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“Six Pack” of candidates hopes to force a runoff in City Council race
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
Bonny McKnight as City Commissioner was an un-saleable product by Portland political standards - but how about Bonny McKnight, one of six assorted flavors?
That is the strategy the Russell neighborhood activist is pursuing as she runs for Randy Leonard’s City Council Position #4 seat as part of what has become known as the “Six Pack” - six community activists working separately for a common aim. In addition to McKnight, there are Frank Dixon of northwest Portland, Leonard Gard of southwest Portland, and Mark Lakeman, Paul Leistner and Scott Stephens, the last three all of southeast Portland. The effort is an offshoot of NPAC, a political action committee for neighborhood activists founded by Dixon several years ago.
“Paul, Frank and myself met last fall, and decided we just couldn’t let the current commissioner go unchallenged in the next election,” McKnight told the MEMO. “We tried to talk different people to enter the campaign, and we found that electable candidates were simply not available. So we decided to go at this in a different way. I suggested that we get a number of different people to run, to appeal to their different constituencies, and to use the primary to get the word out without spending a lot of money. We’re giving people alternatives to vote for. If they don’t, they’ll have chosen what they want for the next four years.”
United against Leonard
The six are united by their dissatisfaction with the treatment that community groups have received from the Council in general, and Leonard in particular, in recent years. “I think it’s important, with changes coming for the mayor and another position on Council, for neighborhoods to have more influence on Council,” McKnight says. “When neighborhood associations can’t get Council to listen to them, it means the people in those neighborhoods can’t, either.” With regard to Leonard, who has charge of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, or ONI, she says, “You need to exercise restraint in how you exercise responsibility, and that’s not something this commissioner does. He has not consulted neighborhoods about anything. You can’t just say, ‘I have a great idea, and I’m going to do it on Tuesday.’ You need to look at the cost.”
She cited two issues currently in the news, both involving bureaus controlled by Leonard. In one case three inspectors in Leonard’s bureau had been suspended amid accusations that they had purchased at low cost houses they had repeatedly cited for code violations, and the commissioner had publicly threatened to fire them if they were found to have acted unethically. In another, an elderly homeowner had been harassed for code violations on her home.
McKnight blames Leonard for the inspectors being “tried in the headlines” in advance of a real judicial process. In the second case, she says, the city is “not treating a person with dignity or respect. If there are 83 year old women who can’t maintain their yards, it’s a neighborhood problem.”
She specifies that although the “six-pack” is pursuing a collective strategy, they are not running a collective campaign. “We’re not running as a group. We don’t agree as a group on a number of issues.”
Permanent jobs a key
Her resume includes work with the Northeast Workforce Center and the Northeast Jobs Committee, identifying and trying to eliminate barriers to getting inner northeast residents into jobs and self-sufficiency. Out of that experience, she says the city should be more selective in the types of businesses it promotes. “The only value to a job is if it pays you enough to live on,” she says. “We assume that when people get entry-level jobs they have a chance to go on to the next level, and that they will get a little more next year than they got this year. But current employers are looking for cheap labor, entry-level workers that they can recycle when they don’t need them anymore.
“Most crime is due to economics. Jobless people are more likely to commit crimes, do drugs and become homeless.” However, she says, when crime is committed it ought to be punished. “For many crimes people are just getting a ticket, and that’s not doing anything,” she says. “It’s very expensive to make arrests, yet this doesn’t prevent the next crime. We need to put some people away.”
Also important are neighborhood business districts with commercial services “that people can walk to,” and support services such as shuttle buses to keep them viable, she says.
McKnight is helping spearhead a committee that is planning a yearlong celebration of the 30th anniversary of Portland’s neighborhood network, including a float in the Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade. At a presentation last month before City Council (co-sponsored, ironically, by Leonard), McKnight said, “It’s important for the (district) coalitions to remind themselves what we’re in business to do.” McKnight herself is trying to take that to a new level.
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