Deciding To Run For Public Office?

British Columbia has survived its 40th provincial election. If you are going to run for public office in Washington state, you will have to register as a candidate by the end of today. Have you every considered being a candidate? Some people run for public office. Why?

Over the last month I’ve heard folks talk about running in local elections and been talked about as possible candidates, all of the talk testing and probing the level of support they might have in a campaign. Some are running for re-election; others will challenge incumbents or run for open positions; and others will decide not to run.

What does it take to make that decision to run or not to run?

A long time ago I ran against two incumbents on a local electric power cooperative board and lost but garnered enough votes to come in third among four candidates. Another time I won a race to be a Republican precinct committee person— when we still voted in open ballots on party precinct positions. In the first instance, I was running on a platform of staying out of purchasing nuclear power and encouraging energy conservation; the second was an attempt to reform the local Republican party from within and modify its influence on local land use issues.

Energy policy and land use are still pretty contentious issues but after those candidacies, I’ve never had a second thought about being a candidate. My ego — which is large — just took on a different shape. I still want to believe I can influence people and the flow of events; however, I couldn’t see doing it as a salesperson.

A candidate is a salesperson, and it’s not a bad thing to be a good salesperson. A good salesperson identifies (or creates) a need and offers you a way to meet that need. It’s not much different than how job coaches instruct job seekers in pursuing employment: research where you want to work, identify what’s the company needs, and sell your skills and experience that can fulfill those needs.

Bad salespeople consider the sale to be the end of their relationship with their customers; for the customer it’s only the beginning.  After you win an election, you have to govern.

When asked recently by a potential candidate about his running, I’d tried to keep it simple: The short answer is yes, do run and run hard. The longer answer entails campaigning hard and smart in a way that brings people together rather than dividing them along the too-familiar urban/rural, city/county issues. It’s not enough to run hard against things like coal port or incumbent leadership; that critical 4-5% vote count that will make the difference needs to be reached with a more positive vision of how your leadership will further economic benefits (it is still jobs, jobs, jobs), increased opportunity for all (justice), responsible growth and development (our quality of life), and balanced and transparent deliberation and decision making (governance). Those are the ‘values’ I value. We’re not electing you, we’re electing the kind of community we want and the kind of leader we want to lead it. And you don’t have to be “nuts” to run— you have to be able to talk in pictures (examples), you have to be able to smile and shake everyone’s hand— and you have to genuinely like people.

Of course, the other part of having the right shape of a big ego to run for office is thickness: the slippery slope to negativity comes pretty quickly when campaigns are contested.

After this week’s BC election, the Globe and Mail headline reads: “NDP loss shows the powerlessness of positive thinking “

Justine Hunter’s story begins : “As the room of shattered New Democrats emptied out of the election night party, Moe Sihota, the NDP president, shook his head in response to the unspoken question: What went wrong? ‘We want to reflect on this,’ he said. But after a minute, he conceded the obvious: Adrian Dix’s insistence on a positive campaign had failed. ‘Positive didn’t work.’”

And when I recently asked a local official who’d lost by a handful of votes what made the difference, we talked about the political baggage one carried having made hard decisions but ended up talking about sticking by a decision to keep the campaign on the issues and not personality and innuendo like the opponent had raised through advertising and anonymous blogs.

My supporters said I should hit back but I didn’t go there, she said.

It’s not naïve to work towards making our political campaigns a reflection of the kinds of communities we want and the kinds of leadership we seek. We’re not powerless. Some of us can decide to be candidates; the rest of us do get to vote.

--Mike Sato

Puget Sound Starts Here Launches New Campaign

The Puget Sound Partnership has done social research into how the 4.5 million of us think and feel about Puget Sound and is launching a new Puget Sound Starts Here campaign this month.

Take a look at the campaign website.

In an email to ECO Network members, the Partnership wrote: ‘On May 6, the Puget Sound Starts Here website, advertising and local materials will have a new look. Instead of a static website that tells people what to do, the new PSSH will feature a mosaic of ever-changing content (videos, infographics, photo essays, articles and more) that celebrate why life in Puget Sound is so special, and why we each have a role in caring for the Sound. Next Monday we will do a “soft launch” of the website with the May “Walking the Sound” creative materials. In addition, our online advertising campaign and regional public relations efforts will begin. For each, we will begin slowly and build momentum as new content is added to the site over the coming months.’

According to Dave Ward, the Partnership’s Regional Stewardship Program Manager, in an April 9 memo, the new campaign goals are to “rekindle an emotional connection between area residents and Puget Sound, increase PSSH brand awareness from 26% to 50%, position PSSH as a connector for residents to a healthy Puget Sound, and reinforce the ‘umbrella’ PSSH brand to unite regional and local efforts of partner organizations.”

