Why did I decide to run for this seat in the first place?

How did I end up deciding to file paperwork as a write-in candidate for District 2 County Supervisor?

I've been interested in politics my entire adult life, and from time to time I've become personally involved, but like most people I'm busy, or think that I am, and it's easy to find other priorities from day to day. Also, like most people, I tend to follow National politics more closely than I do local politics (for reasons that I'll address in another post) even though there's a much better chance of directly impacting events on a County level, as well as being directly impacted by the actions of County Government.

As most residents of District 2 know, we've been poorly served over the last eight years, for several reasons, and that lack of an effective voice has functionally left almost all policy-making decisions in the hands of the Supervisors from Districts 1 and 3. I don't wish to re-hash the past eight years in any detail when it comes to the personalities of the three Supervisors and the interactions (or lack thereof) that occurred as a result, but suffice it to say that there were times when Paul Newman should have been heard by his colleagues, and times when what they heard should have been acted on; by in essence marginalizing and shunning Paul the collective voices of District 2 were silenced, and the District suffered accordingly.

Be that as it may, when Paul Newman elected not to defend his seat in the primaries that offered District 2 a fresh chance to elect a candidate who might effectively speak to and for the concerns of the people of the District, and who might advance a different agenda than the one that has colored the last eight years. My personal philosophy of Government is that if people elect to establish Government at all, as opposed to an anarchistic idea without Government, that Government ought to properly function from the bottom up, with elected officials who are attentive to the voice of the people who they represent, and responsive to that voice when it comes to setting policy direction.

The problem that I saw, and that many people in District 2 see, is that County Government has not been particularly responsive to our voices; in fact from time to time the Board of Supervisors has acted in ways that were directly opposed to the voices of the electorate, with perhaps the most dramatic example being the events surrounding the proposed development of Smith Ranch that eventually led to Proposition 400 overturning the entire proposal. I'll discuss some other particular instances in a separate post so that I don't get sidetracked, but the short form is that prior to the Primary elections it seemed that District 2 might finally get an effective representative, and a corresponding equal voice on the Board of Supervisors.

But then the Primaries were held, and after I looked carefully at the results and thought about the implications I decided to enter the race in order to provide the electorate of District 2 with an opportunity to choose another path, rather than the one that they'd been placed on without too much collective input from them.

Harvey Allen, running unopposed, garnered the Republican nomination, while Ann English defeated Charles Flanagan for the Democratic nomination. And, as most of you know, Ann thereby became the presumptive winner of the general election, and the next District 2 Supervisor, for the simple reason that voter registration in District 2 is so strongly tilted toward the Democrats that a Republican would need a virtual miracle to win.

But the thing that troubled me enough to try to do something about it was this; Ann English and Charles Flanagan roughly tied in most precincts, with the exception of the Douglas-area precincts, where the vote ended up roughly 1.5 to 1 for English over Flanagan, and that provided the winning margin. And here is the kicker; the Democratic turnout of eligible voters in Douglas that determined the winner of the Primary, and as a result almost certainly the winner of the general election if nothing unusual happened, such as another candidate entering the race, was 9%.

9%. Voter participation is always a problem, particularly in primary elections, but in this instance a vanishingly small percentage of the total population of District II cast the die and determined the identity of the next District 2 County Supervisor on the behalf of all of us, and that isn't participatory democracy as I understand it.

I've often joked that the election for County Supervisor in District 2 is really the Battle of the Yard Signs, but the fact of the matter is that name recognition plays an almost exclusive role in that election, which might not be the best way to choose someone who will be responsible for representing our interests for the next four years. Most voters don't have any clear idea of any positions that a candidate might have on any given issue, and sometimes when the winner takes office and begins to act it's a nasty surprise to the electorate who installed them.

And so I filed the necessary paperwork and put most of the rest of my life on hold for the next 50 or so days to try to give the people of District 2 something to vote for instead of a yard sign; in another post I'll discuss some of the upcoming issues and questions that will face the Board of Supervisors in the next four years, but suffice it to say that the decisions that are made are going to impact us in a real fashion, and it's in our collective interest to elect a Supervisor who will accurately and forcefully communicate our viewpoints, and who won't abandon those viewpoints in favor of a different philosophy of Government that doesn't fit the District or the people who live in it.

As the Russians (who are familiar with the consequences of not being politically involved) say:

"If you're not AT the table, you're ON the table."

John-Henry

What kind of Supervisor are the people of District 2 really looking for?

Candidates for public office commonly hold their leadership skills up as an important qualification, but I think people in District 2 don't want "leadership" from their Supervisor, they want "stewardship," which is a very different thing.

They want a Supervisor to make sure roads are well maintained, but not to unilaterally decide to build another road. They want a Supervisor to handle the County budget, but not to arbitrarily allocate funding for an entirely new program. They want a Supervisor to solicit their opinions on any important issue, then act the way the voters want him to act.

