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Of course, the big elephant in the room is… well, it’s not literally a
big elephant, but it’s a big elephant. Allen County leans very
Republican, and while Agen hears from a lot of “progressive leaning
folks,” they’re often discouraged by a lack of representation, or see
their own cause as hopeless. There are Democrats out there in Allen
County, but it’s hard to get behind the party on a local level when
clowns like David Roach and Tommy Schrader pop up on the ballot. “How do
I get those people to vote? It’s tough,” Agen says. “I know a lot of
people, particularly young people, who were disappointed by the way the
primaries turned out. But there are a lot of candidates who are running
on progressive issues in our area. I would implore people to reach out
to those folks, have real conversations with them. Locally and across
the state, the Democrats have a super-solid team this year, and a real
chance to get our voices heard.”
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Features > Morrison Agen: On the Record
Morrison Agen: On the Record
The Democratic at-large candidate for County Council is on a mission
Fort Wayne Reader
2016-10-09
Morrison Agen is on a mission.
He’s running as a Democrat for an at-large seat on Allen County Council,
and of course he wants to be elected. But there’s something else there,
too…
It’s a mission to get people like him — Democrats and other
“progressive-leaning folks” in the area — to realize there is much, much
more going on in an election year than whoever is at the top of their
respective party’s ticket. “There are 520,000 elected seats in this
country, and all anyone cares about is one of them,” Agen says. “But all
those ‘down ticket’ candidates, those are the ones that affect you on a
day-to-day basis. That drainage ditch on your property? Donald Trump is
not going to come drain that ditch. Hilary Clinton is not going to come
drain that ditch. Gary Johnson is going to tell you to do it yourself…”
To put it simply, if you’re frustrated, despondent, or angry over your
presidential choices this year, don’t give up — instead, take a serious
look at the candidates running on the state and local level.
Maybe it’s a message we’ve heard before, but 2016 seems a good year to
make that case. True, we’re all tired of hearing about the presidential
race this year, or at least we say we are. But if there’s an upside to
all the attention being given to the national candidates, it’s that the
controversy might spur action, driving more voters to the polls on
election day and giving a boost to some down ticket candidates that
otherwise might go overlooked.
“I feel part of my job as a candidate is try to make local elections
sexy again,” Agen jokes. But in all seriousness… “I tell people, if you
are sick of this presidential election, and I am too, know there are so
many things you could vote for rather than who is at the top of the
ticket.”
Agen’s campaign for county council began long before Trump vs. Clinton
was a certainty, but the desire to run started with a similar
frustration at the lack of candidates in our area. The owner of Neat
Neat Neat Records and a resident of Allen County for nearly two decades,
Agen has been a “political junkie” for about as long as he can
remember. He uses the word “progressive” a handful of times to describe
his politics, but when he talks about issues and ideas he comes across
more as an old-school Democrat, albeit one who is barely in his 40s. He
grew up in Porter County — Chesterton, to be exact — and remembers at
nine years old going out with his father to canvas for then candidate
Pete Viscolsky. “I swear we knocked on every door in Portage,” he
laughs.
He continues: “Everybody I knew had parents that worked in one of the
mills there. My own father was an auctioneer; he did a lot of bankruptcy
auctions at the time (mid 80s). But those experiences planted an idea
in my head of how important politics could be.”
Agen stayed active in politics to some degree, usually as a supporter,
championing Democratic candidates. What spurred Agen to finally put
himself in the ring were a couple of Facebook posts last January from
people he corresponds with regularly.
The first was from Phyllis Bush, part of the Northeast Indiana Friends
of Public Education’s Executive Committee. In the post, she listed all
the political races coming up in 2016 that were running unopposed. “It
was an insanely long list,” Agen says. “There were something like 20
unopposed races.”
And while a bewildered Agen was asking why no Democrats were stepping up
to the plate, Jack Morris, the Chairman of the Allen County Democratic
Party, wrote in response to a post — “If there’s something that you
think is missing from the ballot, maybe that something is you.”
So Agen gave him a call, set up a meeting, and made the decision. “With
Bill Brown deciding not to run for election again this year, I think we
have a shot to make something happen,” Agen says.
Agen is enthusiastic and chatty, with a clear, pragmatic view of the
duties — and limitations — of the office he’s running for. There’s also a
refreshing lack of (1) smarm; and (2) the sort of polarizing, firebrand
“us vs. them” rhetoric that dooms most political novices.
