On election day last November, Dan Jenkins shared the ballot with a few somewhat bigger attractions: Barack Obama, Susan Collins, Tom Allen and Herb Adams.
Unfortunately for Jenkins, a Green party candidate, Adams was his competitor in the district 119 race for the statehouse – and a veteran Democratic lawmaker that the Bollard’s voter guide called a “Parkside institution” (alongside “sweat pants, prostitution and Deering Oaks”).
Adams handily defeated his much younger rival, who walked away with 25 percent of the vote.
“I was surprised I lost, it was pretty bad,” says Jenkins, on watching the election night returns. “But I got a lot of positive responses from people in the neighborhood about the way I ran my race, so it didn’t feel as bad as the numbers reflected.”
Come January, Jenkins was back in his role as a student at USM’s Muskie School for Public Service.
And with the semester winding down, he’s already found a reason to pull some of the old campaign gear out of storage: a 12-member commission being assembled to review and revise the structure of city government in Portland.
Once he recovered from his “electoral bruising,” Jenkins started talking with friends at city hall – councilors Dave Marshall and Kevin Donahue – who encouraged him to make a run for it.
The commission is the result of a referendum question also on the fall ballot, centered around Portland’s lack of a popularly-elected mayor.
At present, the city council decides annually which of its 9 members will don the title, which is largely ceremonial and has been a mixed blessing over the years: current and first African-American mayor Jill Duson has used it as a pulpit to decry some of the racial bigotry that followed Obama’s landmark election – but last year, it may have been little more than a lightning rod for controversy on the campaign trail for former councilor Ed Suslovic.
A top priority for the commission will likely be to re-define the position as a new executive slot answerable to voters; but there’s nothing stopping them at that.
“The mayor issue is just the catalyst,” says Jenkins. “Once you open the charter up to a commission, anything goes.”
It will be the first such overhaul in nearly a quarter century, and Jenkins is among a loose coalition of candidates across the city who are particularly interested in what the charter has to say about elections.
Anna Trevorrow, who herself lost a bid at the school committee last fall, is another Green in her late twenties. She thinks the name recognition she and Jenkins built up last fall will come in handy this time around, while meet-and-greets with voters might put some of their fears to rest.
“One challenge I believe [we] face in this race is the perception that too many changes will make Charter Commission recommendations less likely to be ratified,” she says. “It is important to remember that we do not necessarily have to present charter revision recommendations as a single document to be voted up or down. Recommendations can be submitted as separate ballot questions.”
Ben Chipman is running his own campaign over on the East End, and he’s highly motivated by the prospects of reducing the role that fundraising can play in city politics.
“Smaller districts is a key for me,” Chipman said, at a kick-off party for Jenkins’ campaign at his Grant street apartment last Thursday. “I’ve lived here for nine years now, and I’ve seen campaign-spending in city races go up dramatically.”
One remedy being floated is to reduce the number of seats that are voted on “at-large” – meaning city-wide – while increasing the number (and tightening the scope) of districts represented.
“District races are more about how you know your neighborhood and the views there,” says Jenkins. “Whereas an at-large race is more about how much money you can raise.”
“Get 25, 30 thousand dollars together, and you can buy yourself a seat,” he added.
It’s a particularly sensitive point for up and coming, third-party candidates. Jenkins’ opponent is once again a bit more seasoned – Robert O’Brien now sits on the Portland school committee.
“You could say conventional wisdom gives him an advantage,” says Jenkins, who also points out that the district encompasses USM’s Portland campus. “I don’t think his advantage is actually that strong. But I’ll definitely be knocking on the doors of everybody who showed up at the last school finance vote.”
Major door-knocking, however, will begin when after he’s finished with his final papers and the semester is officially through.
The elections will be held on Tuesday, June 9. Find your local polling place at:
http://www.portlandmaine.gov/voter/pollplace.asp