Background #

Richland has an administrative item on its ballot to determine whether to move from all at-large voting for council or toward a mix of districts and at-large positions.

I’ll be transparent—I think districts would have made a difference 10+ years ago when we failed to bring a public market to Richland and most council members were from Meadow Springs and had no vision for downtown Richland.

Today, the geographic representation is broader, and I will be clear that I find the good-faith counter-case reasonable. It’s a choice, largely, about how you see the city, and (as I’ve spelled out in this separate piece, whether you think the opinions of voters who drive through or around North Richland should outweigh the vision residents who live there have for our city’s downtown).

Districts for Richland are an old idea #

The pro-district’s current movement in Richland started a decade ago with Council candidate Donald Landsman (RIP), promoting districts as part of his 2015 campaign, saying, “Yakima and Pasco recently went through redistricting. I think it’s very appropriate for Richland to do that voluntarily.”

Landsman, who died this summer, later changed his position on the matter and actually went so far to apply for the committee writing the ‘no’ statement in the pamphlet.

But the topic again became a key point of the 2019 election, as it was Shir Regev’s primary campaign platform and opponent Brad Anderson told the Herald "he supports the idea and will promote it.".

The district supporters have a slew of volunteers who’ve collected 3,800 signatures to put it on the ballot.

Meanwhile, the ‘no-districts’ group has only had a few months to find its footing. The anti-district group’s PAC, Columbia Basin PAC, which has no published list of members, appears to be led by current candidate Pat Holten, mayor Theresa Richardson, and Natalie Whitten (whose husband is councilman Ryan Whitten). (This information was only publicly discoverable because of a PDC enforcement action which was responded to by Holten, cc’ing Richardson and Natalie Whitten.)

The anti-district momentum had been relatively flat so far. They’ve found a good rallying cry: "PROTECT your RIGHT to vote on EVERY city council position!" but there hasn’t been a lot of visible passion and momentum. In addition to listing no volunteers on their website or disclosing contributors, they haven’t even been able to gain anything but anonymous testimonials to compete with 3,800 petitions:

So, if you’re a council member wanting to PROTECT your SEAT, what do you do?

(Besides use your title and public office in order to weigh in on a citizen’s ballot measure that directly impacts you, I mean.)

Aura Farming, Shitposting, and Acting Normal #

Sarah Jeong has written some insightful analysis on how political discourse in 2025 has three modes that interact like rock-paper-scissors. The framework perfectly explains what’s happening in Richland right now.

Jeong describes three modes:

1. Aura Farming — an earnest attempt to use posturing to gain political leverage by projecting power, victimhood, authority, or coolness (’cancel culture’, defiant proclamations, victim narratives, authoritative posturing like threatening arrests or military action)

2. Shitposting — deliberate incoherence presented as humor, content that refuses to engage with meaning or logic; not satire, which has a point, but pure meaninglessness (memes, people in absurd costumes at serious events, just being nonsensical)

3. Acting Normal — traditional politics: persuasion, negotiation, compromise, coherent messaging; treats politics as a serious endeavor with real stakes that takes real long-term effort.

The "Game" looks like this: #

• Shitposting beats Aura Farming (absurdity deflates posturing)
• Aura Farming beats Acting Normal (power displays dominate traditional discourse)
• Acting Normal beats Shitposting (coherence defeats meaninglessness among reasonable people)

The Problem? #

When most participants choose aura farming or shitposting instead of normal engagement, politics becomes divorced from solving actual problems—it’s just "Posting" at each other rather than governing.

This started as a problem at the national level. It’s becoming the norm at the local level as well.

The pro-districts people have been the epitome of the Acting Normal version of politics for years: It’s been a campaign platform for multiple candidates, they’ve written letters to the editor, gathered thousands of petitions, and transparently funded a campaign to educate the public. They’ve been able to lean on seasoned campaigners who have held a persistent vision for Richland as a city with diverse needs and geography in need of better representation for the unique opportunities and challenges posed by its diversity.

The anti-district campaign provides a good example of Aura Farming.

Air Quotes "Censorship"! #

A few days ago Richland Mayor Theresa Richardson shared a meme claiming victimhood of being ‘censored’, which she persisted in, regardless of facts presented, because (as became clear) her only goal was Aura Farming.

