It definitely caught my eye when Bob Dunning wrote on Friday, that it was time to pity the town’s “regressives.” In some ways, I suppose one could in fact suggest that this might mark the end of progressive era in Davis. But I would argue if that were the case, then the progressives have won.
Writes Bob Dunning: “STUCK IN LEFT FIELD – it’s really time to pity the town’s regressives – first they were unable to find anyone to oppose a completely vulnerable Don Saylor for county supervisor, then in the council race they finally decided to throw their ‘weight’ behind a McCain supporter who had no problem taking campaign donations from – you’d better sit down – developers – generally, taking money from a developer will earn eternal damnation from these folks, but not this time – turns out their new enemy is not developers, but firefighters – another sure sign The End is near – “
On the other hand, perhaps the progressives have already won. In 2000, the growth in Davis produced a backlash that not only created a progressive majority but also saw the passage of Measure J. Measure J passed by just a 53-47 margin in 2000. The only candidate who opposed it, Susie Boyd set a record for the most votes in becoming Mayor. Make no mistake, Measure J was a progressive measure, developed by progressives and won at the ballot box by progressives.
What has happened over the next decade? Measure J was put on the ballot for renewal by one of the most pro-growth council we have seen, by a 5-0 vote. Don Saylor and Ruth Asmundson have never seen a development they do not like. They along with Stephen Souza not only voted for, but worked for the Covell Village development which would eventually lose 60-40 in the first Measure J vote. And yet, they could not oppose Measure J.
What had been a narrow victory in 2000 was an overwhelmingly successful landslide reelection in 2010 by a 3-1 margin. Measure J went from a progressive vision in 2000 that narrowly won to mainstream in 2010. Not one of the candidates opposed Measure R. It was the sign of the times.
So if you look at things in 2010, with Measure J/ R in place, with the economy and the real estate market in their current shape, we have a situation where growth is not only off the table, it was hardly even an issue in 2010. Not one candidate was promoting peripheral development. Every candidate was talking about infill, densification of the core, they were talking about alternative transportation and reduction of greenhouse gases. The council just two weeks ago pushed through a rather progressive and aggressive program to reduce greenhouse gases in the city. In short you could argue that the progressives have already won.
Moreover, what we have seen is that the growth issue has been replaced by the budget and the economy as the top issue in 2010. I believe what we are seeing in Davis is the beginning of a new era where the growth issue by and large has been resolved. There is no great will to expand beyond our borders. The only projects that are on the horizon possibly that go beyond current boundaries are Nishi and Covell. The other that could be considered expanding current boundaries might be Hunt-Wesson. That is it. I do not see those being built any time soon, especially the first two which are Measure J/ R votes.
The big issue in 2010 is the budget. The city faces a crisis that stems back to the middle part of the last decade. You see as the progressives were out of power, those in control were the firefighters who from 2002 until 2008 won all but two elections. Only Sue Greenwald in 2008 and Lamar Heystek in 2006 were not backed by the firefighters. We saw the city’s commitments to employee compensation increase dramatically over that time, as did our commitments to retirement benefits.
The firefighters parlayed their influence into a 36% total compensation increase in 2005. That increase ate up the entire Measure P sales tax of $3 million that we just renewed in the form of Measure Q.
The firefighters used their numbers to deliver votes reliably for sympathetic candidates. They bundled $100 contributions skirting the city’s $100 campaign limitation by combining 40 or so together to form a block of $4000 donations. In addition, they would send out a mailer and use their membership to drop a leaflet. In 2008, they donated $12,000 to each candidate in this manner and they won two of their three seats.
So flashfoward to 2010, the critical moment in the campaign was first the decision by Joe Krovoza and then the decision by Rochelle Swanson not to accept firefighter money. Joe Krovoza was likely going to win regardless of his decision, but Rochelle Swanson was able to get the support of Sue Greenwald and Lamar Heystek, and followed it up with the support of many many progressive leaders in this community. The result was the progressive vote by and large went for Rochelle Swanson and that swung the election her way.
So we can look at things from the perspective that the progressives were forced to support someone who was a McCain supporter, or we can look at it from the perspective that Rochelle Swanson appears to be on the fairly moderate side on the growth issue, certainly far more moderate than the current council majority, that she is right on the budget, and the support of the progressive community swung the election her way. Is that really something to pity?
