Crappy Day for the Polls - Your Vote Counts for More

It's an ugly day. It's Royals Opening Day. It's Rotary Greater Kansas City Day.

There are dozens of reasons not to vote this morning. Which means that your vote counts more, if you bother to cast it.

Right now, it's cold and wet and dreary. What a perfect day to vote in favor of Question 3! It reminds me of the schadenfreude I'll feel every time I walk past a cold, wet smoker on my way into one of Kansas City's soon-to-be smoke-free bars and restaurants!

Oh, yeah, vote "YES" on all the questions, and cast a vote for Airick Leonard West!

Big Tobacco Got Burned, or How I Would Have Won on the Bad Side of Question 3

Question 3 on Kansas City's ballots a week from today is a proposal to prevent inconsiderate people from imposing health risks and cleaning bills on their intellectual and moral superiors. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom that will prevail at the polls next Tuesday, despite the $225,000 spent by tobacco companies to shift that attitude.

The tobacco companies got cheated.

They're not losing because they're evil. They're losing because they ran an utterly ineffective campaign. With the money they've tossed into the cause, I could have delivered a victory for them.

Mind you, I'm not going to go crying any tears for big tobacco. Their business model has been to spread death and to lie about it, so I hold no sympathy for them. I just didn't know they were so foolish.

First off, whoever designed those yard signs should be ashamed. The key to yard signs is to deliver a message at a glance. The "No on 3" signs, though, deliver an undecipherable black bar. Not only is it ugly, but, more importantly, the black bar swallows the dark red 3. The message delivered is "NO on Question". The "NO" stands out fine, but the sign fails in its main purpose.

Next, the whole thrust of the campaign was poorly chosen. Rather than running against casinos, big tobacco has been running to protect small business owners. Sorry, friends, but nobody really cares about bar owners. "Business rights" might sound good when you're sitting around having a pity party with your fellow bar owners, but the rest of us aren't crying into your river. We're also not falling for the made-up statistics claiming that all our local bars are going to close and the taps will grow cobwebs. It's a lie, and nobody's falling for it, so if they had spent half an hour listening to a focus group, they would have adopted an entirely different theme.

Now that it's too late for them to change their theme and yank up those worthless yard signs, I'll go ahead and give them the advice they needed before they blew almost a quarter million dollars.

"Don't Stack the Deck. No on 3. No More Breaks for Gaming."

There it is. A sense of unfairness. A focus on the casino exemption - the one aspect of the Smoking Ban that makes absolutely no sense to people of good will. And a big ugly target to run against.

Kansas Citians don't like big businesses getting an advantage over the rest of us. That's one of the main reasons that Funkhouser's Mayoral campaign focused on the TIF pigs. While not a single person in Kansas City could point to a single dollar that a TIF project had taken out of his or her pocket, the resentment against cozy insiders making big money over breakfast with the former Mayor ran deep.

The casinos should have been the TIF pigs of this race. Especially since they wouldn't even fight back - there's no way they would actually promote anti-smoking legislation.

Of course, I would have also ran a better street campaign, even beyond the yard signs. Every beer in Kansas City would have been served on a coaster that looked like a big ace of spades, with "Don't stack the deck - No on 3" written on it. Letters to the editor would focus on "why are we giving more breaks to the casinos?". Press releases would point out that this proposal favors not only the KC casino, but also the ones in other municipalities. I'd have those little oval car stickers with "NO3" available at every bar, and plastered on every bar employee's car.

Question 3 will pass by a healthy margin next Tuesday, and I'm glad of it. I'll be happy to see people voting in favor of clean air and pleasant bars.

But if the bar owners and tobacco companies were smart, we'd all be going out on Tuesday to vote against another break for "the house". I could have won this race for them. I'm glad they hired the incompetents.

Bar Owners Agree - Vote Yes on Question 3 - Ban Stink in Bars!

Alright, the headline may be a bit of an exaggeration. But I just spent a little time looking at the Campaign disclosure forms from the Kansas City Business Rights Coalition, and I'm not seeing much evidence of panicked bar owners trying to stave off disaster. In fact, fewer than 20 local bars have bothered to pay the $50 membership fee for the group that is campaigning to prevent clean air in bars. Even one of the three bar owners featured on the committee's website has failed to bother writing his fifty dollar check to join. Priorities, priorities.

