7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 19, 2018
Voters: Trump earned 41 percent of county’s votes
Continued from Page 1A
“So I was hopeful for that,”
she said. “And I have not been
disappointed.”
Bridgens would like Trump
to place more emphasis on
education, particularly school
vouchers. She sees a small vic-
tory in the appointment of Val-
erie Huber, an advocate for
abstinence education, to a top
post with the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services.
Like many Trump voters,
she also wants the president to
follow through with his cam-
paign promise to build a wall
on the border with Mexico.
“I’m still hopeful about the
national security and building
the wall to keep the drugs out
and the illegals out of our coun-
try that do so much damage,”
she said.
Her advice to Trump’s
doubters?
“I believe they should take
an honest look at the successes
that he’s had that help all of us,
and put aside their ideology
and just look at putting Amer-
ica first, as he puts it,” she said.
Some Trump voters blame
Republicans who control Con-
gress for not acting fast enough
on Trump’s agenda, like
repealing the federal Afford-
able Care Act, or Obamacare,
which could be politically
costly if Republicans lose the
Senate or House to Democrats
in the midterm elections in
November.
“It’s been disappointing
that we haven’t been able to
get Congress going on a lot of
things that need to be done that
are good for everybody. Good
for America, I guess that’s the
main thing,” Seppa said. “I’m
disappointed in that.”
Self-inflicted wounds
Many of Trump’s troubles
since his inauguration have
been self-inflicted, from pick-
Trumpville
Vote tally by precinct
Precinct/location
Trump
Clinton
1 Astoria
2 Astoria
3 Astoria
4 Astoria
5 Astoria
6 Astoria
7 Astoria
8 Astoria
20 Cannon Beach
21 Chadwell
22 N. Clatsop
23 S. Clatsop
24 Elsie
25 Gearhart
26 Hamlet
28 Jewell
29 John Day
30 Knappa
31 Lewis & Clark
35 Necanicum
36 Olney
37 Seaside
38 Seaside
39 Seaside
40 Seaside
43 Stanley Acres
44 Svensen
45 Arch Cape
46 Walluski
47 Warrenton
48 Warrenton
50 Westport
52 Hillcrest
Total
146
176
282
173
225
106
203
149
228
266
348
460
78
337
97
181
152
457
409
141
214
271
316
250
288
57
270
50
151
1,025
308
156
168
8,138
299
433
471
242
489
278
464
235
561
141
222
416
66
492
102
114
134
356
268
99
120
371
406
368
368
55
203
113
155
713
236
108
154
9,252
Clatsop County reliably votes for Democrats in presidential elections.
Donald Trump was among the most polarizing Republican candidates
ever to run for president, yet the billionaire businessman attracted
41 percent of the vote in 2016.
PACIFIC
Chinook
101
Rive
m bia
2
Hammond
3
47
48
Warrenton
1
For Trump
r
4
29
5 6 7
Astoria
30
44
8
Knappa
30
46
4
409
30
50
31
22
Westport
52
P a ci f i c
Ocea n
202
101
23
21
Gearhart
39
25
38
Seaside
43
36
40
CLATSOP
37
28
202
35
Jewell
101
26
20
103
Cannon Beach
26
Tolovana Park
45
24
26
53
2 miles
TILLAMOOK
Source: Clatsop County
ing diplomatic fights with
allies like Britain and Austra-
lia to reality show-style Twit-
ter feuds to shockingly coarse
descriptions of poverty in
Haiti, El Salvador and Africa.
For Clinton
h.
Was e.
Or
401
Col u
Precinct results
WAHKIAKUM
Derrick DePledge and Alan Kenaga/EO Media Group
Kurt Donnaku, who lives
in Brownsmead and serves as
a Republican precinct com-
mitteeman for Knappa, was a
reluctant Trump voter.
Donnaku likes Trump’s
drive to reduce regulation
and rescind some of Presi-
dent Barack Obama’s execu-
tive orders, turning those issues
back to Congress, where he
believes they belong.
“Every time I start feel-
ing good about Trump, then
he shoots his mouth off and
just says ridiculously stupid
stuff,” he said. “He tends to be
a bully with the name-calling
and third-grade stuff. That’s, I
guess, what gets me.”
Donnaku’s advice for the
president?
“Get rid of his Twitter
account.”
Activists: Event on Saturday House: No longer has ‘good bones’
Continued from Page 1A
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values through rallies, meet-
ings, canvassing and social
media campaigns.