But for someone who says he wants to make local elections sexy again,
Agen, by his own admission, has probably chosen one of the least sexy
offices to run for. “When I’m out talking to people, they don’t want to
talk about the ‘social issues’ that consume so much of the big
elections,” he says. “Those aren’t things they care about in their daily
lives. They’re talking about drainage issues, roads, infrastructure
stuff. It’s things that are personal and literally in their own
backyards. On county council, you have the ability to make those things
happen. You have a say over how dollars are spent and what gets
priority.”
A refresher course on local government might be in order here, and we’ll
make this quick… Allen County is governed by a separate body than the
city of Fort Wayne. The city has the mayor and the city council. Allen
County has the county council, made up of seven members, and three
commissioners. The commissioners are essentially the legislative and
executive body of county government. The council itself is basically the
fiscal body. They make decisions on expenditures, etc.
All three commissioners and six of the council members are Republicans,
with Sharon Tucker as the lone Democrat. An unbalanced situation like
that, Agen contends, doesn’t lend itself to the kind of careful
oversight and accountability government should practice. “Is there
anything
off about the way county council works? Probably not,”
he says. “But anytime I’ve talked to someone, that’s been news to them.
That kind of super-majority doesn’t lend itself to good government.”
As a “for instance,” Agen points to the recent Blue Kingfisher case, a
company setting up a big milk processing plant in Allen County. Blue
Kingfisher asked the county for a sizeable tax abatement, saying they
were planning to hire 150 people. Agen watched the meeting, and while he
didn’t have access to the paperwork council members had in front of
them, he had about a dozen questions he wanted asked of Blue Kingfisher.
“Blue Kingfisher supplies 600 Wal-Marts,” he says. “That’s all the
company does. Are they a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart?
Considering they’re based out of Bensonville, Arkansas, I have a feeling
they are. So, it took 12 minutes, and this company got a $10 million
tax abatement.”
And maybe that’s okay, Agen concedes. But is the company actually hiring
150 people? What’s the average wage? How many of those people are labor
and how many are management? “If they decide to unionize, is Blue
Kingfisher going to fire everyone, or just pack up and move somewhere
else? Because Wal-Mart has done that before.” Agen continues. “Those
were some of the questions I would have asked in that 12-minute meeting,
but those questions never got broached. Do we need jobs? Of course we
do. But I’d like to make sure it’s on the up and up and everyone is
doing what they say they’re going to do.”
He’d also like to see county government do a better job “selling” the
region’s various development efforts to the area in general. Agen says
that the farther away he gets from the city limits, the less people seem
to understand or see much benefit to things like the Regional Cities
Initiative or revitalization efforts in Fort Wayne. “I talk about it as
a quality of life issue,” he says. “The more people we attract to the
region — the more people we have buying houses, raising families,
putting down roots here — the better off Allen County is going to be.
Bigger, better, more. But I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t see
it like that. I love living here, I love the quality of life we have
here, and we need to make sure we keep these efforts happening.”
Another regional improvement he’d like to see is more funding towards
drug courts and other programs directed towards rehabilitating
non-violent offenders in the area. “We know it’s a problem in our area,
and it’s a problem no one seems to be talking about,” he says. “For
example, take someone with three DWIs. If you’ve got three DWIs… that’s
a problem. So what can we do to actually make those non-violent
offenders functional members of our community? It costs much less to
rehabilitate someone than to incarcerate them, and you’re not paying
taxes when you’re in jail. Are we doing all we can to provide for their
family, pay taxes, and help our community to grow?”
Those are “big picture” issues, the kind of things that really don’t
come up regularly when he’s out on the campaign trail “door knocking.”
And they’ll take a lot of work to accomplish. That said, Agen doesn’t
seem like the kind of person easily intimidated by what he calls “the
tweaky stuff.” He’s doing his homework, and… “I am a really good ‘on the
job’ learner. I may not know all the ins and outs, but I’m willing to
learn and to listen.”
Of course, the big elephant in the room is… well, it’s not literally a
big elephant, but it’s a big elephant. Allen County leans very
Republican, and while Agen hears from a lot of “progressive leaning
folks,” they’re often discouraged by a lack of representation, or see
their own cause as hopeless. There are Democrats out there in Allen
County, but it’s hard to get behind the party on a local level when
clowns like David Roach and Tommy Schrader pop up on the ballot. “How do
I get those people to vote? It’s tough,” Agen says. “I know a lot of
people, particularly young people, who were disappointed by the way the
primaries turned out. But there are a lot of candidates who are running
on progressive issues in our area. I would implore people to reach out
to those folks, have real conversations with them. Locally and across
the state, the Democrats have a super-solid team this year, and a real
chance to get our voices heard.”
For more information of Morrison Agen County Council Campaign, visit…
Facebook.com/MorrisonForCountyCouncil
Gowithmo2016.com
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