Sounds exciting and something to look forward to in the months to come.

--Mike Sato

In Praise of the Blue-Spaced “Wows!” in Aquariums

"Wow!" Baltimore Aquarium Shark (George Graff)

One of the 12 Sound Resolutions promoted in 1991 by the now-extinct People For Puget Sound included visiting an aquarium, zoo or museum to learn more about the Sound and its critters.

A critic complained that attending aquariums and zoos should not be encouraged because they were bad places where wild animals were kept in captivity against their wills; wild animals should be allowed to be wild. “Thank you for calling and sharing your concerns” was the only way to end that call.

While growing up, I’d been to some pretty sad zoos and aquariums but I haven’t felt that way recently. Especially not when returning today to visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore and hearing the first “Wow!” from the kid standing next to me upon reaching the first level viewing area exhibit, “Maryland: Mountains to the Sea.”

That “Wow!” and the excitement of parents and adults brought back to me the article by Michael Roberts in Outside about marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols (The Touchy-Feely (But Totally Scientific!) Methods of Wallace J. Nichols ):

“THE PHILIPPINE coral reef tank inside the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco is 25 feet deep and holds 212,000 gallons of water, making it one of the largest exhibits of living coral anywhere in the world. It is the centerpiece of the academy’s Steinhart Aquarium and hosts hundreds of coral species, a couple thousand colorful fish, plus sharks, stingrays, and numerous smaller creatures, like sea anemones and snails. There are five windows affording looks inside, the biggest of which, at 16 and a half feet tall and almost 30 feet wide, makes a sweeping arc in front of a dimly lit standing area backed by several rows of benches. It was designed to offer visitors a panoramic, theater-like view of life in the tank and is among the museum’s most popular attractions. It’s Wallace J. Nichols’s favorite spot in the building....

“Whether it’s a 92-year-old or a two-year-old, when they come into that blue space, something happens,” Nichols says. They grow quiet and calm, but there’s more to it than that. When couples walk in, they frequently start holding hands. He says that if you ask people here what they’re feeling, they’ll struggle for words. Nichols finds this fascinating. He also believes that if we can understand what really happens to us in the presence of the ocean—which brain processes underlie our emotional reactions—it could bring about a radical shift in conservation efforts. If we learn precisely why we love the ocean, his thinking goes, we’ll have an immensely powerful new tool to protect it.”

I’ve been to the Steinhart, too, and I didn’t go quiet. For me it was, “Wow!”, the same as that kid standing next to me in Baltimore. And it was “Wow!” in Monterey. And “Wow!” standing before the Seattle Aquarium’s big tank display in the lobby.

These are magnificent exhibits and in many ways they work hard to present the conservation message in the context of the “Wow!” but I don’t think we’ve come very far in understanding, as J. Nichols hopes, “why we love the ocean” and discovering any new tools to protect it.

Today, we watched the Giant Pacific Octopus with fascination, looked for birds and monkeys while walking up the levels of the tropical rain forest in the heavy mist, and spiraled down the levels of the Atlantic reef tank until reaching the sharks cruising the bottom below. But it’s hard to get a sense of what’s at the crux of conservation: that it’s the relationship of the land and the waters, that it’s the relationship of what goes on on the land that affects the critters of the waters, that it’s what goes on in our hearts and minds that determines the conservation of the oceans and its critters.

Until that “Wow!” comes with understanding that relationship, we’re doomed to lose much of what today might prompt our “Wows!” in our aquariums, zoos and museums.

It’s been fun exploring in the other Washington the American Indian Museum, the Air and Space Museum and the Hirshhorn, and finishing yesterday there at the U.S. Botanic Garden (but no monkeys in their tropical rain forest.) Not as many “Wows!” there as in the few hours today at the Baltimore National Aquarium but, after all, I was visiting from the Salish Sea.

--Mike Sato

Earth Day 2013

April is like high church season for environmentalists and Earth Day on and around the 22nd its culmination. Writing about this year’s Earth Day became tough this week after Monday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon and yesterday’s Senate actions and inaction on gun public safety.

I wanted to reflect and write about the power and the limitation of a movement like Earth Day but instead was being informed about how to construct and detonate a pressure-cooker bomb. Getting a phone call on Monday alerting me to what had happened in Boston brought back many of the same feelings I felt when I first learned about the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma and the 9/11 terror attacks: shock, anger, impotence, sadness...

