Wise Use Moves into Electoral Politics
(C) 1994 by Paul de Armond
About three years ago, our county was suffering from soaring taxes due to
poorly planned development. Whatcom county (NW Washington on the
Canadian border) had been small in population (<80K) and rural. Most of
the economy was in salmon fishing, timber, farming and dairy. We still
have (at least among the surviving dairy farmers) one of the highest milk
per acre production rates in the US.
In the early 70's, the urban growth of Vancouver and the par exchange rate
caused an influx of Canadian money and outside commercial development.
Speculative housing developments (mostly for Canadian vacation homes) and
shopping centers for the Canadian trade fueled a series of real estates
booms and busts that were driven by a combination of US interest rates and
changes in the Canadian exchange rate. What had been one of the nicest
little towns on Puget Sound started to have cyclic depressions with
unemployment sometimes soaring as high as 20%. It was still a nice place
to live, crime was non-existent, people left their houses unlocked, rent
was low. Even in bad times, it was still a good place to live.
Each of these cycles left its mark. As the shopping centers grew up along
the interstate, each bust would drive locally owned businesses into
closing their doors and the chain stores would stay. By the mid-80s we
were blessed with the largest shopping mall in the state. The weekend
population would surge by 30 - 50% as the weekend shoppers came over the
border from Canada. This meant that local taxes went through the roof, as
the western half of the county became an economic colony. We had to pay
the taxes to keep up the roads, provide emergency services, deal with the
problems that had been imported. The county sectoral economy shifted from
farming and extractive industry to commercial retail. Land speculation
drove real estate prices higher and higher with taxes following in their wake.
What had been a stable, self-sufficient economy with substantial local
business ownership (and a high rate of local re-investment) had turned
into a suburb with no city nearby. The chain stores only left about 5% of
their cash flow behind (in sales tax and minimum wage jobs). The county
average wage has been steadily declining. Taxes, local utilities (water
and sewer), and rent went through the roof. We suddenly had a substantial
homeless population as the low-rent housing was converted to owner
residences by the rising real estate prices. Wells started going bad,
particularly near the coast, where excessive pumping had drawn seawater
into the water table. Sewage systems started failing in some
developments, which will require large amounts of tax money to repair and
replace. Road maintainence all over the county started rising due to higher
traffic level. Flooding became more and more severe as forest land was
logged for raw log exports and the urban sprawl accelerated. The small
farm I was living on was destroyed by mudslides triggered by logging road
that should never have been built.
About three years ago, we started to figure out just how badly we had been
had. "Everybody do what they want" had steered everybody (except the take
the money and run crowd) into a rising spiral of development raising taxes
and then more development being justified to raise the tax base, causing
more demand for infrastructure, raising taxes and here we go again. Many
people were fooled by the cash flow, thinking that we were all going to
get rich. Local candidates had been elected by grass roots campaigns (and
very little money) to try and get things back on an even keel.
The developers fought back. They wanted to keep on using our taxes to
subsidize their profits. One group, the Keystone Forum, started holding
monthly invitation-only lunches. They mapped out a plan to grab the
government for themselves so they could keep picking our pockets. They
found an organizer and created a property-rights group for the county, the
Coalition for Land Use Education (CLUE), a tax-exempt non-profit. the
founding members of CLUE were the former head of city planning (who had
gone through the revolving door to cash in), the head of the builders
group, a realtor who specialized in manipulating land use laws, and the
president of the surveyors association. CLUE's first act was to bring
Chuck Cushman to town to disrupt critical planning meeting.
Cushman is a carpetbagger who makes his living tearing communities apart
with hatred, fear and rancor. Almost immediately, we had elected
officials getting death threats, vandalism, intimidation, fear and rancor
destroying our public process. Keystone also started getting close to a
local citizens group that was involved in city issues revolving around the
collapsing downtown. More rancor and intransigence screwed up the local
people trying to figure out what was best.
CLUE in turn spun off two county secession movements and a referendum
campaign to sabotage local planning. All of a sudden property rights was
the big local issue. People stopped going to public meetings because they
were getting their tires slashed, windows and headlights broken, followed
home from meetings, threatening phone calls.
CLUE and Keystone ran a slate of Wise Use candidates in a stealth
campaign. More money was pumped into these races than had ever been seen
before in local elections. The county secession groups were running
selective voter registration drives, telling people: "just sign this
petition and it'll lower your taxes." Before the primary, many people were
getting phone calls encouraging them to vote for the Wise Use slate. The
callers claimed that they were from the local Republican party, but the
Republicans hadn't made any endorsements. Large numbers of letters and
faxes were circulating in support of candidates, but were never declared
by the campaigns or Keystone's PAC (which spent more money on their own
campaign than many of the candidates). All of this was being done in
secret, nobody seemed to know what was going on. Sure enough, come
election day, the stealth campaign won. You can now read the voting
majority of the county council in the Yellow Pages under "Excavating and
Heavy Construction."
