Housing activist John Fox wrote an insightful letter to the Seattle Times, chiding the paper’s tabloidesque scandal-mongering attacks on City Councilmember Judy Nicastro.

It seems Nicastro and two other councilmembers got campaign funds from strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Jr. (whose dad had been a big local political influence-peddler back in the “tolerance policy” days of the early ’70s).

Apparently in return, the three councilmembers voted yes on a minor zoning change, allowing Colacurcio to build a bigger parking lot outside his Lake City venue, Rick’s.

The Times and certain other local media are trying hard as heck to make this into a brouhaha of election-altering proportions. But, as Fox points out, there are many people who’d like Nicastro ousted, and many of those have bigger political connections than Colacurcio Jr. People such as the landlords and developers who’ve felt inconvenienced by Nicastro’s work as an advocate for affordable housing. Some of these people are putting big bux into the campaign coffers of Nicastro’s opponents, so they can get sweetheart deals that would make Colacurcio Jr.’s look paltry indeed.

My own take on this: I’m glad the council, or at least a piece of it, is willing to be seen doing something in favor of sexual expression (albeit the most commercialized form of sexual expression). Maybe now they’ll lift the city’s decade-old ban on new strip joints, and allow the kind of healthy thriving grownup-entertainment biz Portland’s got.