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Corporate Prog Rock

Is it a coincidence that Progressive rhymes with Oppressive?

Here it is, point blank: In the past five years or so, the cost of a campaign for A$UO office has taken more than a fair jump. In fact, the cost has doubled, tripled, and in extreme cases, increased by tenfold. From available figures (record-keeping being less than an exact science around the A$UO), we found that the average cost has gone from a couple hundred dollars in 1994, to about $400 in 1996, to an exponential $1552 this year. A lot of cash is going into this whole thing, and in more than one case, thousands of dollars are being invested in unsuccessful bids to shoot the moon. You know how much Red Hook Porter you could buy with that kind of money?

STORYTIME
Where does this all take us? To tell the story right, we've got to step back a few years. It's the '94-'95 school year, and young firebrand student senator Joey Lyons is on the make. Lyons unifies a good 18 or so students to run on a Progressive slate, with a platform based on the well-meaning and appropriately vague values of access, diversity, and empowerment. The gamble works, and the large majority of Progressive candidates take their races (oddly enough, Lyons wasn't among the winning candidates that year). It was the dawn of a brave new world in student politics.

Flash forward: the year is 1998, and with another round of elections past (though far from over), the Progressives have grown considerably beyond the modest collection of students they started as. Fliers. Balloons. Picket signs. More volunteers than you can shake an uprooted stop sign at. Their meteoric rise mirrors that of their partner in crime, OSPIRG --and in a fraction of the time. Their influence across campus is staggering, with X senate seats for the coming school year, and having won the Executive race X years running. The Progressive party is a monster the likes of which have not seen since the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man nearly destroyed the world back in 1984. Hell of a story, isn't it?

RETURN OF THE PROG QUEEN
What's happening is that the Progressives have muddled the elections for anybody without the phrase Vote Student Power, Vote Student Rights at the end of their Voter's Guide statement. Wisely, one supposes, their money is pooled. Each candidate supports the other candidates, and as any National Geographic special that features lions and a herd of water buffalo will invariably point out, there's strength in numbers. And they're getting stronger. In years past, the executive and senatorial seats have been decided fairly independently, but according to Student Senator Jenna Wasson, "This year the connection was a lot stronger between slate and the executive ticket." All this isn't inherently evil, mind you. Unity among people with common goals is a good idea, but what about when the side effects far outweigh the benefits?

Now return to the campaign-spending numbers above. Hard to believe, eh? No doubt, the increase in average spending is enough to make even the uninvolved 92 percent ask: "Like, why, ya' know?" And, if you've been reading your morning Emerald, then you know damn well who spent that money. You saw those shiny yellow ads asking you to bring diversity into the A$UO, and don't even imagine for a second that those ads come cheaply. Team Kelli McCartan was the clear economic juggernaut of the '98 elections. The blame for the increase would seem to fall squarely on the shoulders of McCartan (even though calculated without her, the average cost is still up a couple hundred dollars from years past). The question that has to be asked is why did Kelli have to spend this much money?

We'll get there. But let's role play for a minute. You're the adventurous type. You have a square head on your shoulders. You care what happens around this place. You decide to throw your hat in the ring. Go for the gold. You're running for the A$UO. So what are you going to do? Are you going to do this all by yourself? Or should you affiliate yourself with someone else who thinks the way you do?

On one hand, you have the Progs, with their green balloons, picket signs, miniature fliers and the like. They've got their buttons and their booths and everyone knows they are definitely a presence on campus, and uncontestably well-organized.

Then on the other hand, you have ... hold fast now, Maury, because the waters are muddier on this side. You gotta wonder here: who are the Progressives running against? There really isn't any kind of organized opposition. Among the scattered: the Raging Moderates Soundtrack King Ryan Ositis, who ran for Executive a few years back, as an alternative to the bullshit. Ositis suggests that the bulk of the Progs' indignant masses are idealistic newcomers. "As students get older, they get cynical... the progressives don't know what can and can't be done." The Progressives have the Squeegeed-clear advantage. Ositis and the Raging Moderates haven't run in a few years. "My wife won't let me run and I probably won't," he said. "It's real stupidity...they don't get it."

