City council candidate Ed Garren has removed the gloves, calling his fellow rivals to take down Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman a “bunch of clowns” in a late night blog comment posted here in the early hours.
- GARREN: FEISTY
Garren was photographed with the other candidates on Sunday at the Overlook Cafe, and council candidate Spencer Burton put out a notice saying all five would be at an event on Alberta this Friday night. But Garren says he hadn’t agreed to that just yet, and is angry that Burton notified the media without his consent. Posted last night:
The open letter I sent to this bunch of clowns, who have REALLY pissed me off !!
Dear Spencer, Mary, Jason and Jesse:
I came last Sunday to see what you had to say. While I appreciate your desire create a more “collegial” perspective among candidates, I think I made it VERY clear in the meeting that I was opposed to any scheme which would attempt to conspire to get $750,000 out of the city.
The entire reason for the Qualifying Contributions process is to see if there is genuine public support for an individual candidate to warrant PUBLIC MONEY being awarded to that individual candidate. It is NOT a scheme to just get money out of the city because a group of people are angry about an individual elected official, or a single issue.
I also made it very clear that I did NOT want the photo of me with the rest of you published until my campaign steering committee had considered and approved our participation in such a scheme. I asked your photographer to take a second set of photos of the four of you, with me not in them, and you did.
The Steering Committee of my campaign also agreed with me about this endeavor and felt equally uncomfortable with it.
Yet, before I could notify you of that decision, I get notice of my photo, with the rest of you, published in the Willamette Week (online http://blogs.wweek.com/news/2010/01/05/dan…).
What this blatant disregard for my request confirms is that my instincts were correct, and I do not wish to be publicly associated with this group, this series of endeavors, or the reactionary impetus which appears to drive your endeavors.
I am running for City Commission because I believe the city needs change. While I share your concerns about many issues, I am not interested in any conspiracies to try to manipulate the Public Financing system.
I ask you to do a public disclaimer, and ask the Willamette Week (and any other media) to remove the photo with me in it.
Regards, Ed Garren
If you’d have checked Blogtown, Ed, you’d have known about this two hours and four minutes earlier. Anyway, commentator Kari Chisholm at Blue Oregon, who happens to have prepared Jesse Cornett’s rival website, hits back:
He called his fellow candidates a “bunch of clowns, who have REALLY pissed me off!!” and suggested that the meet-the-candidates concept was a “scheme which would attempt to conspire to get $750,000 out of the city.”
Sure, Ed. Can’t have candidates talking to voters or anything like that. That would screw up that whole “democracy” thing we have going on.
Agreed. I can’t see what Garren would have to lose by showing up to this event. On the other hand, I can see that he’d lose a great deal of good will by calling his rivals clowns. Rivals, feel free to chime in in the comments! Do you mind being called a “bunch of clowns?” Is it better to focus on the issues than these kind of spats?
Update, 12:23: Garren called earlier this morning to say he’s “not sorry” for calling the other candidates a “bunch of clowns.”
“I’m really pissed,” he says. “I feel violated, and I don’t want anything to do with any of them after this.”
Garren repeats that he went to the meeting but that he was scandalized by the idea of trying to get $750,000 in public financing out of the city council, if all six candidates were successful.
“It felt really icky,” he says, of the meeting. “In the shrink business, they say to kids, if someone is touching you and it feels icky, then it’s not right.”
Garren, so far, has gathered 160 $5 contributions, he says, of the 1000 needed to qualify for public financing by the end of the month. He says he’ll decide at the end of the month whether to continue a campaign even if he doesn’t qualify for the public money.
“I really respect the intelligence of the voters in this city,” he says. “And that’s what this comes down to. This is not about manipulating people so that you can get $150,000 in taxpayer money and pump up your ego.”
and why wouldn’t we want this kind of measured, thoughtful goodwill on the city council? i mean, who wouldn’t enjoy Ed calling Randy a “clown” or “asshat”? the essence of democracy, civility and good government.
Ooooohhh Kaaaayyy…guess I can remove this @$$clown from consideration for my vote. Volm is a whackjob as well, so it’s a three-man race at this point.
Where is Ed’s red nose?
Did Ed sign a release for this picture?
Sue the editor!
When he’s not LOLing, I’m sure Saltzman is really shaking in his shoes about facing anyone in this crew.
Jesse Cornet recently said there that it isn’t his website. He was asked directly if Blue Oregon’s bratty, elitist, “we know better than you” attitude, that some of its writers are so proud of, would characterize his dealing with Portlanders. He replied, “I sure wish I ran Blue Oregon. Now that would be neat. But you see, to get a site like this, it has to run itself (which isn’t to say Kari and others don’t to a lot of work to make it greate (sic)). Editors (which I have not been for over two years) and contributors (which I remained until I decided to run) are given wide discretion. If contributors want to share their position that commenters (sic) are whiny, that’s fair game. You see, they’re not City Council. They’re just citizens, just like you”.
Of course the original question was a little more pointed, about why they’re the only blog on the planet too busy to manage link spam (which happens to include everything from child porn to date rape drugs), and how outing readers and calling them stupid is “hard hitting journalism”.
