A Council like you

The Everyman appeal is a long tradition in politics with candidates telling you to vote for them because "I'm a family man" or "I'm a God fearing man" or, around Grand Forks, "I'm a working man who's feeling the pain of property taxes."

In other words, "vote for me because I'm like you."

The people you see above are what happens when you take this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. They're what you might get if the demographic make up of the council were just like the make up of the city's population of eligible voters.

This "fantasy council" is part of a story in today's Herald about the diversity (or lack thereof) on the real council. It was inspired by my conversations with Ward 2 council candidates Jon Dorner and Mike McNamara, both of whom made their common man background a part of their appeal to voters.

To come up with the fantasy council, I did some research on the Census Web site, broke the data into different population segments and figured out how much of the council they could get. The bigger the segment, the more council members. What I came up was the composite council you see above. To see my work, click here. Mac has done something similar, though he breaks it down differently.

I'm usually skeptical of the idea that somebody's race or sex has anything to do with their qualification for a job. But Mac's and Dorner's ideas made me take a fresh look at the council.

Frankly, like Pygmalion, I like the look of my creation a lot more than the real thing, especially that councilwoman on the far left. But seriously...

The fact is, aside from political philosophy and personality, the council is remarkably homogenous: Mostly male, all older and all white-collar.

For the most part, that's fine by me because nobody forced voters to pick these guys and they're doing a decent enough job that none of the candidates are complaining about them.

There have been a few times, though, that made me wonder if the rhetoric on the council might not be a little different if some of them were more like, say, people like me. For example, the laser-like focus on keeping homeowners happy drive me up the wall at times. I happen to be a renter. I don't pay property taxes myself, but my landlord does and he does it, in part, with my rent money. I also pay sales taxes on every purchase and sales taxes keep property taxes down. So renters like me are making just as much a contribution to this city as homeowners. But when the city upgraded its recycling service so there's no more sorting, it's the homeowners that got the upgraded service. Three years on and us renters are still waiting. I have to wonder, if there were a renter on the council, wouldn't he or she have noticed?

(I guess I could complain to my council member, but he's one of my sources, so I don't. This isn't a complaint either. I just take my recyclables down to Hugo's rather than trying to sort them out.)

The next question that needs some answering is, why don't more "people like me" run for council? I'm sure many women would like to see more women elected officials, but not many women are running so they'll never get that choice. Same with renters. The Census says 49 percent of households in Grand Forks rent but the only renter running is maybe Peder Rice (I didn't ask him but he's a student, so I'm making an assumption). Another question is, would more types of people be able to run if the council increased its pay, something it has considered in the past? The cause-and-effect on that one is debatable, but it hasn't been debated yet.