Learning from a Local Issue : Alan DeBoer versus Tonia Moro

A closer look at a State Senate campaign in southern Oregon.  Upstate money to burn.   A lesson on fouling your own reputation.

Local governments work in part because citizens, both Democrats and Republicans who fit a profile of civic minded concerned citizens willing to get things done, participate for little or no pay out of a sense of civic pride and a personal desire to provide leadership.  

There is an disconnect that shows up in Republican politics.  I observed publicly active Republicans who would cheer a presidential candidate who says that regulations are bad and that government is the problem with America.   But the next evening he or she sit might sit in a long boring City Council meeting and review and pass a city budget and after hearings agree to a city regulation to ban use of leaf blowers or lawn mowers after ten p.m. 

The Republican ideology of government as ham-handed tyrant applies to the federal government.  Many Republicans lead the government at the local level and work well with Democrats to do so.

From one of her TV ads: hard worker 

The Southern Oregon campaign for State Senator.   The sudden death of State Senator Alan Bates, a Democrat, caused a vacancy and a sudden need for an election to fill it.   The active Democratic Party participants picked Tonia Moro, an attorney, as their candidate.  She has been active in Party work and was a natural pick.  She has a political profile that the Sanders-oriented activists liked.  She has been generous with her time and energy on civic improvements of the sort Democrats like: a bus system and libraries.

Her opponent, chosen without observable opposition, was Republican Alan DeBoer, a long time civic minded car dealer, active in helping the local historical society, the YMCA, and a leader in the liberal college town of Ashland as a member of the School Board and on the City Council, then Mayor.  

DeBoer at a nonprofit fundraising event

He fits the profile perfectly for the civic minded Republican I referenced as the kind of person who makes local government work.  So, too, does Tonia Moro the civic minded Democrat.

Their contest is confounded by the fact that Alan DeBoer has the resume of a Democrat--pro-public-service in the region's most liberal city.  The two candidates generally support the same kinds of things: good schools, transit systems, libraries.  They disagree on ballot measure, measure 97, a 2.5% tax on sales by publicly owned corporations.  

In a September post I explain the tax in detail:
 Click Here for the blog post on Measure 97

The contest is also confounded by the fact that the two state parties care deeply about the partisan affiliation of the seat.  Each party is sending money to try to win the open seat.  So there are hundreds of thousands of dollars available for advertising--far beyond the amounts that could be raised locally, especially for the Democrat.   DeBoer's campaign had raised over $400,000 as of a week ago and Moro's nearly as much.

So many resources, so many opportunities to go for the kill.

Tonia Moro launched a negative ad on TV.  I have personally seen it about 6 times in the past week on TV news shows, so I assume it is a big ad buy.   Here it is: 
 Corrected Link to see the ad

How the ad begins: Table Rock and to the right, my farm.

By the low standards of presidential ads this ad is not all that ugly. But the ad takes place in a context.   Alan DeBoer does not present like a Tea Party talk radio nihilist; quite the opposite.   He presents like the bi-partisan cooperator similar was the tone the late Senator Bates projected.  (As does Moro.)   It characterized DeBoer in a way that does not particularly fit his public reputation as a civic do-gooder and philanthropist.  It shows him to be a self-interested abuser of the public trust, under the influence of his campaign contributors.   DeBoer has independent wealth.  The charge seems misplaced.  The direction of the ad seems more to address a typecast stock villain rather than DeBoer's actual political vulnerabilities.  It would be easier to characterize him as yet another rich white male Republican seeking office, a man whose situation makes him hopelessly out of touch with the problems of struggling workers.  After all, a man who can give away thousands of dollars to charities is unlike most people.  How can he represent us if he isn't really one of us?   That argument might or might not work, but it would have the solid grounding of being based on the reality of his background and current situation.  Instead, the ad attempts to show him to be self-interested--an implausible case to make given his public life.

The ad has drawn attention because a negative ad of this kind was avoided by Senator Bates in his own previous campaigns and Moro presents herself as his successor.   Bates' opponents in 3 previous campaign had run very negative campaigns against him, campaigns that in each case backfired on Bates' opponent because they appeared so personal and excessive.  Bates' Republican opponents claimed in the aftermath that the ads were on their behalf, yes, but were actually prepared by the upstate Republican caucus, not them, and they tried to disassociate themselves from them.   The local newspaper said that one of his opponents' campaign carried "sleaze" and it "sullied the reputation" of both the target and the supposed beneficiary, concluding the campaign was "beneath contempt".   Click here for perhaps the strongest local editorial I have ever encountered:   A tough editorial

Moro's ad stepped into this context and is getting instant criticism, partly because it is negative but more because the ad attempts to conflate two actions DeBoer took as mayor with destruction of southern Oregon livability, the ad starting with an iconic view of the locality, the Rogue River coming upon the Table Rocks.  Moro's ad does not actually criticize either mayoral decision on its merits--a downtown multiuse building with affordable housing and a plan to use warm phosphate rich wastewater for irrigation rather than build a $30 million treatment facility.  The ad associates those actions, however, with getting campaign contributions from "developers", with an implication of there being a sleazy connection and an implication that developments under consideration had some relationship to the natural beauty of the Rogue River and Table Rock, 25 miles away from Ashland.   

The ad is generating negative comments from Democrats, including ones who attended a fundraiser at my home on behalf of Tonia.  The ad disclaimer does not reference an upstate Democratic caucus source.   The ad is directly from the Moro campaign.  

(Full disclosure:   I attempt for this blog to be objective rather than partisan, but it is true that I usually vote for Democrats, as well as in favor of tax levies for schools, libraries, and transit districts.  I held a fundraising event for Tonia Moro at my home in September.  I also donated $2,500 to her campaign.  Therefore, some fraction of the money that pays for this ad comes from me.)

The history of campaigns in this state senate district is for candidates to have access to so much money that it gets them in trouble.  The temptation is to make something out of nothing, and to run as an advertisement something they would not personally stand on the courthouse steps and say in their own voices.  TV ads appear to have distance and anonymity, so they allow candidates make put things side by side in an tv ad--creating a mood and message--that they would not choose to defend as a point by point argument they take full ownership of and stand behind.   Such ads can backfire.   

In 2006, 2010, and 2014 the repetitional damage was done to the Republican attacker.   This time the damage is to Moro.   The local newspaper endorsed her opponent and voiced something being said by many others to me, that her ad is misleading and her decision to go negative with such an ad is "dismaying."  From the Mail Tribune newspaper:  DeBoer Endorsement Editorial

The story is not over yet, nor is the election.  Alan DeBoer has money to spend and he has allies with money.

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Wait!   There is more:  a podcast on the Presidential Election.   Thad Guyer and I discuss the poll data  and whether or not Trump is self destructing. (I think he is.)  I assert that he is stepping all over his message.  Thad has strong views on the USC/LA Times poll, which show Trump ahead.   Yes, ahead.   I get angry about Trump's Gettysburg Address. Thad makes the observation that there are some good things to come out of this long, long campaign.      Click Here for the Podcast