The Power of Ones
by Robert Denard

Around the end of last year, a failed school board candidate appeared before the Duncan School Board and advanced the idea of increasing Duncan's sales tax rate by a percentage point to 4.5 percent. He was hailed by Duncan's district superintendent as a visionary hero. He said to the board members that the candidate might just be "the cavalry coming over the hill."

The tax supporters then decided to let everyone in on the miracle tax by proposing that it be a county tax instead of a Duncan tax. I don't know if this was because other superintendents in the county saw a cash cow they wanted to milk or tax proponents wanted to make sure Duncan shoppers couldn't avoid the tax by driving up the highway a bit.

The board member wannabe became the chairman of a group called Citizens Pursuing Resources (CPR). This was a shadowy organization. The only person ever publicly identified as a member of CPR was the man who proposed the tax. There were also indications that the school district superintendents were members of this organization.

Of course the special interests immediately banded together behind the new tax. Teachers supported it. School support personnel supported it. School management supported it. Area newspaper editors supported it. Local governments supports it. The county's district attorney even numbered the county commission's resolution (which he wrote) 03-911 to carry along the theme that this was an emergency and that the schools needed to be "saved." In short, the establishment supported it and quickly galvanized into an organized machine. The tax measure seemed sure to be passed by a gullible electorate.

But there were people who were against this tax increase. I was one of them. A co-worker was another. We started out talking about all the things wrong with the school districts and this tax. My co-worker saw an editorial in the Duncan Banner opposing the tax and provided me a copy. I thought that there were a lot of people out there who were opposed to the tax but that they weren't organized against a formidable tax-and-spend machine. I contacted the LTE (letter to editor) writer and asked if he wanted to work with us against the tax. I noted his ability to get published as a great asset because the paper usually wouldn't run anti-tax LTEs until the evening of election day. (I realized later that the new editor chose the tactic of printing anti-tax letters early and then printing only pro-tax letters within a few days of the election -- capitalizing on the public's short attention span.) The LTE writer said he would work with us. I told him I would write an anti-tax pamphlet to spread around. He told me his parents and another relative owned convenience stores in Duncan and Marlow, and that they would distribute the pamphlets. This was a great break-through. A couple of ones was now a half-dozen.

My co-worker located some great stats on the State Department of Education website. I incorporated these into my pamphlet. I noted early on that the pro-taxers were playing fast and loose with the facts, so I listed information sources in the pamphlet itself to lend it credibility. (Note: be careful with draft distributions. I sent a draft to the LTE writer who reproduce it in quantity and distributed even though it wasn't finished and contained some dummied numbers awaiting verification.) The theme of the pamphlet was "How much is enough? When will they stop?"

Our small group distributed the pamphlets through convenience stores and restaurants. It was through soliciting distribution points that I found many businesses were against this tax. Many were afraid it would be the straw that broke the camel's back as far as their continued operation was concerned. A few stores refused on the grounds that they didn't want to upset any customers.

I looked for public gatherings to hand out the pamphlets. A good day was the Cotton Electric Co-op annual meeting. While local politicians were on the stage delivering speeches, I was handing out tracts poor-mouthing their tax-and-spend ways. The comments I received made me realize that many people didn't even now about the pending election. My strategy became one of spreading the word, because it was apparent that more people opposed the tax than supported it. It was just a matter of getting them to the polls. This scared me because the voters in this area are very often quite willing to sit back and hope someone else watches out for them. I urged people to get to the polls and bring their like-minded friends with them.

I planned to hand out the pamphlets in downtown Duncan on a Saturday morning. The place was deserted, another sign that the businesses didn't need another tax. The next afternoon was a good day in the Wal-mart parking lot. I handed out around 150 pamphlets to a populace that seemed oblivious to the election just two days away. Less than a half dozen people expressed their support of the tax. One kid of high school age challenged me with "So don't you think education is important?" I asked him to show me in the pamphlet anything that said education wasn't important. He couldn't. I then told him I thought education was very important but that it wasn't my job to pay for his.

Another strategy to inform the public of the impending vote was an LTE campaign. I wrote one. I was ghost writer on another. This was in vain, because the area papers blacked out opposition. The "news" articles in Duncan Banner and Lawton Constitution were fluff pieces supporting the tax. I knew the pamphlets were getting around though because CPR's chairman (and possibly only non-goverment member) was making reference to "questionable numbers being circulated." He, of course, failed to be specific as he tainted the opposition. (This is another political trick that often works on people who don't use critical thinking.)

The big day came on September 9th. After a long, tense wait, (drum roll please) we saw the tax fail by a 2-to-1 margin. The opposition came out. A few ones became 3500 ones. It sounds ironic, but individuals have to band together to beat collectivism. We beat collectivism with a collective effort. E pluribus unum.

The fight might not be over yet. The CPR chairman has already suggested that he will circulate petitions to get the tax on the ballot again in six months. This guy can't take a hint, so a wooden stake might be in order.