On the other hand, Portland, Maine deserves exactly what it's about to receive, good and hard
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Portland Elects Second Democratic Socialist to City Council
Wes Pelletier, a longtime member of the Maine Democratic Socialists of America (Maine DSA) was elected to the Portland City Council on Tuesday, making him the second democratic socialist who will be serving on the city’s nine-member policymaking body.
…. He will join District 5 City Councilor Kate Sykes, the former co-chair of Maine DSA, as the second democratic socialist on the Portland City Council.
The national DSA put out a statement on X Wednesday congratulating Pelletier on his victory.
“A former chapter co-chair, Wes has been a member of DSA for close to a decade where he has fought to bolster rent control in Portland to take on an unprecedented housing crisis,” the DSA wrote.
Portland’s socialists are mostly made up from non-taxpaying students at the University of Southern Maine, and that institution’s graduate baristas and folk singers, supplemented by all the best people from Massachusetts. Because Portland’s charter allows any proposed law, no matter how stupid, to appear on the ballot with just a handful of signatures, the Socialists have put rent control (5% maximum increase, with no credit for repairs or improvements) and a $22 per hour minimum wage up for voting on recent years, and both, as well as a myriad of of other dystopian plans have passed by slim majorities. Portland’s very liberal mayor, Kate Synder, was so frustrated by the process: “issues that should be discussed and considered in a rational way are reduced to one or simple sentences that are voted on without thought” that she chose not to seek a second term, and got out of Dodge.
She had this to say about the group last year:
In November of last year, former Portland Mayor Kate Snyder described the influence of the Maine DSA on the city’s political landscape as “very real, and very powerful.”
“I think the national platform of the Democratic Socialists of America has really taken hold in Portland, Maine,” Snyder told WGAN Morning News host Matt Gagnon. “And there are many people who are very receptive to the message and who have taken on that mantle, and who are moving that national agenda forward in our small city.”
After two decades of growth, Portland is still thriving, and perhaps it will continue to prosper. But I remember the decades when the city was a dive, with a commercial vacancy rate of 67% as recently as the late 90s, and I expect to see those days return, soon. What can’t continue, won’t, and the student socialists and their adult enablers are working hard to ensure that the halcyon days of abandoned buildings and low-to-no rent are part of the city’s future.
