Bend City Council elections are supposed to be non-partisan, and generally that’s worked pretty well for us. Our council races are far less acrimonious than, say, the typical campaign for president, Congress or even the State legislature.
But Troy Reinhart apparently would like to change that. Reinhart, the Chairman of the Deschutes County Republican Party, ripped into City Councilor Mark Capell, a registered Democrat, in an e-mail to party members last week.
“I think for Republicans, he’s a target,” Reinhart said. “He will have competition, I can assure you of that.”What got Reinhart so riled up was Capell’s participation in a panel that made recommendations for legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in six of Oregon’s major cities, including Bend. The measure, called Senate Bill 1059 and introduced by Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), is complicated, but the crux of it is that by 2035, the cities would be expected to cut greenhouse gases from automobile emissions down to 1990 levels.
Critics of the legislation, including Reinhart and the Central Oregon Association of Realtors, say that requirement would be economically devastating to Bend because our population has quadrupled since 1990.
The critics have a point – but it’s not at all clear that’s what the Bill says. Capell and other members of the task force, and even the conservation group 1000 Friends of Oregon, say they assume the aim will be to reduce emissions on a per capita basis.
Another gripe from the critics is that the legislation creates an unfunded mandate: It orders cities to undertake expensive studies and implement costly compliance measures, but doesn’t provide any state money to help pay for them. That’s a fair complaint too, and we hope the bill that finally emerges from the legislative process will fix that problem as well as clearing up the ambiguity about how emissions targets are to be calculated.
Even if a badly flawed bill comes out of Salem, it’s stupid for Reinhart to blame Capell for it. He didn’t write the Bill – in fact, he strongly criticized it in an e-mail to fellow members of the task force and legislative leaders, saying: “I can’t begin to describe how disappointed I am in the proposed Senate Bill 1059.”
Maybe Reinhart thinks Capell, and Bend, should have boycotted the whole process. But that wouldn’t have resulted in a bill that was better for Bend, and it might have produced one that was a lot worse.
For his part, Reinhart is unapologetic about trying to drag Bend city politics down into the partisan muck. “Mark is a registered Democrat, and so Republicans are looking for conservative people to run,” he told a Bulletin reporter.
All we can say is that if Deschutes County Republicans are planning to mount a slash-and-burn campaign against Mark Capell, they’d better have better weapons to hit him with than this. In the meantime, for launching a partisan – and what’s worse, ignorant and unfair – attack on Capell, we’re hitting Troy Reinhart’s butt with THE BOOT.
This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2010.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Source Staff: That isn’t even half of it. Our friend Troy right now is both head of the local GOP AND
Chairman of the Bend Chamber. That’s okay for the local Tea Sack Palinistas but if our business community…large and small (that’s me) is okay with that then we are in big trouble. Mr. Reinhardt is a right wing Fox News radical. That is his right. That the Bend business community would endorse this is downright scary.
Thank you for the honor of winning the boot. Please let me know when and where I can pick-up my award.
I just wanted to point out that it was not I that interjected “partisan” politics into the City Council race. That honor goes to your man Mike Schmitt who announced his, now defunct, candidacy via the Deschutes County Democrats.
I just want to make sure to give credit where credit is due.
Have a fantastic day.
Troy
I’ve been a Republican for 20 years. I attended George H. Bush’s inauguration. I’m a member of the NRA. I’ve been to the Heritage Foundation (where, by the way, they served me delicious turkey/croissant sandwiches), and I was the president of the largest college Republican organization in the country. As a relative newcomer to Bend, I’ve been deeply disappointed by the mis-guided strategy and leadership that my fellow Deschutes County Republicans have shown. While I appreciate Mr. Reinhardt’s service to our party, bringing partisan-based ideaology to our City Council elections, and to our Chamber of Commerce leadership, is not only inappropriate, it is a disservice to our citizens and our business community – regardless of their partisan stripes.
I don’t think Mr. Reinhart deserves the boot because he’s kicking some donkey! Human-Caused Global Warming is highly suspect as a theory at best, and, at worst, is an economy wrecker for our state and nation. Thank you Mr. Reinhart for standing up for our principles and opposing against this horrible bill and insane policy. Mr. Capell, like so many other activist water carriers from the left, is just hiding behind the title non-partisan to do pursue the most partisan of policies. Mr. Reinhart and the Bend business community are just smart enough to call Mr. Capell out on it.
Press on, Troy. It’s about time the Deschutes GOP had someone with some guts at the helm to push back on the socialist progressives in Bend. As a matter of fact, keep pushing back and maybe we’ll push all those Marxists out of this side of the mountains and back to California.
I see the local Palinista troll army is out in force, marching in lockstep as they do on every issue. So predictable.