A vote, a bill and a bit of Facebook turned apathy into activism in Aumsville recall

AUMSVILLE – A year ago, Derek Clevenger was a 30-year-old mostly retired Army veteran getting ready for a vacation in Mexico and planning hunting trips.

Like many Aumsville residents, he had little political interest and no involvement.

Today, Clevenger has become a leading voice in a group that calls itself Aumsville Community Action and has enacted change, including recalling three city council members, in their town in the past eight months.

Aumsville Community Action came into existence as a closed Facebook group and has proven how unusually effective and powerful social media can become in elections. People who had little in common suddenly were working together.

“When would their interests cross unless they all met up at a café on Saturday morning?” said Jim Moore, Assistant Professor and Director of Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University.

“But if they have no other connection than this, the fact that they found each other is rare.” 

According to a Pew Research Center study in January, around two-thirds of adults in the United States use Facebook and 74 percent of them use the social network daily.

But for a group of individuals to come together and accomplish a focused goal in the manner they did in Aumsville is unusual.

“This little thing in Aumsville is a learning experience for everybody,” Aumsville resident Ed Blakesly said.

What happened in Aumsville?

The Aumsville city council in December of 2017 voted to enact a $12 monthly public safety fee to pay for the position of their sixth police officer and fund a seventh police officer position.

The council acted instead of putting the issue up for a public vote, which would have required 50 percent of voters to participate in the election and a majority of yes votes.

The way the city council enacted the fee drew immediate ire.

“I’m that guy that if I see some bullying happening on the street, I’m jumping in,” Clevenger said. “That’s the way I perceived it. 'We know better than you. We’re the city council. We don’t want you here.' That ain’t right.”

Many citizens of Aumsville first learned about the public safety fee when it was attached to their utility bill.

Shortly after a contentious January Aumsville city council meeting, Chris Chytka started the Aumsville Community Action Facebook page, and the goal of recalling city councilors became the first order of business.

It quickly grew from a closed Facebook group – one in which only its members can read posts and polls – into a political movement.

From anger to action

Recall elections are not unusual.

But getting a recall election to a ballot is no guarantee of it being successful.

“People, in effect, are fighting the last election again,” Moore said.

It took seven months from the idea of recalling three Aumsville city council members – Lori Walters, Kevin Crawford and Trina Lee – to come to a vote on July 3.

During that time, it was the Aumsville Community Action group that organized the effort, raised money among themselves, and garnered broader support.

And they did it by posting on Facebook.

To join the Aumsville Community Action page, a person must be a resident of Aumsville and a registered voter.  

The city of Aumsville’s social media presence has been comparatively scarce.

“There’s a reason why social media management is now a legitimate college degree,” Clevenger said. “Having someone who just works in the office and occasionally posts something on Facebook doesn’t work. That’s not going to get information out to anybody.”

A Pew Research Center study released in July found 34 percent of U.S. Adults have taken part in a group on social media that shares an interest in a civic cause.

“The evidence is that it (social media) doesn’t make much difference,” Moore said. “The reason is anytime a new system is in place — that can be email, that can be Facebook — that doesn’t tend to bring new people into the political system.

“If this truly has brought new people into the system, that’s a change.”

Why does the group work?

Blakesly spent little of his first 73 years interested in politics.

He said he went to a few city council meetings when he lived in California, but after moving to Aumsville from West Salem four years ago had no interest.

The public safety drew his ire and spurred him to learn about local politics. 

Thankfully, he had someone to teach him.

Nico Casarez was on the city council in 2008 (at the age of 20) and 2012, but lost in the mayoral election to Robert Baugh Jr., in 2016.

For those who were interested in filling one of the positions previously held by a recalled city councilor, the group held a class led by Casarez to explain how a city council works and what it takes to hold a position.

$12 fee leads to recall election in Aumsville

Regardless of the citizens’ personal politics, the group of 280 people was bonded by a singular goal: To enact a change in their city government.

“The world is spread out to red and blue, Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative, and to me that’s the most refreshing thing out of this whole experience is that people say, I like Trump, you don’t like Trump or I don’t like Trump, you like Trump,” Casarez said.

“We’re putting that aside. Our core goals for our community are more important. Just because we may disagree on our president or something, we’re not going to let that get in the way of what our goal is.”

Can this political model be applied to other causes?

Not long after the recall election, a group from Dallas contacted them for advice.

Whether the same political model could work elsewhere is debatable.

“A lot of it just depends that you have people that are passionate, you have people that will follow through,” Casarez said.

“We had people who would just show up to meetings, they would just stuff envelopes for fliers. Some of the tasks were really menial, but they would help the overall cause. I think that’s where the strength is.”

The larger the issue and the people involved can create problems due to the size and scope.

Moore said he thinks the model can work for other smaller governmental bodies, but he doesn’t know if it could apply to a larger municipality.

“It works because there is a small group of population and membership simultaneously and also a small group that is responsible for making decisions,” Moore said.

What does the Aumsville group do next?

There are frequent polls in the Aumsville Community Action group.

One of them posed was what should be done with the remaining money donated by the group for the recall election.

Among the options is to use it to help people for whom the $12 monthly fee is a problem or to help fund candidates to replace the remaining three city councilors and mayor.

“We’ve got a handful of people that they are going to run for the appointments or for (the general election in) November,” Clevenger said. “I think this year, honestly, in November there will be six or eight candidates for city council. Usually, we get maybe four.”

At least half of the 10 people who applied to fill the three vacant city council positions were from Aumsville Community Action.

Most involved in the group hope that the group will continue to band together to make positive change in the city.

The $12 fee remains in place, but if a total turnover of the city council takes place, they could repeal the fee.

“I hope it brings people in to run for mayor or run for city council that want to do it, for purposes of running the city and making it a better place,” Blakesly said.

bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler