“I’m not a politician, I’m a community organizer,” says City Council candidate Tina Smith, as fellow candidates and voters shuffle past her on a rainy Wednesday evening, after wrapping up a lively election forum at the North Star cafe in downtown Portland.
“I’m never going to be a politician.”
Smith is running for an at-large seat on Portland’s city council that’s up for grabs next month. And it’s an uphill climb – not only does the race include an incumbent mayor, Ed Suslovic, but a very credible candidacy from Dory Waxman, a local businesswoman who has served on a school committee, Bayside Neighborhood Organization, and Portland Community Action.
Smith meanwhile, proudly exudes her outsider, rookie status.
She points to a necktie that some friends and advisers have told her to take off, at least for the duration of the campaign.
“They’ll say take off your hat, your [gauged ear peircings],” she says, “but if people have a problem with the way I look, I don’t want their vote anyway.”
It’s important to Smith that she doesn’t compromise too much for her campaign, and she’s confident it will pay off when it comes time to vote. City council, after all, is a nonpartisan body, though many members’ affiliations are well-known; much of the campaign involves face-to-face contact, where candidates pitch their message to one person at a time.
The race is also lower on the food chain in terms of media coverage – there typically aren’t many heated battles and lightning rod issues.
This year, however, Suslovic and Waxman have gotten plenty of attention for their squabbles over the politics of developing Portland’s pier; Waxman has worked as a “community liason” for one of the losing bidders – Suslovic is pegging her as a former lobbyist with conflicts of interest.
Suslovic and Waxman are both Democrats, with Suslovic sitting more to the margins of his party, often siding with Greens and the one Republican on the city council.
But Smith, who admits she has admired Suslovic’s independent streak, still thinks it’s time to clean house. The 31-year-old USM undergrad has been taking some time off for campaigning and activism before completing her senior project in media studies, probably next summer.
She traces her own independence back to the group that drew her into politics just a few years ago, the Maine chapter of the League of Young Voters.
When they first came to Smith’s attention in 2004, the local arm was in its infancy and known by the more caucus title “The League of Pissed-Off Voters”. Smith describes herself as a regular but rather clueless voter at the time, when a friend involved in the league came to her for help producing a video for them.
Within a year, she was their community liason at USM – a campus organizer who immediately found herself working on an issue that was striking a chord around the state, and for her personally.
An out lesbian since it lead to her discharge from the Army in the late 1990s, Smith committed herself to rallying students against an attempt by religious conservatives to overturn, by referendum, a set of anti-discrimination laws enacted by the state legislature aimed at protecting gays and lesbians.
The Christian Civic League, a major proponent of the referendum, portrayed it as a step toward legalized gay marriage.
That November, the referendum failed and Smith fondly remembers the lively rallies she helped put together at the Portland campus.
And while her work with “the league” sits high on the resume portion of her campaign literature, there is a strong sense the two may have parted ways for good.
“We kicked off the league here in Portland promoting a book called ‘How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office”, she recalls. “But now their motto may as well be ‘how to get stupid white men out of office, and replace them with smart white guys.'”
She feels the League has lost touch with its roots – it was founded by a self-described “hip-hop activist” in 2003 to promote independence and diversity in politics. She questions that commitment today, as voter guides around the city proclaim the group’s backing of Suslovic.
After praising her for her stance on public transportation and equal opportunity, and mentioning her bold call for allowing even non-citizen residence the right to vote in local elections, the League lays it out plainly.
“Her lack of experience with strategic planning, policy, and budgets would not make her an effective advocate on the Council,” reads the guide.
She doesn’t see it as a stab in the back so much as indicative of their more establishment turn; their tendency to back Democrats over Greens and independents was the subject of a few arguments toward the end of her involvement.
But Portland, she says, is a young city, and an increasingly diverse city, something that its representation in Government doesn’t accurately reflect.
As the candidates forum officially winds to a close, people are testing microphones and amplifiers on the cafe’s small stage, preparing for a night of music, breakdancing and poetry readings. A new crowd shuffles in and starts filling up the tables, and somebody lets Smith know that her friend, DJ Grey Matter, will be performing soon, at which point she lights up.
“These are my people,” she says.