The election was so lopsided that I took a close look at the precinct
returns. It was obvious that some very unusual things had happened. In
the city vote, the key race was decided by absentee votes that came from a
very few precincts. These votes must have been a straight Keystone slate.
A little more checking around showed that the funny precincts all had
nursing homes in them. I found witnesses that had seen people going
around and "helping" sick and elderly people fill out their ballots.
Then I started looking into the county secession groups. Many people in
the county had told me that forming a new county would be on the ballot.
The petitions looked like initiative ballot petitions (which bring an
issue to a vote.) The petitions were all marked "RETURN THIS PETITION BY
NOV. 1, 1993". There was no secession issue on the ballot and no
petitions have ever been submitted for verification. I visited the office
of one of the secession groups and was horrified by what I found. It
looked just like an American Opinion bookstore. There were posters on the
walls and in the windows that said that the communists wanted to take your
land. There were large amounts of CLUE literature, yard signs, handouts
saying the most outrageous things. They had a financial feasibility study
that never mentioned startup costs. They claimed that they were going to
lower taxes and increase services. Then the head guy looked me right in
the eye (with one of the most malicious expressions I have ever seen) and
said, "We're taking over!"
I've been looking into these folks ever since and I don't like what I'm
finding. Most of the people in the property rights and secession groups
think they are just a local group. I've found that this was not the case.
I go to their meetings and find twenty good local folks and six
operators. Only the operators know what is going on. There are secret
meetings that the key operatives from five counties are attending each
month. Members from all of the local groups (in several counties) that I have
talked to tell me that their group wouldn't exist if if wasn't for the
support and direction of their local property rights alliance or CLUE.
All the groups have similar or identical names. All of them are
circulating identical literature that differs only in the names that are
on it. As I have traced the organizing ties upwards I find the Wise Use
movement. Few or none of the people in the local groups know anything at
all about who is running them or where they are coming from.
It is now becoming apparent that the stealth campaigns are being
coordinated at a state and interstate level. The secrecy and paranoia
that radiates from these organizations is unbelievable. Every group seems
to have some very scary and violent people lurking in the background.
Most of the people are being manipulated in ways that they neither see nor
understand. At my local level, it is the same group of monied interests
that have messed up our economy and tax base that are driving this thing.
As you look up the ladder, there are large corporations like Trillium,
Plum Creek Timber, Bechtel, Presto. There are organizational ties to
groups like the Unification Church, the World Anti-Communist League,
Christian Identity, Aryan Nations and The Order. I don't think that any
of the good people at the local level (and they are good people, I've
known some of them for many years. They've got real problems, just like
the rest of us, and these problems need solutions) don't know how they are
being used or who is really doing it.
What is emerging is a picture of an attempt to take over the city, local
and state governments in the Puget Sound region. The five counties that
have been targeted by the "New Counties Movement" comprise about 90% of
the population and taxbase of the entire state. The secesionists are
openly bragging about how their efforts dovetail into legislative
campaigns. They claim 300,000 voters statewide as already being on their
petitions and mailing lists. Dan Wood, a professional lobbyist for Wise
Use front organiztions, is running a takings initiative campaign that will
swell their identified voter lists. The secessionists are running large
voter registration drives in the unincorporated areas in the western slope
of the Cascades.
All of this activity fits in nicely with the "modern populism" strategy of
the far right. These people have an invisible third party that can be use
as a swing block to influence elections for all sorts of offices next
fall. They do not have any party allegience, though the Republicans are
their natural allies. They took over the Snohomish county council last
fall by running candidates inside of both parties. The most severe
political damage that they have done has been forming alliances with
construction and timber unions and winning primary elections that take out
Democratic incumbents who don't expect a challenge from inside their own
party. This has effectively nutralized the state Democratic party as an
organizing base aginst them.
I expect to see the 26 right wing initiative campaigns disrupt most
elective campaigns by dividing the available resources too thinly. Then
control of the legislature will be seized in the general election. At this
point, the Right will be able to discard the initiative campaigns and
simply pass the legislation. It looks pretty grim. To the best of my
knowledge, we can look forward to the stealth campaigns for control of the
legislature and county governments to emerge from behind the smokescreen
of the initiative campaigns too late to be stopped. It will probably take
eight years to correct the results of the 94 elections, even if everybody
gets the picture yesterday. This could make the last decade look like a
picnic.
