Small should get to know voters
Like so many other dailies, The Washington Post is desperate for revenue. More unusual is that the newspaper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, offered to rent out her dining room table in order to raise a little cash. A couple weeks ago, The Post distributed fliers advertising a forum Chez Weymouth, where, for a mere $25,000, “those powerful few” would get “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate” alongside reporters and government officials.
Unsurprisingly, the public was outraged to learn that The Post would sell out its massive constituency (the readers) in favor of special interests (those powerful few). On July 3, Weymouth canceled her soirée, but not before a barrage of criticism had seriously damaged her newspaper’s reputation. “If I had $25,000 to spare,” wrote Thomas Frank in the Wall Street Journal, “I’d advise [The Post] to forget about befriending the A-list. Stick to the public — what you might call the Z-list.”
Frank’s advice could serve local politicians as well, some of whom mistake their little “A-lists” for the entire alphabet.
Two days before The Post’s scandal, Vice Mayor Larry Small solemnly pronounced The Gazette’s editorial page “completely out of sync with the citizens.” Small probably meant that he expected to see his latest proposal, which would increase property taxes by 600 percent, skewered by some limited-government editorialist.
Nobody with a feel for local politics could fail to see the ironies at play. When it comes to tax issues, Small is so “completely out of sync with the citizens” that a clever pundit could predict elections simply by seeing where he stood, and then staking a position on the other side.
Last year, El Paso County Question 1A, which would have raised sales taxes by 1 percent, was defeated 59 percent to 41percent. Small supported the measure, which means that he was completely, quantifiably and objectively out of sync with the overwhelming majority of citizens.
In April, City Issue 1A, which would have extended a property tax “to create, attract, and retain jobs,” was defeated 62 percent to 38 percent. This time, Small found himself at odds with an even larger majority.
Yet despite all this, Small feels comfortable presenting himself as the trustworthy gauge of public opinion.
How is it possible that our vice mayor could be so out of touch? More importantly, how could he believe that he represents the majority view?
At a Tuesday forum regarding the “Colorado Springs City Government Budget Crisis,” John Weiss, the publisher of The Independent, warned the attendees not to mistake themselves for the people as a whole. “Normal people,” he said, “do not come out on a summer day to talk about the budget crisis.”
Weiss was right. The vast majority of people don’t want much from city government, so they don’t send their vice mayor e-mails. They don’t contribute money to political campaigns, work as city employees, sit through government meetings, or do anything else that would make Larry Small aware of their existence.
Yet these are the people who determine the outcome of city elections. These are the people who open their newspapers and cringe to see another tax proposal. These are the people who, year after year, ask themselves if they want more public services, decide they don’t, and vote accordingly.
These are the people who, in Small’s opinion, represent a small minority.
We can’t blame Small for not knowing them personally, but we could wish that he might at least infer their existence, as scientists infer the existence of dark matter, from observing their effect on other objects.
The voters who rejected the two 1As aren’t suddenly going to rally around the vice mayor’s plan to multiply their mill levy. If Small doesn’t understand that political reality, he should consider spending less time at forums where, to quote Dorothy Parker, the opinion “runs the gamut from A to B,” and more time seeking out those mysterious people who keep defeating his tax increases.
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Cole, of Colorado Springs, is a writer, translator and political organizer. Readers can reach him at dancoloradan@yahoo.com.
