Scary signs of life in Tacoma Port race

Is Jim Jensen counting on uninformed voters to get him elected to the Port of Tacoma Commission, or at least to push him past next Tuesday’s primary and onto the general election ballot?

Some observers (including a letter to the editor writer today) cite this as the most likely explanation for why Jensen’s campaign signs are still peppered all over Pierce County, including at busy intersections in his Gig Harbor home territory.

Suspicion seems warranted here. Jensen and his supporters have had seven weeks to take down his signs since he promised to exit the race.

The Fox Island real estate developer invested over $100,000 of his own money hoping to land the open Position 1 seat before some revealing tweets shamed him into dropping out. He deleted his five-year-old Twitter account, apologized and called his messages “insensitive, unacceptable and unkind.”

While his mea culpa and purported political exile are appreciated, all signs literally point to a candidate still pinning his hopes on name recognition. With his name still on the ballot (the deadline for removing it had passed when he bowed out), unwitting voters could conceivably propel Jensen to a November runoff against either John McCarthy or Eric Holdeman.

It’s too bad the Port of Tacoma Commission generates so little election buzz; after all, these are the folks who steer our region’s prime economic engine, and big decisions are coming down the pike regarding management of the Tideflats and the Frederickson industrial sites. Since the ports of Tacoma and Seattle combined forces in 2015, the Northwest Seaport Alliance has become the nation’s third-largest container port.

We didn’t interview the candidates or offer an endorsement in this lone Port primary. (Two other seats will be on the Nov. 7 ballot.) It seemed unnecessary after Jensen said he was dropping out. But if we had, we would’ve recommended McCarthy, a longtime Pierce County Superior Court judge, and Holdeman, a former port security director, to advance.

The fact that Redline Tacoma, an environmental activist group, exposed these and other offensive tweets must have hit Jensen with an added sting.

Jensen’s reckless chatter in the Twitterverse is a cautionary tale for anyone who might hold future ambitions for elected office. Homer Simpson once said of beer: “It’s the cause and solution to all of life’s problems.” The same could be said of social media.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are powerful tools; politicians are wise to use them to engage with constituents and reach voters. It’s a way to control the message, but it’s also a way to muddle it. It can sink a campaign faster than a speeding ballot.

Will it do so in Jensen’s case? The verdict will be rendered by voters, who tend to turn out for local primaries in sparse numbers. They should decisively say “no” to Jensen in this go-round.

Meantime, Jensen should take down his signs immediately. Then we’ll have more confidence that his sincerity is, as they say in the Twittersphere, #4realz.

This story was originally published July 27, 2017 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Scary signs of life in Tacoma Port race."