Local, small-town elections typically conjure up images of candidates shaking hands with well-known neighbors, speaking engagements at local shopping centers and front yards full of campaign signs with candidate names and checked boxes painted on them. But the old days of down-home politics have been infiltrated by aggressive politics, big bank accounts and new strategies.
Four candidates are running for mayor of Eugene, each with his or her own special flair, but all have one goal: Find a way to win.
This election pits two political heavyweights – incumbent Mayor Kitty Piercy and former Mayor Jim Torrey – against each other, while two lesser-known but very outspoken candidates try to fight the media’s insistence to hand them an early disqualification by suggesting they don’t belong in the race.
A recent column in The Register-Guard stated that inviting Nick Urhausen and Jim Ray, the remaining two candidates, to the city’s main mayoral debate is “just silly,” and the two candidates should attend the debates only to ask Torrey and Piercy “what a Eugene mayor can, did, should and might do.”
However, Urhausen said he has been offered media face-time, but is reluctant to accept it.
“KEZI wants me to do a few scripts for them, but I just don’t trust them,” Urhausen said.
Ray went the other route and accepted the invite from KEZI, but he said, “I have learned to be cautious of the media. I have to choose my words very cautiously because I know my words can be edited and used out of context.”
In the face of media neglect for some and mud-slinging between others, the four hopefuls are relying on tried and true campaign methods as well as new strategies to win the most votes.
Campaign signs – those corrugated fliers stuck in lawns, stapled to trees and lining neighborhood streets – are the bread and butter of the hometown campaign.
Piercy’s camp has asked supporters to pull out and reuse their old signs from the 2004 election in an effort to embody her “green” attitude she has employed for the past four years. Torrey has a few signs posted around town and a sign draping a downtown building but said he plans to put up 500 more signs this weekend. Urhausen, however, said he thinks “the things are clutter,” but feels he may have to put some up anyway. Ray has put up a few signs around town, but said people have been tearing down his signs and putting them in piles with other candidates’ signs.
If lawn signs are vintage, a personal elections Web site is nouveau – at least in Eugene.
Three of the four candidates have personal Web sites up, and Ray has a MySpace page to showcase his views and platform. Piercy’s and Torrey’s offer lively pictures of the candidates, links to donate money and personal profiles. Urhausen, 62, claims the Internet is something new to him, but he said at a recent war veterans’ meeting he met a Gulf War veteran who offered to create a campaign Web site for him at no charge. The site is up, but no information has been added to it yet.
Lawn signs only offer names in fun fonts, while the quintessential campaign forum where candidates hop on soap boxes to offer their platforms is the public debate. Controversy has swirled lately around what type of debate the candidates prefer, but there is a public open event scheduled on May 2, and another radio debate being planned.
Torrey was hesitant to hold a public debate where he felt Piercy supporters could pack the house and bombard him with unfair questions, he said, or his comments could be taken out of context and used against him – something he claims has happened to him in the past.
“I’m not afraid. I just want to know what the rules (for the debate) are, that’s all,” Torrey said.
Torrey has set up a debate that would air on KPNW-AM 1120, but it would be more of a candidate versus candidate debate than one where the questions come from audience members and candidates have a 30-second response time.
The date for this radio debate has not yet been set, and Piercy said “we’re in the process of getting back to them … but from our point of view, we need to know the date and format before agreeing to anything.”
Debates have generally been a good way for candidates to showcase their similarities and differences to the public, and one of the glaring differences that might come up during this campaign is spending amounts.
Urhausen said he has spent almost $400 on his campaign – $300 for the voter’s pamphlet fee and $74 to take his picture that will appear in the pamphlet, but money shouldn’t dictate election outcomes, he said.
“If money wins elections, then we should just auction off the offices,” Urhausen said.
Ray said he has spent $1,600 so far, but added that he is just about out of money left to spend.
Piercy broke previous Eugene spending records in 2004 when she spent $142,115.09 on her way to city hall – nearly twice the amount spent by all candidates in the 1996 and 2000 mayoral campaigns combined.
Piercy’s Campaign Manager Ashley Miller said this year the mayor plans to run a similar campaign as she did during 2004 and the dollar amount “should be in the $100,000 range.”
Torrey said when he first filed for mayor in early March that he planed on spending nearly $200,000 this race, but backed off when asked on Wednesday how much he plans on spending. He said, “I’ve already spent about $20,000 and will probably spend around $100,000 this election.”
The mayor of Eugene’s annual salary is $19, 329.12, more than 15 times what could be spent by two of the candidates in this year’s mayoral election.
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