These were the same feelings I felt when I learned about mass shootings, murder and woundings, the last coming during the December high church season at Sandy Hook Elementary. Again, people wanted change to improve public safety. Alas, shame on our state Senate Republicans for refusing to vote on gun public safety. And shame shame shame on U.S. Senate Republicans for voting against gun public safety.

I wanted this week to write that Earth Day represents people power, people demonstrating how volunteers working together on behalf of the Earth’s health can accomplish a lot. It is serious work but meant to be celebratory. We like to say, “Every day is Earth Day,” and you can really feel the power this time of year.

But it’s hard not to feel like people, ordinary people, aren’t powerful but just victims when something like pressure-cooker bombs explode, kill and maim at the Boston Marathon. That people who join in to write and call to ask for change to gun public safety are no match for the powerful interests of gun manufacturers, Second Amendment zealots and the NRA.

Many people will work together this weekend and on April 22 in celebration of Earth Day. That’s good. My celebration is tempered this year by knowing that our work in the environment has to be looked at in a much wider community safety perspective— and by knowing the limitations of collective action when facing powerful special interests.

--Mike Sato

A Fresh Breeze From The Herald Wafts Over The Partnership

Check out the editorial voice Peter Jackson and his editorial writers at The Herald are establishing. Over the last three weeks, they've opined on coal exports, the San Juan Island National Monument, food fish safety and coal trains.

Earlier this month, the subject was saving Puget Sound and praise for Governor Jay Inslee's proposed natural resources budget.

Specific to Puget Sound, the editorialists wrote:

"Most of Inslee's recommendations dovetail with the priorities of the Puget Sound Partnership, the state agency responsible for the Sound's recovery. The partnership has become a lean, efficient bird-dog of state funds, ensuring oversight and accountability. Coordinating and leveraging federal dollars also falls on the partnership, as well as developing indicators of a healthy Sound consistent with its 2020 restoration goals. The partnership no longer gets scapegoated as too top-heavy or PR oriented, with an evolving bipartisan consensus. The reason centers on tangible results such as restoring shellfish beds previously off-limits because of contamination."

The "lean, efficient bird-dog" description and no longer "top-heavy or PR oriented" description had me checking out the Partnership staff web site since I'd not heard much from or about the Partnership since its executive director Tony Wright resigned earlier this year. I couldn't tell how much leaner or efficient the Partnership had become by perusing its staff roster but I did learn that Marc Daily is now serving as Interim Director.

With all due respects to Marc Daily, having an interim director for an agency charged with saving Puget Sound unfortunately doesn't inspire much confidence in the state's pursuit of this important task.

Nevertheless, The Herald editorialists see a new day for the Partnership thanks to delivering "tangible results such as restoring shellfish beds" and to "developing indicators of a healthy Sound." That led me to check out how well the Partnership (and Puget Sound) is doing in meeting the 2020 benchmarks that measure how 'fishable, swimmable and diggable' our Sound is. 

The Partnership's colorful Vital Signs display shows a few tangible results-- but we're clearly running out of time as the Partnership moves closer to 2020. What's disturbing is how many of the indicators of Puget Sound recovery don't show progress and some don't have interim targets to measure progress.

Sadly, the Partnership has never told its story or the story of Puget Sound very well since its inception in 2007. Maybe better "PR" -- in place of or in addition to its campaign of picking up dog poop -- would have resulted in more Puget Sound residents seeing the waters of the Sound as at risk. In 2007 about three-fourths of people polled thought the health of Puget Sound to be good or excellent; five year later, the Partnership's polling found little change in that public perception. ( General Public Opinion Survey 2012 ) 

It's a good thing that The Herald newspaper still thinks the Partnership and the need to save Puget Sound are important enough to editorialize about.  The issue is too important to fade from public awareness. How about Puget Sound environmental groups and other major news media do their parts to watch dog the Partnership and put the "action" into its Action Agenda?

--Mike Sato

Gimme That Gun! (Or, Lessons Guns Have Taught Me)

Gun safety is public safety and the U.S. Senate begins its deliberations this week. Our state legislature seems to have already tucked its head neatly into the sand on the issue, despite state legislators going on a shooting junket last week ( Legislators answer a call to arms for fun, education ).

Seattle Democrat Jamie Pedersen, prime sponsor of a background-check bill, said, “We are having serious policy discussions about guns and I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to have some experience of holding them and knowing what it feels like to shoot one who don’t have that experience.”

