right, campaigning hard, putting up lawn signs, and receiving endorsements, Progressive candidates Eliza Torlyn and Dixon Bledsoe lost their respective School Board contests, as well. However, their losses were by narrower margins than mine. I believe the most likely explanation for this is that I missed the deadline to get my statement in the Voter’s Pamphlet, as I’ll discuss below.
To anyone interested in potentially running for future office in this district as a liberal, as a progressive, as a Democrat, or as a left-leaning Independent: my message to you is, you can’t win here by playing to the liberal base. Numerically, there just aren’t enough of them. Messaging strategies that work well in Portland will flop here. It might get you applause on social media, but it will not get you votes. Your best hope of getting elected, is to run as a conservative Republican. If you are not a conservative Republican, then you need to connect with moderates. It’s very difficult to connect with moderates in these divisive times. Polls show that, nationally, moderate voters are the key swing voting bloc that doesn’t care much about party affiliation, and generally votes for whoever appeals to them at the moment for reasons that change from one election cycle to the next. Moderates also tend to have a very, very low voter turnout because they don’t care much about politics and they don’t believe their vote impacts their life very much. It’s very difficult to identify moderates based on voter registration: because many non-affiliated voters are actually quite extremist in their views. To further complicate matters, moderate views are increasingly considered unspeakable and socially toxic in an era when everyone (especially those who pay attention to current events) has been subjected to a steady drip of hardline extremist indoctrination from either the Right or the Left. And yet, I continue to believe that there are enough moderates here, and anywhere, that if you could successfully get them on your side, they could be the key to an election victory. How do you do that? Well, I didn’t succeed, so obviously I don’t know; but I feel certain in my heart that it is possible.
Of course, the school district is much smaller than the State House district, and the relative party affiliation of the voters is slightly less skewed. Still, Republicans have a distinct advantage.
Based on numbers shared by a local activist, in this school district there are 3,962 registered Democrats and 5,813 registered Republicans. Republicans have a nearly 47% advantage in voter registrations. Of those voters, well I don’t have the final numbers, but as of the morning after the election, Democrats and Republicans were both voting at something close to a 19.5% participation rate (a May election in an off-year election cycle often suffers from a low participation rate). In the most recent figures I saw, Dems had a slight edge in participation rate, but it wasn’t nearly enough to compensate for the numerical superiority of the Republicans. Non-affiliated voters were voting at a less than 5% participation rate. Again, if you could get those NAVs to turn up and back you: then you could win. In the world of politics in general, both sides are so busy playing to their hardline political bases that they neglect this huge group of disaffected voters in the middle.
The Competition
To those of you who are unfamiliar with the contest, my opponent was the ten-year incumbent for this position. That alone made this an almost impossible challenge for me as an upstart political outsider. He’s also widely known to be more conservative in his political outlook than I am by reputation (which meant he more easily appealed to the district’s voter base as described above). And he has lived in the area all his life. I’ve seen it suggested in an online forum that his lifelong residency gave him an edge; I can’t either confirm or deny whether that was really a factor.
Before I initially declared my intention to run for School Board, I had been informed (by another member of the School Board) that Tom had announced his intention to retire; so I believed I would be campaigning for an open seat. Something – or someone – convinced him to stay on and run for a third term. If I said more, it would be speculative, so let’s move on.
My Platform
It’s very simple. In 2022 I ran for the Oregon State House of Representatives because I wanted to see the State send more money to the School District so they could pay the teachers. In 2023 I ran for the School Board for the same reason: I wanted to see the School Board offer better support for the teachers. Shortly before the election, the School Board finally resolved a year-long standoff with the local teachers’ union: a standoff that had grown so acrimonious that the teachers had already voted to authorize going on strike. As a parent of two kids attending the local public schools, I considered that unacceptable; and it seemed clear to me that my opponent was one of the holdouts on the Board: so on a purely moral basis I felt pretty good about challenging him. Public education is the foundation of opportunity in a modern economy. Paying teachers a competitive compensation helps to attract and retain top talent. Smaller class sizes lead to better education outcomes by any metric. And the final sticking points of the contract negotiation weren’t even really about money, it was all essentially just technical details about who gets to define what the class size caps should be. In other words, there was not a good reason to push it so long and so far. I figured that as a member of the School Board I could help the schools and do some good for the community.
My Mistake
No, it’s not what you think. My mistake was missing the deadline to get my statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet. That was my fault. For some reason, I thought I had more time. I had written a draft of my Voter’s Pamphlet statement and sent it off to a local activist, who advised me against using terms like “both sides” or “Marxist” or “Christian Nationalism.” I accepted that advice, and tabled my statement pending a rewrite: and that’s when I missed the deadline. Again, that was my fault. I believe that by failing to get my statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet, my campaign for the School Board was doomed from the start, regardless of any other factors.
If you’re not an Oregon voter, you should know that our elections system is better than yours. Ha ha! No, just kidding, Washington and several other States have the same system. In our system, every registered voter receives a ballot in the mail, and they have a few weeks to fill it out in the comfort and privacy of their own home, and then return it either by mail or to a ballot drop box at a convenient nearby location. Every registered voter also receives a Voter’s Pamphlet in the mail. The Voter’s Pamphlet is a booklet which contains statements prepared by each of the candidates; as well as statements for and against any ballot measures that happen to be on the ballot at that time. Without a Voter’s Pamphlet, I don’t see how anyone could possibly know enough about all the various candidates and issues to make an informed decision. Therefore if your local precinct does not yet conduct elections in this manner, I encourage you to start lobbying your local elections officials to adopt this system.
