Clearly, Doug Karlberg's announcement, he'd be a candidate for Doug Smith's position at the Port of Bellingham, was the highlight of the week for local political junkies.
Indeed both the Herald's and NW Citizen's comments ran overwhelmingly in support of the self styled, online iconoclast's decision.
In his favor is a public tired and suspicious of all things POB. And particularly in the case of those races, the realization that incumbency has been both carried to the extreme and reduced to absurdity.
What accomplishments can the present Port Commissioners claim after all these years in office?
Smith, who was first elected fifteen years ago, has idly watched the bureaucracy swell and management entrench and multiply, the end of which is the need to continually tax the community to subsidize operations that just can't make ends meet.
During his three terms, POB has achieved a degree of arrogance which renders it nigh on impossible for the public, or their other elected representatives, to participate in what is really the public's business.
Perhaps the biggest blunder they've made was the deal with Georgia-Pacific to assume its toxic site on the waterfront. By so doing, POB allowed G-P to walk away from their mess and the liability they'd created. Instead of the public being able to insist G-P exhaustively clean up the site, their port stepped in and became a proponent of an “economically reasonable” effort.
The community has, as a result, been left to struggle with the enormous problem of re-developing the waterfront, a process POB was not qualified to pursue, which has bogged down in a horribly divisive public debate characterized by finger pointing and name calling.
Periodically POB throws a public tantrum, sometimes threatening the city, sometimes making fools of themselves in letters to other elected officials.
And of course the POB plan includes the thoroughly wacko idea to waste the water treatment lagoon by turning it into a mega-yacht basin. If you were to do a cost benefit analysis of the scheme you'd understand why they have to keep taxing county residents.
Oh, the list could go on and on. So why in the world would anyone want to send Smith back for four more years of the same, when you could shake things up with a guy like Karlberg?
Well, I've gotten answers to that question from a number of voters and political observers. Most who thought about it just don't take Karlberg seriously. They don't disagree with his stated platform, but doubt he's the political skills to bring it off.
Others find him to be a gadfly; another guy with a computer and too much time on his hands, wandering online from place to place commenting on all matter of issues susceptible to a quasi populist, mildly reactionary, conservative outlook.
Generally, Karlberg is considered part of the entertainment. Few don't look forward to the opportunity to watch him make these prigs at POB squirm for a few months. But it remains to be seen if, in the end, voters will take him seriously.
If his campaign runs the same course his mayoral attempt took, there's little chance he'll succeed unless, during the race, Smith dies laughing.
It will soon be seen if Karlberg is ready to settle down to the hard work of a campaign: appearing in public, pushing doorbells, raising money and really taking it to Smith.
Or will he take off to Alaska again and just throw bombs from the blogoshpere?
Whatever course he takes, good luck to him. It will be fun.