The enemy of the progressives is not the firefighters, but rather the political influence that they were able to obtain through the use and exploitation of loopholes in the campaign finance system. This is a fight that people like Sue Greenwald have been waging for half a decade. This is nothing new. Unfortunately, it is an issue that Bob Dunning and people like him have never really paid any attention to, they were asleep at the switch along with most of the mainstream media, but we have been talking about it for several years.
Bob Dunning writes that “they” were not able to find anyone to oppose a copmletely vulnerable Don Saylor for county supervisor. That is actually a complete re-write of history. The first problem with the statement is that he was not vulnerable until after it was clear he had won. It was only once he had basically won the seat that he became vulnerable. Besides the issue of Don Saylor was never clear cut for progressives in terms of what was the better of the two unpleasant possibilities. Progressives had a choice, two more years of Don Saylor on the council or Don Saylor as county supervisor. I suspect a lot of people believe they would rather him be at the county level than the city level. So to use that as rationale for bashing the left, makes no sense.
The bottom line, I think progressives should be very happy with this election. The city elected two people who if they are not progressives, are also not cut from the same clothe as the folks that have run City Hall (virtually into the ground for the last decade). Both Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson are good and decent people that will not play political games or start or provoke fights on the dais. They are not going to push forth development after development even as it is clear there is no market for growth. They will not continue the same fiscal practices that have put the city on the brink of bankruptcy. They will not have allegiances to the city employees over whom they will have to vote on contracts as soon as 2012 or 2013.
And on the bigger issues, the progressives have won. Measure R is now part of the city’s culture, it is not going to go away. We are not going to expand our borders. Any development battles will take place within the city. The fight is now to cut our greenhouse gases, repair our infrastructure, expand on alternative transportation, and save the city from fiscal ruin. All of these are issues that the left has championed for the better part of twenty years.
The world has changed. I believe that 2010 marks the start of a very different era in Davis politics, where the lines have been blurred and altered. Where former alliances have changed, and new lines of definition will take hold in the next two years that could produce very different battles over very different issues. Davis went from a town of 20,000 to a city of 65,000, but it may never become a city of 100,000. There is not the will for that. That means that the issues that face Davis are no longer likely to be growth in the next decade, but other issues that we have discussed. You know you have won when your opposition attempts to co-opt your own values and issues and that is what has happened in Davis. Davis progressives has basically won the battle on growth, even if their candidates are not necessarily the ones reaping the fruits of the victory.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I am not sure what a “progressive ” is. If a progressive opposes peripheral development then WHR obviously poses some interesting problems. Fiscal conservatism is generally not considered a key trait of the left. At one time conservatives claimed to be fiscally conservative but its hard to take that claim seriously anymore. Opposing a public service union like the firefighters union is also not traditionally a progressive cause.
Does that mean folks who call themselves progressives played no role? No.
Swanson is much better than Vergis and its likely that the progressive vote swayed a close election. They didn’t carry the election for Swanson–she has a base in the business community and Blue and White, but they probably made the difference.
Measure R carried 75% of the vote (about the same as No on P interestingly but the June election is a tougher vote since it likely drew more renters). That is a victory and kudos to Eileen Samitz who pestered people to death in an apathetic election until they helped (not all of these folks were progressives either). Kudos also to the No on P campaign (including Eileen and Sue and some others in the progressive movement) who brought a lot of attention on these issues to the fore.
My guess is that progressives are no more than 20% of the Davis vote and the number is shrinking. In Mace and WH that percentage is far far lower and that is part of the new reality in Davis.
Maybe progressives are learning they have to work in a coalition with others in Davis for accountability, transparency, fiscal responsibility and a good process.
The progressive movement in Davis is dead? Long live the progressive movement.
i wondered if Bob had picked up on my schtick.
If you don’t agree with a pol you don’t want them to move up and nobody goes from Supervisor to running for council.
Anti-growth anti-labor progressives back republican, as Gomer would say “Surprise surprise surprise.”
Dr. Wu…. no need to add my “2 bits”, I’ll just say, “ditto”.
To Dr. Wu and Davisite: I’ll just say “ditto” too!
DPD: “Both Joe Krovoza and Rochelle Swanson are good and decent people that will not play political games or start or provoke fights on the dais. They are not going to push forth development after development even as it is clear there is no market for growth. They will not continue the same fiscal practices that have put the city on the brink of bankruptcy. They will not have allegiances to the city employees over whom they will have to vote on contracts as soon as 2012 or 2013.”
You won’t truly know how Joe and Rochelle will govern until you see them in action. And even then it will take them a bit of time to get their feet wet and possibly form allegiances/or not. But I do think there may be a different dynamic on the City Council – I just hope it is for the betterment of Davis, but only time will tell for sure.