Who can blame him? Everybody knows that smoking is bad for the health of everyone stuck smelling the second hand smoke. Everyone knows that bar owners have chosen to participate in a regulated industry, and have no more "right" to continue poisoning their customers than anyone else. Everyone who has visited a city with a smoking ban knows that there are plenty of thriving bars around - the only difference is you can visit them and emerge without smelling like an ashtray.

In short, everyone knows that Question 3 deserves our support, and will make Kansas City a better place to live.

I'm guessing here, but I suspect most bar owners don't like being shills for tobacco companies. About 90% of the money for group comes from huge, out-of-state, multi-national tobacco companies - not the Kansas City businesses featured in the group's name.

If the bar owners' claims about closing bars and firing employees were true, don't you think that more than 20 of them would fork over fifty bucks to prevent it?

Disagreeing with the Mayor

Funk has announced his support of the current smoking policy, which is that smoking is legal in bars and restaurants until 80% of surrounding areas enact a smoking ban. He explains:

I intend to follow through on the promise I made during the campaign for mayor, and that is to honor the current ordinance, which represents a compromise that was reached after a very long and sometimes contentious period of public debate. [. . .]

I believe that it would be disrespectful to the process if we were to back away from the ordinance now. And I believe it would be dishonest and disingenuous if I were to break my campaign promise.

Well, I disagree with his position. The prior council's action was a backroom response to bar-owner bullying, and I expect Funk to rise above that kind of politics. Reading between the lines, it sounds like he shook hands with Nigro on this point during the election, and given the narrowness of his victory, it's possible it was a necessary handshake in order to put himself in position to become mayor and achieve his other reforms. If so, it was probably a smart move.

Fortunately, Mark's just one vote on the Council, and the signers of the petition have done the work to force the issue onto the ballot despite his opposition. I believe that the majority of the council will shepherd the issue through the process, led by Beth Gottstein, who has taken a leadership role in this issue. I trust the process.

I disagree with the Funk on this issue. It doesn't mean that he's a bad mayor, it doesn't mean that I want to recall him, it doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It certainly doesn't mean that I wish Brooks/Glorioso had won. It doesn't mean that I am going to turn this blog into a receptacle for a daily ani-Mayor rant.

It merely means that two people who care deeply about our city disagree on a point. The next time I see him, I'll politely express my disagreement. That's the way adults handle disagreements.

Anti-Smoking and Pat Gray

I am 100% in favor of a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, but I can't jump onto the "Breathe Easy, KC" bandwagon. I completely support their goal, but the thought of sending checks directly to Pat Gray at Northstar Marketing just kind of creeps me out.

Why is it that a feel-good, pro-health, anti-stink issue like a smoking ban hasn't lined up a far more positive front person than a backroom political consultant? Why can't we imagine that our money will go to support a cute grandmother who has emphysema, or a little boy who has lost his father due to lung cancer, or even just some celebrity who, likes me, wants to be able to enjoy a good beer in a bar without someone stinking up the joint?

"Breathe Easy, KC" has a wholesome, community-based, grassroots mission. Its first order of business ought to be to get Pat Gray as far from the spotlight as possible.

And that advice comes free - no need to send me a check.

Way to Go, Gottstein

Councilwoman Beth Gottstein has heard enoough constituents complaining about smoking in bar and restaurants, and she's going to do something about it. She has introduced a measure to allow Kansas City to vote on a real smoking ban on February 5, 2008. The Barnes-led council back in '04 handled the matter the way it did most things - ignored the will of the people, buckled to a few influential business owners, and changed nothing, all through backroom deals. Beth's taking it to the streets - let the more persuasive side win.

Prepare to hear lots and lots of whining. "It interferes with my freedom," some will complain, ignoring the fact that the freedom to pollute my space is not enumerated in the Constitution, and, if it were, it would end where my lungs begin. "It's bad for business," some will cry, as if New York and Minneapolis and Lawrence had become dry territory after their successful smoking bans were instituted. "Let the market decide," some will counter, ignoring the fact that bars and restaurants are (thank goodness) already heavily regulated for the health and benefit of the public, and they have no more free market right to serve tainted air than they do to allow tainted meat.

I admire Beth for getting out in front of undoing the damage done by the prior council. She has exposed herself to a nasty and vituperative group of people who will attack her personally, and she's probably cost herself a few donations in the next campaign cycle. But she's doing the right thing, and she's allowing the people of Kansas City to be heard. We'll have four months to discuss this issue, and then we get to vote. I'm going to vote in favor of the ban, and I know plenty who will vote against it. On February 6, we will know what the majority decided.