About 15 people lead the
group, nearly 500 subscribe to
its weekly email updates and
nearly 900 follow it on Face-
book. The group offers lead-
ership training and has dif-
ferent teams such as Oppose
Bigotry and Vote the Future.
Nearly all of its funds come
from member donations.
“Some of us are expe-
rienced activists. Some of
us never considered being
activists until the last pres-
idential election,” Vanasse
said. “We’ve been build-
ing the boat while sailing.
Everything has been a sur-
prise because we’re building
things so rapidly.”
A year into Trump’s pres-
idency, the activists offer lit-
tle to no praise of his perfor-
mance. They are particularly
troubled by the threat to the
Deferred Action for Child-
hood Arrivals program, fund-
ing cuts to the U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban
Development,
reductions
to national parks and mon-
uments and the attempted
repeal of the Affordable Care
Act, or Obamacare.
Vanasse described her
political mood as a constant
state of “low-level dread.”
“The reason 2017 was,
to me, even worse than I
expected it to be is that the
truth has been undermined
more than I expected it to
be. The self-serving interests
have been blatant,” she said.
“There’s so many of them
that you forget about them,
and you forget about some
horrifying thing two weeks
ago or two months ago.”
Trump and his allies
have
taunted
progres-
sive activists as sore losers
unable to accept the election
results.
In turn, activists have con-
ceded that their messages
likely will never sway the
president.
“I don’t see that the pres-
ident looks beyond his base,
and we’re not part of this
base,” Vanasse said.
They do, however, feel
like they’ve made an impact
on Congress. The most sig-
he told commissioners. “It’s a
cadaver.”
‘Beyond repair’
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
A demonstrator dressed as the Statue of Liberty waves
to passing vehicles at a September protest.
nificant victory might be
the pushback against the
Obamacare repeal. Congres-
sional offices were flooded
with calls about the topic,
while town halls were more
lively than they’ve been since
conservatives in the Tea Party
movement fought the health
care law in 2010.
“I think Indivisible and
groups like it send a very
clear message to Oregon pol-
iticians on where we stand,”
said Lee, who has joined
demonstrations in Portland in
the past year.
Voter registration
A recent internal survey of
more than 30 Indivisible fol-
lowers produced a range of
ideas and even some mixed
reviews about the organiza-
tion’s effectiveness and open-
ness. One thing the major-
ity of respondents agreed on,
though, was the need to focus
on the midterm elections in
November.
The group may have
already made some strides on
that front.
From November 2016 to
November of last year, Clat-
sop County voter registration
increased more than 7 per-
cent, the fourth-largest spike
in the state, according to sta-
tistics from the Oregon Sec-
retary of State’s Office. The
county hadn’t seen a positive
change in voter registration
in odd-numbered years since
2003.
Indivisible’s views align
more with the Democratic
Party, and some of its mem-
bers also are involved with
Clatsop County Democrats.
But the organization does not
view itself as a political oper-
ation as much as a political
advocacy campaign. Flex-
ibility is one of its greatest
strengths, Vanasse said.
“We’re sort of not
entrenched in the meritoc-
racy of a political party,” she
said. “I believe Indivisible is
a force to be reckoned with
for that reason.”
The group expects to add
to its political efforts this
year. It will endorse can-
didates and ballot mea-
sures and push for election
reforms such as county
voter pamphlets in off-year
elections.
Event on Saturday
This Saturday, Indivisi-
ble will host an event called
Turn the Tide Regional Sum-
mit at Fort George Brewery’s
Lovell Showroom. It will fea-
ture nearly 14 hours of guest
speakers, workshops, a ques-
tion-and-answer session for
prospective candidates and a
community dance.
Vanasse believes civic
engagement has risen on the
North Coast in the past year.
Since Trump won’t face vot-
ers again until 2020, though,
she is hoping that energy will
be focused on more immedi-
ate goals.
“We’re very focused
on midterm elections, get-
ting out votes and getting
good candidates,” she said.
“There’s a lot more to be
done to get our democracy on
track than changing the name
in the White House.”
The Alameda building is just
over three stories tall, painted
purple and backed up against
a hill in the slide zone. In addi-
tion to being listed as historic,
it is also located in the Union-
town-Alameda National Regis-
ter Historic District — a “dou-
ble whammy” when it comes to
decisions about its future, City
Planner Nancy Ferber said.
