Someone put sleeping bags, tents in front of McLean’s signs, campaign says
Someone has been putting up tents and sleeping bags by signs promoting City Council President Lauren McLean’s bid for the mayorship, her campaign says.
In a Facebook post Saturday morning, McLean wrote that she thought the tents, which she posted a picture of, were “a crude attempt to make Boiseans feel that ‘camps’ of people experiencing homelessness are springing up in their neighborhoods right before an election.”
McLean’s post goes on to say that she “would trust that this crude stunt and unabashed fear-mongering isn’t the work of the incumbent mayor’s campaign, and rather one of the for-profit groups supporting him.” Someone took pictures of the tents, she wrote.
Melanie Folwell, McLean’s campaign manager, said Saturday that McLean’s campaign had no evidence pointing to any specific groups. Robert West, Mayor David Bieter’s campaign manager, said that his campaign wasn’t associated with it.
McLean is in a runoff election against Bieter after no one of the seven candidates won a majority of the vote in November’s election. McLean won the most votes, winning 45.7%, and Bieter came in second with 30.3%.
In the time since the November election, Bieter’s campaign has declared homelessness to be “the central issue of this campaign” on multiple occasions.
Bieter is in favor of appealing Martin v. Boise, the lawsuit centered on whether the city can ticket people who are homeless for sleeping in public places when they have nowhere else to go, to the Supreme Court. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Sept. 2018 that cities can’t prosecute people for sleeping on the streets if they have nowhere else to go because it is unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.
He argues that the ability to ticket is what prevents camps of people who are homeless from forming in public streets. He often points to Cooper Court, where a camp formed that city officials cleared out in December 2015.
McLean was at one point in favor of the same thing but told the Statesman that she changed her mind after hearing that not all local advocates were in favor of it. She has since gone on the record saying she is against ticketing because she believes it’s ineffective and hurts people who are homeless by saddling them with a legal record.
After seeing the images, McLean’s campaign is asking anyone considering donating to the campaign to instead donate to local organizations for people who are homeless.
The runoff election will be held Tuesday, Dec. 3. Early voting has already begun.
This story was originally published November 23, 2019 at 2:52 PM.
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