A Steward holds a position in trust, and the people of District 2 want a Supervisor they can trust not to forget them and act as if he's an autonomous authority; a Supervisor who will keep represent their opinions as fully as possible; a Supervisor who will be be their ally against over-zealous county employees in Planning & Zoning, the County Assessor's Office, the Sheriff's Office, or any County entity that gets puffed up.

Most people are busy trying to work, raise their families, and make ends meet, and they don't have time to follow day-to-day County business, but that doesn't mean a Supervisor should ignore their needs and wants. The Board should give voters every opportunity to be involved in the processes that lead to change.

In short, the people of District 2 have a philosophy that says,

"If it ain't broke, don't bother to try and fix it,"

and their Supervisor ought to keep that firmly in mind any time he's involved in their business.

Can a write-in candidate win this race?

When I decided to enter the race for District 2 Supervisor it was already too late to have my name printed on the ballot, so I was forced to file as a write-in candidate, and several people who were in a position to know told me not to bother, because the odds were just too long. Their assumption, of course, was that any given voter was either too lazy or too stupid to take an extra moment and actually write "John Henry" in the space provided, but I've never subscribed to that view. I've worked and lived in this District for a long time, and I know that people here are not lazy or stupid, and that they're perfectly capable of casting a vote for a write-in candidate if they think that it's going to be in their best interests.

And in fact I like being a write-in; anyone who casts a vote for me has gone an extra mile, bothered to inform themselves of my positions and beliefs through this Web page, and made a conscious decision to change the course of County Government by electing a Supervisor for District 2 who will be responsive to their needs and desires, and who will hold that position in trust for the people of the District .

When Abraham Lincoln was President he held most afternoons open, and people from all walks of life came to the White House to visit with "Old Abe," as he was affectionately known. Lincoln knew that the common people had put him into office, and he also knew that if he spoke with them they'd deliver practical and shrewd advice, which was often in short supply in Washington.

Today, of course, you can't walk up to the front of the White House at all, much less walk in and see the President, but there is no good reason why a County Supervisor shouldn't be accessible to any of his constituents at any time; a Supervisor is engaged in the people's business, and the people are quite capable of telling the Supervisor exactly what opinion they have on any given issue. The only thing that the people need is a Supervisor who pays attention to them instead of forgetting who he represents; if they have that the whole thing works just fine.

John-Henry

The Planning and Zoning Department

I probably hear more complaints about the Planning and Zoning Department from people in District 2 than any other single thing; it makes people crazy whenever they hear the latest story about Mr. Smith who ran afoul of the new building code, or Mr. Jones who requested a zoning variance to erect a sign or a wall or a fence and found himself entangled in a bureaucratic nightmare, or someone else who was cited or fined or threatened for something or other that on the face if it seems absurd.

But none of this could happen without the involvement and permission of the Board of Supervisors; they have oversight responsibility for every County Department, including Planning and Zoning, and they are responsible for adopting the recommendations brought before them, and then monitoring the results. If the Board doesn't take an active role in oversight individual Departments act unilaterally according to whatever they believe is correct, and that is where the problems occur again and again.

In 2004 the Planning and Zoning Department submitted a new County Building Code to the Board of Supervisors for consideration and passage, and the Supervisors were told three things:

1. That the new code would increase public safety.
2. That the new code would decrease insurance rates.
3. That the new code would pay for itself in three years.

That code was adopted, and the first two contentions have never been examined in any serious way; without formal study or statistical evidence it's impossible to know if there's been any positive effect at all on safety or insurance rates, despite the assertions that were made in 2004.

One thing that can be known, though, is whether or not the third contention was valid, and four years later it's clear that it was not. In 2007 Planning and Zoning reported that the monies generated from the collection of fees for permits, as well as the monies derived from fines levied for violations, versus the operating cost of the program in terms of salaries and infrastructure, had resulted in a net loss of $252,000.00 in 2006/2007.

And the next year was probably even worse; collections of fees and fines were down about $150.000.00, bringing the loss for 2007/2008 to somewhere around $400.000.00.

And that responsibility falls squarely on the Board of Supervisors; that budget shortfall has to come from somewhere, and with the increase in valuation that the Board approved this year in order to increase tax revenue it might be a pretty good idea to re-examine the entire Code compliance and enforcement program.

Most people in District 2 view it as burdensome and intrusive in the first place, and I doubt that there would be many tears shed if the Board of Supervisors simply defunded the program, or at the very least imposed some stringent limits on the actions of enforcement personnel.

The people who staff the Planning and Zoning Department are career bureaucrats; they're trained and taught the precepts of Planning and Zoning, and as a result that's what they do. They keep current with the trends in their field, and attend conferences, and subscribe to trade journals, and it's not surprising that they advance plans and policies that are all the rage in San Diego or Boca Raton or Cape Cod, because that's where the cutting-edge progressive ideas are beign implemented.

It's up to the Board of Supervisors to remind them that Cochise County is different, and that it's residents take pride in that difference; they don't want to become Pima County or Maricopa County, and they don't want that kind of Governmental intervention in their lives, so the Planning and Zoning Department might be better served if they worked toward tailoring their recommendations to the people whom the properly ought to be serving instead of annoying.

John-Henry