"New commissioners came into office"

The Oregonian Friday had a great article profiling the individuals who together fought to save the Madrone Wall, which is now slated to become a Clackamas County park.

The story has every element you'd want:

* A few citizens going up against an entrenched bureaucracy
* Lawyers using the state's open records law to get at the truth
* Bad guy actors who could only see profit in a natural wonder

The story starts in 2005 and, after a bunch of back and forth, we get to these sentences:

"In 2007, the county's parks board recommended looking into creating a park. New commissioners came into office [emphasis added], and at the prompting of the preservation committee, they agreed in April to spend about $80,000 on a concept plan for the park."

It actually was one new Commissioner, Lynn Peterson, who in the fall of 2006 unseated long-time incumbent Larry Sowa, altering the balance of power on the Commission to a new majority that favored sensible environmental safeguards.

Of course, Peterson didn't just "come into office." She came into office after a long, hard-fought campaign with many of the folks involved in the Madrone Wall campaign taking part. At OLCV, we spent more than $20,000 independently communicating with voters in Clackamas County about Peterson and her responsible approach to environmental challenges. Lynn herself campaigned tirelessly for nearly a year prior to the election. She won by less than 1000 votes.

If Sowa had, instead, won reelection, it's quite likely the Madrone Wall Preservation Committee would have continued to run into dead-ends and run-arounds at the county.

I don't wish to take away from the many other critical factors that went into saving the Madrone Wall as a tremendous legacy for future Oregonians. But as we are all very aware, elections don't just happen passively-- they result from citizens banding together and putting their efforts into electing leaders who share our values.