There are conservatives in Portland – a lot of them. You just have to know what to look for. The Portland conservatives, for the most part, aren’t the kind who vote for Paul LePage or demand to know more about Benghazi. When they complain about Obamacare, it’s usually because it didn’t go far enough.
They can be seen as conservative only if you go back to William F. Buckley’s definition – as the guy “who stands athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’ ”
It’s not just the opposition to selling part of a neglected downtown park for development. There has been “conservative” opposition to a number of projects in the city, like the reuse of the Williston-West Church, the Federated Cos.’ “midtown” development in Bayside and the St. Lawrence Community Arts Center. This kind of activism is part of the city’s culture, going back to the historic preservation movement and the citizen-initiated working waterfront zoning referendum in the 1980s.