How do I know she wasn’t censored? The admins showed direct screenshots in her comments showing no moderation actions had been taken against her in the group. And multiple people showed up to educate the mayor that in fact, Facebook’s group algorithm is weird and unpredictable.

And I’ve seen for myself that moderators have to intentionally fish things out of ‘spam’ in order to get them to show up:

In the Mayor’s thread, the group’s admins presented the same type of screenshots to Mayor Richardson showing no restrictions or actions taken to moderate her content and she argued with them and others that her perceived slight was reality.

Now, if you’re just framing the way Facebook group algorithms work as ‘censorship’ and also failing to do any research or accept any evidence that counters your claims, that’s maybe not outright deception—but it doesn’t really matter; what matters is the strategic choice to persist despite evidence because it gathers emotional energy that can be harnessed as attention on an issue.

And scrolling through your feed, why would you not take at face value the nice respectful conservative mayor who shares the same national political leanings as the majority of the populace?

When evidence mounts they’re probably wrong, an Acting Normal leader might take a different approach: the best case being getting curious and understanding their mistake or, more commonly, just not persisting in defending their position when the evidence says they’re over their skis vs reality.

Instead, because the post was effective (and it was—her post got a ton of shares and the group in question was flooded with anti-district posts, none of which were censored of course), she doubled down on it the next day, saying that Pat Holten was being censored, too!

And when that post was even more objectively provably false, Pat Holten took up the same message the next day, claiming to be censored while her actual posts and comments were live in the group she was claiming to be censored from.

In one hilarious exchange, Richardson is actively replying to me on the same post above that she claimed was being censored, in the same group where she claimed to be unable to comment.

Why double down? Why continue pressing the narrative?

Because it’s a good political strategy vs Acting Normal: the vast majority of voters think about 30 minutes every two years about who to vote for city council, and those who think a LOT about it seem to lean toward districts.

Btw I’m fully aware I’m Acting Normal here (mostly lol) which is going to "lose" to Aura Farming, but my goal isn’t to "win" anything; I’m just trying to point out what’s happening because I think it’s all very interesting and, frankly, concerning.

This is a leader who has had numerous critics claim to be censored by her, has had a demonstrated record of violating the City Council’s ethics code, facing accusations of self-dealing and failing to disclose conflicts of interest, and presented misinformation in campaigning against a ballot initiative.

The Tri-Cities doesn’t really have a ‘shitposting’ culture outside of small pockets with scant influence. With tactics like these, does it need one? Maybe.

Personally, as much as I like weird things, politics and policy are one area where I wish there was a lot more Acting Normal—but as long as Aura Farming works, we’ll keep getting it.

Update October 30, 2025 #

After I wrote this post, Mayor Richardson deleted all posts claiming censorship, along with the pushback she received in those posts’ comments, destroying (or at least hiding) public records.

Richardson shared an anonymously produced video which used pro-district donors’ political leanings to frame districting as a ‘liberal takeover’ of the City Council.

In sharing the video, she said, "This video must be watched and shared. Let me know your response. Do you care enough for our City to say No?"

When she inevitably got a subset of responses she didn’t like, she threatened each person to hide them.

And, turns out it wasn’t just a threat: she did actually hide an answer of mine in a thread where I was responding to another commenter asking:

"Can you defend why they worked so hard to get this on a ballot where the turnout would be abysmally low? I mean hell, that all by itself is a damnable offense to me."

I had replied:

I would argue it’s both strategic and also reasonable.

Why reasonable? On any given local issue, ~80% of voters have a passing familiarity with the issues (I would bet we agree on this), people generally have a bias toward the status quo for things they haven’t educated themselves on (I’d bet we also agree on this), and running it as a special election separates it and increases the likelihood that the people voting have spent the time to consider it enough to turn out to vote on it.

And I’d argue that wanting it the other way is just as strategic. If you live in an area with a strong slant toward one party (as we do), then any issue the party can make a partisan issue is an easy win—without those voters even taking time to think about the issue.

My response was publicly hidden by Mayor Richardson.

My view:

Others’ view:

It provides a nice bookend that makes it hard to say the fabricated censorship narrative was ever in good faith.