As a voter myself, if I don’t know much about a candidate, and I see that they failed to get a statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet, then I vote for the other candidate. I feel certain that the same is true of a lot of other Oregon voters. I note that in this School Board election, Jo Tucker didn’t get a statement in the Voter’s Pamphlet either: and she lost by a margin even greater than mine; which I thought was unfortunate, because after I heard her speak at the Candidate’s Night forum she was my preferred candidate for that seat. The fact that so many people voted for me even though I failed to get my statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet, speaks to how deeply engaged so many of the people of this district really are, and I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
With all that said, on the other hand, my mistake in this regard was not the only factor leading to my election loss. As discussed above, other left-leaning candidates lost their bids for School Board in this same contest, despite having done everything right. They didn’t say anything outrageous, they got their statements into the Voter’s Pamphlet on time, they had numerous lawn signs posted around town, and they still lost. Therefore, I conclude that voter sentiment in this election in this district favored more conservative-leaning candidates generally. However, I lost by a much larger margin than either of those other two: which again, I believe is largely attributable to my failure to get a statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet. Or it could simply be the case that Tom Buchholz has a broad base of community support, which is why he has now won this seat three times.
All in all, despite the narrative current in local online forums, I continue to believe that the effect of the Hot Button on this contest was negligible.
The Hot Button
Boom! Everything explodes.
All right, I made more than one mistake this election cycle. Failing to get into the Voter’s Pamphlet was the big one; but it was not the only one.
The other mistake, was listening to well-intentioned advice.
The Problem of Advice
I continue to believe that the advice in question was truly well-intentioned. The local activist who advised me, only wanted the best possible outcome in this School Board contest: namely, School Board members who would be more supportive of the Teachers’ Union in the next round of contract negotiations (in 2025). But I also believe strongly that I made a serious mistake by heeding this person’s advice. It was ultimately my own mistake. But it was a mistake nonetheless.
This person’s advice was that I should not mention my views on one specific hot-button issue.
To be clear, the local activist who gave me this advice was well aware of my views.
In fact, I only ran for School Board because this specific person sent me an email on January 16, 2023, and asked me to do it.
Although I had previously toyed with the idea of running for School Board, I had already decided against it. In a reply email to this person dated that same day, I said I didn’t think it was a good idea.
So this person called me on the phone a couple weeks later, and persuaded me.
Because this particular Hot Button issue often comes up in School Board races, I explained my perspective on these issues to this person in a phone call on February 8; and I elaborated my perspective in a follow-up e-mail the same day. I filed to run for the position a week later, on February 15.
I made reference to my controversial perspective again when talking to this activist in person shortly before the Candidates Night forum. It’s precisely because this activist was well aware of my views, that they advised me to keep my thoughts to myself.
That’s very sort of “political” advice, right? It’s exactly the sort of advice you would expect from a political consultant. “Don’t say what you believe: say what you think people want to hear.” It’s also kind of a bit devious and dishonest. That’s the problem. It’s the sort of advice that tends to make people describe politicians with words like “slimy” and “liars.” That’s not the sort of politician I want to be; and that’s why I will regret, probably for the rest of my life, that I listened to this advice.
Or did I? I keep beating myself up about this, but during the campaign I felt I was publicly stating my position. On March 30, 2023 I posted my views regarding this question here on this website on my Policy Platform page. A few weeks later on April 19 I referred to those views again in this blog post.
I didn’t post about it on Facebook at first. But the only time I dodged the question was at the Candidates Night forum at the Silverton Grange, as I have discussed previously. However, that forum was a pivotal event in the campaign. Knowing that I had dodged the question at a high-profile event became a huge problem for me, personally, because it created a cognitive dissonance in my own mind. I knew I had failed to voice my values; and that knowledge ate away at me until I became easily provoked by real-life events, in response to which I opened the floodgates on my Facebook page; in response to which I received a predictable torrent of withering criticism from partisan activists.
If I had ignored the advice I received, and instead openly discussed my views at the Candidate’s Night Forum, then I would not have experienced the cognitive dissonance, and I’d be a lot happier today. Would I still have posted controversial things on Facebook? Yeah, probably, because those views are relevant to this campaign. But as it happened, I didn’t start posting those views there until after mail-in voting had already begun.
The local activist who talked me into running for School Board, and who told me not to voice my views on the only Hot Button issue that really seems to matter to anyone these days, is now very angry with me because I opened my big mouth. Bridges are burning.
In retrospect, I should not have run for School Board.
To summarize my perspective:
This person asked me to run for School Board; and in response, I explained my controversial views. At that point, they should have said, “Never mind, I’ll find someone else,” but they probably couldn’t find anyone else, so instead, this person asked me to dodge the question if it came up. But hiding my views was unacceptable, so I spoke out; and now they’re mad at me. This is the situation I find myself in now.
Alternatively, once I had decided to run for the School Board, I should have ignored this person’s advice, and made my views on the Hot Button a cornerstone of my campaign from the start, rather than an afterthought; and if I had done so, then, well, I speculate that it would not have changed the outcome much: but of course without a lot of fancy expensive polling, we still wouldn’t all be able to say definitively what impact if any those views had on this outcome. My guess, as I’ve mentioned already, is that the real problem is that most people have never heard of me, and I didn’t get a statement into the Voter’s Pamphlet: and that’s why my opponent won by such a large margin.
What are these views, you may well ask, so flammable that bridges are burning because I voiced them? The problem is, I cannot reconcile the core values that I was brought up on, with the angry assertions of The Movement That Must Not Be Named.
I have moved my discussion of the movement to a separate post.