Maybe you need to handle a gun to have any cred in talking about gun safety as public safety. OK, so gimme that gun. Here’s what guns have taught me:

My first gun was a Daisy BB pump rifle. We lived in the country and at 10, I’d shoot at targets I set up on the wall below the second floor back porch. One day I aimed at a small gray dove on the wall. I shot it and it fell over— dead. Lesson: Shoot something and it dies. (The other lesson was being made to eat every little bit of that little dove: what you kill, you eat.)

My father liked to show off how good he was hitting targets from the second floor back porch. One Saturday afternoon he was standing with the BB rifle pointing upward and my baby brother crawled over the pulled the trigger. The BB hit the roof overhand and ricocheted onto my father’s chest. The BB gun was put away after that. Lesson: Sh*t happens and you most likely would shoot out your eye.

While in high school, my father’s friend Mr. Nakamura took me to the Koko Head Shooting Range and let me load and fire his .38 revolver. Everyone started yelling, “Shoot the rat, shoot the rat!” as a big brown rat appeared out near the targets. The place erupted in yelling and gunfire. The rat disappeared. The only other time I’d heard that kind of urgent yelling was from my uncle suffering in his final days from Parkinson’s Disease and hollering, “Shoot the green man, shoot him now.” Lesson: Guns and moving live targets bring out very strange human behavior.

One dark night on Lopez Island, I finally cornered the coon that had been killing the hens in my chicken house. I held the flashlight beam on him and raised the single-shot .22 rifle but dropped the flashlight and couldn’t see the coon any more. I picked up the flashlight and saw the coon frantically digging under the coop corner to get out. I put the flashlight down and aimed in the dark at the corner and pulled the trigger. The hens cried out the began fluttering around the chicken house off their roost. I picked up the flashlight and saw the coon still digging in the corner. I took out another .22 bullet and reloaded, then turned to the corner with the light as hens fluttered back and forth. The coon had almost dug his way out. I dropped the flashlight and I shot again, the hens cried out— then all was quiet except for nervous clucking and my heart beating. I shined the flashlight beam at the corner. No coon, just a big hole. Lesson: Seeing your target and shooting at your target are two very different things.

OK, so there. You can have your guns after we close background check loopholes, ban military-style assault weapons and sales of magazines of more than 10 rounds, increase police protection at our schools and on our streets, and increase access to mental health services. These measures don’t infringe on rights afforded law-abiding gun owners; these measures balance those Second Amendment rights with our rights to life, liberty and happiness.

What’s your gun story?

--Mike Sato

Watchdog Group Audit Finds Serious Flaws in Protection of Puget Sound Nearshore Habitats

NEWS RELEASE
April 9, 2013

Contact: Amy Carey, Sound Action (206) 745-2441

NEW PUGET SOUND WATCHDOG GROUP ‘SOUND ACTION’ FINDS SERIOUS FLAWS IN PROTECTION OF SOUND’S NEARSHORE HABITATS. RELEASES AUDIT OF STATE OF WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE PERMITTING ACTIONS


(Seattle, WA)  Organizers who defeated an international company’s efforts to mine and ship gravel from Maury Island today announced the launch of Sound Action, a new environmental group dedicated to using science, activism and law to protect Puget Sound’s natural nearshore habitats.

“The Puget Sound nearshore is the nursery of the Sound,” said Sound Action’s Executive Director Amy Carey. “But Puget Sound today is documented as a critically imperiled waterway in part because regulatory agencies are failing in their mandated role as environmental protectors.

According to Sound Action, regulatory agencies regularly ignore existing laws prohibiting environmentally damaging nearshore developments during permit review and approval and fail to condition how work done should protect species and habitat productivity.

Sound Action recently conducted an audit of nearshore development permits issued under the state’s Hydraulic Permit Approval (HPA) program and found serious deficiencies in how the program is administered by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“Negative impacts to the nearshore area – which is the Sound’s most ecologically productive part of the food web – occurs with almost every bulkhead, dock and stormwater outfall allowed,” said Carey.


Review by Sound Action found that approximately 90% of the permits approved did not contain appropriate timing restrictions to protect forage fish when spawning and over 95% lacked protections for lingcod and rock sole – which are listed as species of concern.  30% of the permits approved contained no protection for juvenile salmonids.

As a result of these findings, Sound Action will be working to review all future nearshore HPA permit applications under WDFW consideration, providing oversight to ensure that the agency follows the existing laws that were developed to protect vital Puget Sound ecosystems. In the event these laws are not followed, Sound Action will utilize legal actions.

“Our work may expand to other regulatory areas in Puget Sound but our first task is to focus on the HPA program and make sure each permit does what the law requires,” said Sound Action board president Susie Kalhorn.

For more information, visit Sound Action’s website.