The Osborns described the
property before they bought
it in June as a “slum” oper-
ated by an absentee landlord
where “drug use was common-
place.” Over the decades, the
house had turned into a warren
of small, oddly-shaped apart-
ments and fell into disrepair. In
one picture, a raccoon pokes its
head through a hole in the wall.
The Osborns, who live in a
home they built next door, esti-
mated it would cost just under
$700,000 to rehabilitate the
building. They say it is unlikely
they’d be able to make enough
income back in rent to justify
the expense or convince a bank
to finance the restoration.
An engineer they hired to
conduct a structural assessment
concluded that the foundation
was “beyond repair” and the
building’s framing had dete-
riorated. In October, the city
deemed the site a safety hazard
and dangerous to occupy. The
building didn’t pose an imme-
diate threat to public health or
safety, however, and a review
was necessary if the Osborns
wanted to demolish it.
The Osborns knew about
some of the issues with the
building before they bought
it. They said they reported it
as derelict several times to the
city, but saw no changes occur.
They decided to buy it anyway
when it went up for sale. They
didn’t want to risk another neg-
ligent landlord taking it over.
If their appeal to the City
Council is successful and they
are allowed to demolish the
structure, they have no imme-
diate plans to build anything in
its place.
What about the
Merwyn?
LJ
Gunderson,
presi-
‘The history of development
of that neighborhood is
very closely tied to working
class housing and boarding
houses that are really
massive structures.’
Rachel Jensen
Lower Columbia Preservation Society’s president
dent of the Historic Land-
marks Commission, can think
of other buildings that peo-
ple have told her are dead.
The Waldorf Hotel next
to City Hall, also known
as the Merwyn, for one.
She recalled how several
years ago many of the same
people who came to sup-
port the Osborns’ demolition
request told her, “If you let
them tear down the Merwyn,
you’re not doing your job.”
At the time, reports and
studies concluded that the
Waldorf could not and should
not be saved. Things are very
different now. Earlier this
month, the Planning Com-
mission approved a condi-
tional use permit submitted
by a Portland-based nonprofit
to turn the hotel into 40 work-
force housing units.
“When I see what hap-
pened to the Merwyn, and
it’s going to have life and it’s
going to provide more afford-
able housing and stuff that we
need, and it wasn’t torn down,
I think that’s awesome,” Gun-
derson said on Wednesday.
“Although you may not like
where I may vote on this,” she
added, “I’m doing what you
echoed to me several years
ago with the Merwyn.”
But some of the commis-
sioners asked: What are the
odds that an angel — like the
one that showed up to save the
Waldorf — would sweep in to
save the Alameda building?
Later, Wendy Osborn said
the hotel was not a fair com-
parison. Unlike the Alameda
building, the hotel’s founda-
tion is solid, as is the foun-
dation of the historic Francis
Apartments on Franklin Ave-
nue that are in the process of
being restored.
“They have good bones,”
she said, “and this building
no longer does.”
Time to pull the plug?
The Osborns looked into
getting access to a city right of
way on one side of the prop-
erty. Ted Osborn has men-
tioned an option where some of
the building could be salvaged
and moved into this right of
way. The decision to vacate the
right of way is a City Council
call.
In her analysis of the
Osborns’ application, Ferber
wrote that the couple should
first exhaust all options to save
the structure through relocation
or sale of the building and that
they should explore other cre-
ative ways to slash the cost of
rehabilitation. It wasn’t clear
if the Osborns had looked at
incentives like historic tax
credits, she wrote.
Finding a way to turn the
building back into usable apart-
ments “in a high density res-
idential area would add to the
city’s historical heritage of pro-
viding unique workforce hous-
ing options,” Ferber wrote.
Board members of the
Lower Columbia Preser-
vation Society agreed and
spoke against Ted Osborn’s
application.
“The history of develop-
ment of that neighborhood is
very closely tied to working
class housing and boarding
houses that are really massive
structures,” Rachel Jensen, the
society’s president, said Thurs-
day. “As we lose those it really
changes the character of the
neighborhood and housing in
that area. … We’re not deny-
ing that the structural integ-
rity of the building has been
undermined and needs to be
addressed but we don’t believe
it’s as far gone as he says it is.”
In the end, the property
might need to be demolished,
she said. “No one’s saying that
it might not come to that, but is
it time to pull the plug?”