So, I would ask him, isn’t that pretty much Hannity? Do we need more people on the city council that allow such travesty to go in their backyard because it’s not in their job description? For the record- and I know, I run a number of site professionally- the only think Kari does to manage the blog is sell ads. What the average 15 year old does to have a website doesn’t count as professional management. And he ain’t too good at that. Referring to his finding the time to ban the IP addresses of those that question the party line too persistently? Call a spade a spade? Pointing out that Carla is so insulting that the Urban Dictionary references her under “Madame La Snarque” is not more worthy of ban than child porn spam.
Not that they have time for anything other than M66/67… And BTW, Jesse isn’t an assclown.
why they’re the only blog on the planet too busy to manage link spam
Actually, we manage link spam all the time. TypePad, our host, has recently gotten much worse with the filters (or maybe, the spammers have gotten better.) Your complaint seems to be that over the holidays we weren’t fast enough with the spam deleting. Yeah, it’s a volunteer-run blog.
In any case, we’ve been working on a whole new infrastructure for way too long – and we’re just about ready to go live. And it should deal with the whole spam problem. That, and the anonymous asshole problem too.
Dog forbid we actually listen to people speak before we give them money. As far as I’m concerned, a good debate like this, where we can actually see who is very prepared, vs who is just also running, and what exactly their differences are, would save both me, (since I wouldn’t have to give them all $5,) and the city money, (since not all of them would qualify.) Otherwise I was going to have to give them all, [well, 4 out of the 5] of them money.
Not that this doesn’t work too. Only 3 of them are still in consideration for my $5 now…
Garren is a loud mouthed, lying conspiracy theorist. Just because he doesn’t have enough friends or work ethic to get public financing he lashes out at those who do (or at least are trying). I’m looking forward to the time when we never have to read another post about Ed.
Wow, such hypersensitivity to the word “clowns.”
I specifically requested they NOT use my name or the photo which had me in it until I had run the whole thing past my steering committee. I made it very clear that I am accountable to the people who are putting their time and energy into my campaign and could not commit without their input.
Instead of honoring that request, or at least telling me “we’re publishing it anyway”, I had to find out about the photo and article from a friend.
Don’t take my word for it. This is what Jason Renaud wrote me the next morning:
“Sorry Ed. You were clear with the group about your need for an
internal decision. I did ask you + Debra on Monday and you were still
undecided. So I posted the picture of the foursome (not as good!) and
no commentary.”
Given the level of betrayal and disregard for my specific intentions, I think “clowns” was more than generous. And since I was at the table, and felt the “vibe” at it, I think I am entitled to an opinion about what transpired. The feel among some of these folks was that they are taking this money from Dan Saltzman, not the taxpayers. I don’t think that’s right, and I stand by that decision.
There will be plenty of opportunities to listen to candidates, including Friday night at Dough Nation. I just don’t want to be there, and neither do any of my campaign volunteers.
Regards, Ed Garren
Garren- You sound like such a victim. I hope you find happiness in a campaign somewhere. I can only hope that your “steering committee” gets you in a van on I-5 headed back south. Welcome to the real campaign world, W. Hollywood may like your style of doing things and signed releases on pictures.
@dimag05- Mary Volm is native Oregonian and 20 year veteran of the city of Portland, until you can say that yourself you haven’t earned the right to call her a “whack job”.
I note that you state “a three man race”, when Mary Volm indeed is the only woman in the race. Note,”a three person race”.
Too self absorbed to contemplate your subtle sexist error?
Hasn’t Mayor Adams given you any soccer balls to clean up or something else to do other than attack Volm?
Does Adams know that city employees are being paid to blog from City Hall on taxpayer time?
It amazes me that all too often those who routinely call for open dialog and debate are the first to dismiss someone else as a “whack-job”, “sexist”, or “liar”. Either we respect opinions and perspectives that may differ from ours or not but name calling – and that goes for you too Ed – has no place in civic (and civil) debate.
Lol @ Gary: You must not be familiar with The Portland Mercury blog. There is rarely civility here. You’ve obviously have not read some of the starting blogs here back in December on this city council race. Nothing gets deleted–everything is posted warts and all. The Portland Mercury only cares about Google hits to their website. It is only an entertainment newspaper/online media. I agree with your comment Gary— it’s just that civility is something The Portland Mercury could care less about the way the blogs flow here.
@ABS: Mary Volm is native Oregonian and 20 year veteran of the city of Portland, until you can say that yourself you haven’t earned the right to call her a “whack job”.
Why limit it to that? Why not says that anyone that isn’t a native Oregonian, a 20 year “veteran” of the city of Portland, (it isn’t actually a war BTW,) who’s first and last name doesn’t have 4 letters, and who isn’t a Timber Queen hasn’t earned the right to call her a “whack job.”
@Janelle: (After people change their names enough times I just call them the original one to avoid confusion.) Why did you bother to start a new account? It is obvious to everyone who exactly you are when you start posting things like that.