[i]”Measure J was put on the ballot for renewal by one of the most pro-growth council we have seen, by a 5-0 vote. … What had been a narrow victory in 2000 was an overwhelmingly successful landslide reelection in 2010 by a 3-1 margin. Measure J went from a progressive vision in 2000 that narrowly won to mainstream in 2010. Not one of the candidates opposed Measure R.”[/i]
I don’t think the popularity of Measure R is motivated by the same things by all people who voted for it.
Self-described “progressives” (or what I would call “conservatives”) appear to be ideologically motivated by three desires: 1) to preserve farmland* and “open space” around Davis; 2) to retain the small-town feel of Davis by keeping our total population and our geographical spread from growing too large; and 3) a genuine distaste for profit-hungry developers.
If you go back to the Measure J vote in 2000, my guess is that most of the 53% which voted yes were “progressives.”
But not everyone who voted yes on J was. Some (as Bob Dunning has said) were motivated by their own greed. That is, they did not want new houses on the market which would have made theirs worth less.
And some others, including progressives, were motivated by the notion that a large peripheral development will substantially change Davis; and if we are to substantially change Davis, then it should not just be 5 people to make that decision, but the whole town should be a part of the process. Bob Dunning, who is not an ideologue but is generally hated by the self-described progressives, has written in his column that is the reason he favored Measure J.
I think two significant developments happened between 1990 and 2000 which made Measure R far more popular at the polls than Measure J was:
1) Inertia. People tend to resist and resent change. Measure J was change. Measure R was the status quo. After 10 years of Measure J, most people in Davis became comfortable with the notion that every big, new peripheral development had to be approved by a referendum. Insofar as referendums are progressive — they did, in fact, grow out of the early 20th C. Progressive movement — then this is a progressive success. But the voters who before had been wary of this notion and now favor it are not converts to the progressive ideology on the whole. They just decided (like Dunning) that big-change decisions should have broad popular approval; and
2) Depression. As Greg Kuperberg has said many times, homeowners who vote to keep new houses off the market are acting selfishly. When home prices are falling — and that is a serious problem for people who financed their homes from 2003-2008 — more voters are going to be reluctant to let new product come on the market and push the price of their homes down further. These folks, again, are not progressives.
So, as I see it, there has been no great increase in the “progressive” population of Davis in the last 10 years**. What there has been is a great alliance of the progressive core — say 40-50% of the town — with the “What’s in it for me?” core which have combined to stop all the peripheral growth they can.
*Of course, not building on farmland in Davis means building on farmland in Woodland or Dixon or West Village, etc. But progressives try to forget that fact. They pretend it has nothing to do with their votes.
**If Davis progressivism has really grown over the last 10 years, we would see more than one real progressive (Sue) on the City Council in 2010.
Rich: I didn’t argue that progressivism has grown, I argued that some its key points have been adopted and coopted by non-progressives, thus an example was the mainstreaming and institutionalization of Measure J/ R. I don’t think it’s grown over the last ten years, I think some of its core values have simply been integrated into our fabric, even as progressives in power are in diminishing numbers.
Rich: “[per Greg K] homeowners who vote to keep new houses off the market are acting selfishly.”
Perhaps. But their self-interest can act in the community’s interest. Here are the foreclosure rates for nearby cities:
Woodland: 442
Dixon: 225
West Sac: 573
Vacaville; 982 (Population 90,000)
And yet, the city council of Vacaville just voted unanimously to allow staff to proceed with an MOU for the Brighton Landing development of 700 homes on the periphery of the city (south of Elmira Rd, east of Leisure Town). 700 homes and a Catholic high school. The Catholic high school appears to be the selling point.
An elected city council is voting to add more homes in one of the most foreclosed real estate markets in the region, on prime farmland, on the edge of town, crowding up against tiny Elmira. Methinks a vote of the public might prevent this kind of folly, even if the basis is self-interest.
Rich: ” not building on farmland in Davis means building on farmland in Woodland or Dixon or West Village….”
Not all farmland is created equal. But I really think it would be simpler and more honest to rally around the virtue of preserving open space. That was the basis of growth battles in San Diego when I was growing up (there is very little farmland to speak of there). Preserving open space has significant environmental value, whether it is farmland or otherwise. The whole logic of the anti-growth movement there was to prevent urban sprawl.
