Campaign overestimates office’s scope

Coinciding with Labor Day, State Senate candidate Matt Colglazier participated in a 37.4-mile “Walk For Workers” through the towns and cities of the 44th District. The area has lost more than 2,000 jobs recently, and Colglazier, an IU academic adviser, blames the losses on the lethargic leadership and lack of awareness of Republican incumbent Brent Steele. It’s dubious whether Colglazier has actually tapped a vital political resource or simply begun a desperate search for name recognition.

Colglazier might be surprised to know that his purported campaign mission of representing the voiceless and disadvantaged requires far more than spreading a gospel of opportunistic attention-seeking, not to mention ignorance of the multifarious causes of unemployment and economic stagnation. Marching under the banner of the “little guy’s” interests only works when there’s a resume or reputation to back it up, as former senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards should know by now.

The problems Colglazier attacks in his campaign platform are by no means specifically local in their severity. Anyone with a stroke of intelligence or literacy can tell our economy’s not in the shape it ought to be. To confine its worst effects to the tiny strip of territory his opponent actually represents proves more than a presumptuous attitude: It’s an illusion of control. These are not good starting points for a political campaign at any level.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the current unemployment rate at 5.7 percent for the entire nation. The number of people who lost jobs over this past year comes to 1.6 million. White adult men saw slightly higher numbers of jobs, while the percentage of unemployed women and minorities (particularly African- and Latin-American) stayed virtually the same.

For all our whining over high gas prices, it’s clear how comparatively little we’ve suffered alongside industries that traditionally supply much of the nation’s employment, especially the automotive industry. Research from the Bank of Toyota-Mitsubishi UFJ published earlier this month points to the transportation sector, which announced the highest number of job cuts for July 2008: 17,051. Many, if not all, of these were attributed to fuel costs.

The Associated Press reported last week that Toyota actually shaved its global sales target down to 9.7 million vehicles for 2009, “showing that even one of the world’s most durable automakers is being hurt by rising material costs, a slowing U.S. market and soaring gas prices.”

The bitter icing on the cake is the state of financial firms. They have experienced way more than 100,000 job cuts this year.

Understandably, those in charge should be held accountable for some of the misfortunes occurring under their watch. But candidates on the local and municipal level, like Colglazier, are getting far ahead of themselves in laying the full blame for a malfunctioning economy on opponents whose offices have little influence in such broad issues.