Volume Two, Number 4                                              What ElseYou Need To Know                                        September 25, 2002

Council race strategies revealed at C of C lunch

After two candidate forums, here is how the Pleasanton City Council campaign will play out. Mayor Tom Pico and the do-nothing, enviro types will defend two years of wasteful inaction by proposing even more. Former Chief of Police, Bill Eastman, and the two business-oriented candidates will pound away at Pleasanton's ad-hoc government that accomplishes very little, that demoralizes staff and volunteers and that is wasteful with its profligate spending.

In short, Mr. Pico and slate mates Hosterman and Brozosky will run the prevent defense campaign. They will rely on Mr. Pico's past popularity and their combined ability to flim-flam the electorate with impressive resumes. They will choose street corners like other professionals and wave to gullible residents who will mistake affability for accomplishment. The strategy has worked for several elections.

Impressive resumes or not, messers Eastman, Wright and Thorne will need to walk the neighborhoods. If they do not personally talk to the voters, their campaigns are doomed. Their meet the voter coffees, etc. seem to be a major part of their campaigns. Now getting their positive, pro-active message out to a broader audience is their challenge. In Pleasanton, that means talking directly to the voters at their front doors and leaving behind homespun brochures. Pleasanton is still small town.

If they fall into the trap of managed campaigns, their message of common sense, money saving government for all of the people can easily be characterized as "slick" and "in the pocket of…" (you can fill in the blank. Developers has worked in the past.) Three and four mailers and badgering phone calls at dinnertime will turn people off. All three are retired. They need to wear out some shoe leather with all of the time they claim to have.

After two candidate forums, Opinion Pleasanton is still wondering why Cindy McGovern is running. Looking at it from the standpoint of pure politics, she will still have an elected position (school board) if she loses but she builds greater name recognition for a run in 2004. Machiavelli would have her in the race to take away votes from Thorne or Wright (she agrees more with Mr. Pico and fellow travelers.) She does bring many years of public service to the campaign and the kids for whom she is responsible are beginning to test better. However, she lacks vision and she lacks passion. One suspects that she likes the power and prestige that city service provides and hopes to capitalize on her current name recognition to win a seat at a table larger than the one at which she sits at the school board.

It is déjà vu all over again.

Mayoral candidate and former Chief of Police, Bill Eastman charges that crime is up in Pleasanton. By making the charge at candidate forums, it is assumed that Mr. Eastman believes his opponent Mayor Tom Pico has something to do with the dramatic increase. Were it not for the weekly papers and OpinionPleasanton, you might not know this. The daily papers, by not reporting Mr. Eastman's charges, have apparently already reverted to form and will cover the election from afar with biographies and event schedules and issues be damned. That is, of course, unless there are hit pieces or other political scandals ala the one done by Mr. Pico and ex-mayor Ben Tarver to retiring Counselor Becky Dennis.

There is only one way, with only six issues left before the election, that the weeklies will have an effect on the election debate. If they vigorously pursue the crime story, the Bernal initiative and traffic issues the dailies, out of fear of being embarrassed, will be forced to cover them as well. Or, if they come up with the scandal, the dailies will follow.

For candidates Eastman, Cindy McGovern, Robert Wright and Jerry Thorne it is imperative that they appear in the daily papers every day, and not just in the letters columns with canned pre-arranged, campaign-committee letters. They must receive ink for their condemnation of Mr. Pico and the dream teams that have given us an elitist, NIMBY city, left us in traffic gridlock, reduced our bonding capacity and have exposed us to an increase in crime. They must also give their plans to bail us out of these untenable positions.

For candidates Pico, Brozosky and Hosterman it is imperative that they remain under the radar in the daily papers. For environmental extremists such as Mr. Pico and Ms. Hosterman, it is enough to wave to the people from street corners and go door to door with what appears to be an army of volunteers with the same old tired message of we will fight for you against the polluters and pavers. It has worked for more than a dozen years. With no public debate, (in the daily papers) it will work again. It has the warm and fuzzies to which Pleasanton voters eagerly relate. They will be content to take the free biographical sketches the papers will offer, place the occasional newspaper ad and hand out homespun campaign brochures offering up the same pabulum that has worked with an uninformed and easily manipulated Pleasanton electorate.

Since Measure V, the Bernal initiative, is on the November ballot, Mr. Pico and the obstructionist council candidates will want to keep off the front page with their anti-housing positions. They risk being exposed as elitists, approving only million-dollar homes and nothing for the middle class. With land available on Bernal they also do not want to talk about a new City Hall plan which includes buying land. They will also want to stay away from the Bernal controversy because they risk being exposed for wasting millions of dollars on studies, consultants and task forces on projects they have every intention of spiking and never building. They wasted plenty on the Bernal Property Task Force when it was open space they wanted and a signature park they would accept. The uses they encouraged the citizens to forward to them and the task force members to collect and prioritize were never under serious consideration. The task force was window dressing designed to obfuscate the debate, delay decision making and to show how opened minded and concerned they are.

Mr. Pico and his sympathizers Ms. Mc Govern, Ms. Hosterman and Mr. Borozosky will not want to talk about traffic on city streets. If they do it will be in terms of evil outsiders cutting through our town to avoid the I-580 and I-680 intersection. They will repeat their tired mantra, if forced, "more roads and streets encourage houses and houses encourage people and people destroy frogs, foxes and snakes." They will prefer the biographical "we sit on important regional committees and we will, after considerable, lengthy studies, put in diamond lanes on the two freeways and the mess will miraculously go away." If the past few elections are any indication, the dailies will accommodate Mr. Pico and the others.

Absent daily newspaper coverage, Mr. Eastman and Mr. Wright and Mr. Thorne must use brochures and mailers to make their case to the voters. However, they must avoid the checked-pants Republican campaign of "slick" mailers and leave behinds. Mr. Pico will be all over that like white on rice. Slick anything is equated to outsiders, evil developers. Since Mr. Pico, thanks to ex-mayor Ben Tarver and previous dream teams, has established with Pleasanton voters that developers and outsiders are evil, all he will need to do is say that his opponents are for outsiders and developers and it will be ipso facto true. Mr. Wright, Mr. Thorne and Mr. Eastman will be on the defensive. With no coverage in the daily papers, they will be hard pressed to prove they are not. More importantly, they will be hard pressed to show how Mr. Pico and the dream teams have flogged the dead horse of "fighting for the neighborhoods" which has wasted money doing nothing—absolutely nothing.

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