Land developers move by different logic and time scales than housing developers. A city council member in Vacaville might logically be asking why they are even considering approving new development in this market. A housing developer would probably not invest in it at this time. But the land developer doesn’t care about the current or 5 – 10 year housing situation. As for preserving open space: Fairfield, Vacaville, and West Sacramento are going to grow at whatever pace they choose, regardless of what Davis does.
[i]”Preserving open space has significant environmental value, whether it is farmland or otherwise. The whole logic of the anti-growth movement there was to prevent urban sprawl.”[/i]
Yet San Diego has sprawled. It sprawled out to Bonita, El Cajon and Poway and Escondido. Unpopulated regions all the way to Ramona and Julian are now dotted with homes (and, as we mentioned, very problematic for firefighting). I don’t know if that sprawl would have been prevented had there been no preservation of open space in the city of San Diego*. Insofar as your argument is that San Diego is a better city today because it preserved some open space, then I concede that point. But I am not sure how that movement affected sprawl as such in the county.
*SD County also has preserved some rural lands as open space. I think the bigger problem has been with the smaller cities where the city councils were owned by developers; and also, a million people from Mexico flooded into the county, so some sprawl was inevitable.
RR: “SD County also has preserved some rural lands as open space. I think the bigger problem has been with the smaller cities where the city councils were owned by developers; and also, a million people from Mexico flooded into the county, so some sprawl was inevitable.”
Rich, could you provide some references for this allegation – were these people documented or not; have they bought property; over what time span did this sprawl inducing immigration occur?
There are an estimated 250,000 – 300,000 total illegal immigrants living in San Diego, Imperial, and north Riverside Counties, which is about 7% of the population there. They aren’t a significant factor in San Diego’s growth. The expansion of the Navy facilities during and after WWII, the development of UCSD and the surrounding area of research parks and businesses, and the huge expansion of the tourist industry with the creation of MIssion Bay, the Wild Animal Park, Sea World, etc., drove San Diego’s growth. Plus the fact that it is just about the nicest climate in the world.
The biggest problem in San Diego County in the 1960’s was that the county supervisors would approve nearly any development project that came to them, regardless of the impact on nearby schools, bus systems, and infrastructure. My high school, which was already at capacity and whose buildings were not earthquake-safe, doubled in population in two years as new leapfrog developments were built and students poured into the district. More than 50 students were assigned to my English class at the start of one school year.
Mayor Pete Wilson urged a policy of annexation of any and all land that seemed likely to be developed. San Diego expanded to more than 30 miles across north to south, including an odd annexation that took in the entire region along the border (Otay Mesa, which is separated from the rest of the city except for a narrow corridor of land down the freeway) in order to facilitate a new airport. The airport never happened. But the point of the plan was for the city to control the land which might be developed, rather than the county.
Wilson ran as a reformist and developed a reputation for growth management. What he really did provides a bit of a cautionary tale for Davis and Yolo County. In exchange for allowing large developments such as University City within the (new) city limits, mostly on the periphery, he negotiated with the large developers to also massively rebuild the downtown. Having been to and through downtown San Diego many times as a youngster, I can attest to the seedy condition of the place, and the redevelopment definitely enhanced the tourist industry. Thus growth, though massive, was planned and constrained within the city limits, and was leveraged to the city’s benefit. But in the absence of any planning between the city and the county, developments continued to be allowed further and further out in the very flammable and ecologically interior of San Diego county. The fires in 2003 and 2007 illustrated the folly of that, but we all know that county governments are notoriously bad at long-range planning.
[i]”over what time span did this sprawl inducing immigration occur?”[/i]
Since the 1960s. I never said anything about illegal aliens in San Diego. In fact, San Diego County, despite its proximity to the border, is not a common destination for those who cross illegally. They tend to pass through and settle in Los Angeles County or elsewhere north.
My understanding is that about one-third of San Diego County is Latino, virtually all of Mexican heritage. The county has over 3 million people. So about 1 million Hispanics (including, fwiw, some of the wealthiest Mexicans, who live in La Jolla). Most Latinos came as immigrants (or their immediate offspring) from 1964 (the end of Bracero program ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program[/url])) on, during the time when sprawl pushed out toward Poway and toward El Cajon and so on.
[i]”a million people from Mexico flooded into the county, so some sprawl was inevitable.”[/i]
By the way, I did not mean to imply that Latinos were the only group coming into San Diego during the period of sprawl. They were just the largest group. The non-Latino white, black, Asian, etc. populations all grew during that time, too, though at slower rates.