June 22, 2004
'Tribune' Gets Jumpstart On General Election Campaign
Plus A Brief Item Of Our Own
While the rest of us haven't yet paid much serious attention to the local campaigns in the weeks following the May 18 election, the Portland Tribune has been laying the groundwork during the cooling-off period between the primary and general elections. It's not normal for us to post an item which focuses so exclusively on one publication, but we also don't tend to publish campaign round-ups until there's enough material to bother.
In this case, the available material all happens to come from the Tribune, so they luck out and get as many as three different links from us today.
In last Tuesday's edition, they outright pronounced that the race starts now, and offered something of a status report on the Mayoral campaigns of Jim Francesconi and Tom Potter.
In last Friday's edition, they profiled business issues as they appear in the positions of the two Mayoral candidates, ranging from matters relating to a Home Depot in the central City, affordable housing, and the leadership of the Portland Development Commission.
And in today's edition, columnist Promise King says there's "no respite from the political", urging Portlanders to being their "voice" and "passion" into the political process, and suggesting that Potter's primary win over Francesconi is not necessarily an indicator of what will happen in November.
Finally, just to throw something of our own into the mix, and related to how to view the primary results as indicators of outcomes in the general, at the 30th anniversary birthday party for Portland's neighborhood associations held this past Saturday (where all of the remaining City candidates except Sam Adams were present, unless he was there and left before they were all introduced), City Council candidate Nick Fish offered some context of his own.
Fish told us that to his knowledge no one has ever blown a lead of the sort he had over Adams in the primary, where he led Adams by a vote of 47.71% to 37.13%, and that he intends to work to maintain that historical record.
"I don't want to become a footnote in Jewel Lansing's next book," he said.