TEAM KELLI / MORE NUMBERS
McCartan, not an affiliate of the Progs, probably knew that she was up against a good deal of opposition, and pulled out all the stops: T-shirts! (Confiscated) tennis balls! The chance of becoming the next ASUO Veep! The campaign had everything, save the Progressive endorsement. The Progs didn't have a formidable opponent to compete with, but Kelli did. And she reacted the only way she could: money. "[Other candidates] have to spend a lot more money because Progressives are everywhere and they have to do what they have to," said Wasson, who once was but is no longer affiliated with the Progressives. It even extends to Kelli's campaign. She had to spend a lot more money in order to compete with that. To fight the behemoth, you've got to raise your visibility. Kelli, no slouch in the visibility department, can tell you that it costs money. Lots of money. And sometimes, even $3540 worth of publicity isn't enough.

Now let's take Kelli out of the picture. The Wortman/Cowling campaign spent $962, with the support of the Progs. The Kriegel/Labavitch campaign spent $120, provided by themselves and a few friends. Each vote for the Progs cost 82 cents, compared to Kriegel/Labavitch's 29 cents per vote. The Progressive Miner/Unger campaign of last year easily outspent their competition.

Of all the ballot measures on which you checked off your decisions at random for, only two had organized campaigns for and against: the OSPIRG brouhaha, and the sister USSA funding measures, both causes near and dear to the hearts of the heroic Progs.

Let's throw some more numbers out there: the anti-OSPIRG Honesty campaign spent $170, while OSPIRG put down a staggering (and staggeringly unsuccessful) $775. Who'd have thought OSPIRG would find new ways to waste money? And while there wasn't any kind of anti-USSA campaign, there were a number of Progressive posters promoting it. Posters cost money, but the dollar amount cannot be disclosed here. This is because Ben Unger, the self-proclaimed All-Purpose Campaign Manager, never filed the necessary financial disclosure forms for this or other campaigns he was in charge of. Who exactly are the Progressives so afraid of that they're spending money like there's no tomorrow?

VOTE PROG
Welcome to partisan politics, ladies and gentlemen. The Progs have done what no one else has been able to do in the century-odd history of the A$UO: they've reduced the student union to a microcosm of big government, a partisan government that no one much pays attention to. But even beyond that, it's a clearly one-sided partisan system. Wasson says she's surprised any unaffiliated candidate won. As big as they are now, the Progressives are no longer the progressive, independent spirit they were. They've lost the renegade status that made them attractive in the first place. What was a handful of like-minded candidates a few years back is something else entirely now. They were (and are, supposedly) for student control of student fees, but I can't remember the last time I saw Dave Frohnmayer taking random pictures inside Suite 4. So what is Progressive nowadays? "People don't seem to realize that affiliation with the Progressives, doesn't necessarily make one progressive, nor does lack of affiliation indicate one is not progressive," explains Wasson. 'Progressive' nowadays is merely an interchangeable term for status quo. Its what you should be in favor of if you want to get elected. Its what the other kids are doing. The common goals of the '94-'95 have transmogrified into an entirely new goal: Get Elected. Is this all frightfully one-sided? Yes. E-mail contact was established with Progressive campaign manager Claudia Villena, but when I called (and e-mailed again) to set up an interview, no calls (or e-mails) were returned.

To make matters worse, there really isn't a lot that can be done from the outside. Various solutions, like caps on campaign spending and the creation of a competing party, spout flaws like geysers before you dig too deeply. Partisan politics have nothing to offer the A$UO, perhaps maybe more grievances and spiteful letters to the Emerald. At the heart of it all, an inadvertent and unnecessary bureaucracy has arisen where there wasn't one before, and now, everyone's paying the price. The Progs, in a suspiciously accurate analogy, can be likened to cancer. They're everywhere, they're spreading, they're killing us, and maybe in a few years, we can put advanced military technological research to good use by using powerful lasers to eradicate them.

William Beutler, a freshman majoring in nothing, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator