Winning on YES but at what cost?

The Oregon tax measures I've posted about--66 & 67--won by a good margin.  But it cost around six million dollars when you add up expenditures by both the YES and NO campaigns, and an unbelievable effort in time for door-to-door canvassing, telephone banking.  Important as it was to the life of  schools, social services in the state, I'm bothered by how anti-government, ultra-conservatives (names of the really big spenders can be seen here) forced this effort on the rest of us.

And, with the popularity of initiatives, there will be more efforts like this.  One personal outcome is that our family will never agaoin buy clothes we have enjoyed in the past  from Columbia Sportswear (and that is why no link is provided here).  Owner Tim Boyle, who says he has supported education in other times, seems to have turned a dark corner in his explanation to the Willamette Week.

"Class Warfare?" asked the WW in their editorial supporting the two measures. But elsewhere local journalism--the Portland Tribune, another weekly and the Oregonian came out strongly on the No side.  But the major shock was the way that the Oregonian chose to oppose the two measures with a startling front page on the  Sunday paper shortly before the voting ended. 

Once known for quality work and  Pulitzer Prize reporting a recent purchase by a conservative Californian, has changed the Oregonian.     Clearly it was keeping close to both its new values and major advertisers when it shocked readers with a  spadea  featured on the front: an advertisement  that looked like an editorial against Measures 66 & 67.

Now many of us have this new word, "spadea," an ad wrapped around a newspaper section, in our collection of seldom-used vocabulary.  It was no surprise when the Oregonian  came out with its own strong editorial against the tax measures.  Its negative reporting along  the way seemed destined to produce this result.

So, though the  YES side won, we have all paid a high price in real dollars and media degradation.

Comments

[m.e.]

thanks for that little informational tidbit. i didn't know there was a name for those wraparound ad things. i'll bet the "no" folks paid plenty for it, so i'm glad they lost. maybe they'll pick a better horse to back next time. but now that the supreme court has come out with their ruling on corporate advertising, we're probably in for lots more of this kind of expenditure as those with money try to throw their weight around. i congratulate you and the other "yes" folks on your success, however. that was the result of lots of people doing lots of things right, and that's hopeful.

[Lydia]

I'm disgusted with most of Oregon's newspapers for having opposed the measures. I've considered canceling my subscription to The Statesman-Journal for that reason, but feel it's necessary to closely follow news around the Capitol.

I learned a new word in this post! And I did not know about the Oregonian's new owners...

[Hattie]

If the state just bottles up this money or "refunds" it to taxpayers, then all the work will have been in vain.
Don't I sound cheery.
Go over to the Nike Headquarters at Beaverton and walk around a while. Then go over and take a gander at the trailer park right across the street.
Most people around there school themselves not to notice such oddities.