EDITOR’S NOTE — To vote, go to http://tinyurl.com/pdn-best. You can also get current vote totals there.
Online voting now underway between Port Angeles and Chattanooga runs until 8:59 p.m. Thursday, June 4.
PORT ANGELES — “Only a tiny Northwest city stands between Chattanooga reclaiming the top spot it held three years ago in Outside magazine’s Best Town Ever contest.”
After that summation, the Chattanooga Times Free Press noted that the Tennessee city, with a population of more than 170,000, easily eclipsed the 19,000 souls in Port Angeles, its Cinderella-like rival in the nationwide fight.
And “numbers matter for sure” in this “competition for coolness,” the newspaper added.
Leslie Kidwell Robertson isn’t intimidated.
“Chattanooga may be big, but they are certainly not the best,” says Robertson. “Port Angeles is like no other place in the world.”
She is the founder of Revitalize Port Angeles, a Facebook group with more than 1,100 enthusiastic members that has been cheerleading Port Angeles as it bested Santa Barbara, Calif.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; Bar Harbor, Maine; and two other towns since the competition began May 4.
Online voting has been underway since Thursday evening, and the victor will be the town that gets the most votes by 9 p.m. this coming Thursday.
There is no money or prizes for the winner — but plenty of bragging rights.
Plus a splashy, tourist-drawing profile for the winner in September’s edition of Outside, a nationally recognized outdoor and adventure magazine.
This is Outside’s fifth annual “Best Town” contest, and previous winners like Chattanooga say the title has resulted in more tourism for them — and calls from businesses that want to relocate to their towns.
Winning is worth “an estimated $300,000 in advertising value,” says Ryan Malane, marketing vice president for the owner of the MV Coho ferry, which travels daily between Port Angeles and Victoria.
And Outside reported:
“Since Chattanooga won our Best Town award in 2011, its farm-to-table restaurant scene and whiskey distillery movement have boomed.
“As for the world-class rock climbing at Foster Falls, mountain bike trails, and Class IV and V rapids on the Ocoee [River]? Well, those haven’t changed.”
Outside says the best town in America in 2015 has “top-notch restaurants, vibrant farmers’ markets, friendly neighborhoods and unparalleled access to hiking, biking trails and public lands and, of course, a good beer scene — in short, the perfect jumping-off point for adventure.”
Robertson and her Revitalize partisans have inspired “Vote PA!” signs all over town.
To boost votes for Port Angeles, it also uses online posters of Bigfoot and circulates gorgeous videos and photos of Olympic National Park.
The state’s two U.S. senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and the area’s congressman, Derek Kilmer, use their Twitter feeds to urge votes for Port Angeles.
“What’s especially exciting is seeing how involved the town is getting!” says Malane. “Almost every business in Port Angeles is advertising it.”
Chattanooga’s effort is pushed by the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, with tweets, emails and sponsored Facebook ads from boosters including Rock/Creek, a popular outdoor clothing/gear company based in Chattanooga; U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.; and the University of Tennessee.
Rock/Creek and Lamp Post Group, a business venture incubator, are hosting voter parties at local bars and restaurants.
“I didn’t expect this much buzz, honestly,” said Rock/Creek’s marketing director, Mark McKnight. “We’ve seen a ton of interest from our customers.”
Outside magazine’s contest is set up with brackets modeled on the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament, with an original field of 64 towns — or cities in many cases, Las Vegas and New York City among them (they were knocked off in early rounds) — seeded into four geographic regions.
They were then pared down in five rounds as towns with the most votes advanced.
In Final Four semifinals that ended Thursday night, Port Angeles, the West division champ, dispatched Bar Harbor, the East division champ, with a 6,350-vote margin.
Chattanooga, the South division champ, beat Eau Claire, Wis., the Midwest champ, to make the finals.
Earlier, Chattanooga beat Roanoke, Va.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Beaufort, S.C.; and Boone, N.C.
It got tens of thousands more votes in its competitions than the total Port Angeles tallied.
But you should never underestimate Port Angeles.
It was a wild-card entrant that won its way into the contest at the last minute based on Instagram votes, beating out 104 other towns and getting a No. 16 seed in the West.
And unlike the NCAA, where a No. 16 seed has never beaten a No. 1 seed, Port Angeles began the competition by upsetting Santa Barbara, the No. 1 seed in the West, by a 28-vote margin in the first round.
Port Angeles then edged the Kitsap County city of Bainbridge Island in the second round (by 296 votes), knocked off the Colorado resort town of Glenwood Springs (by 488 votes) in the third round and polished off Flagstaff, Ariz., the West’s No. 2 seed (by 1,336 votes), in the fourth round.
Now Port Angeles is the West division champion — and one of two towns still standing after 62 others were eliminated.
________
Publisher-Editor John Brewer can be reached at 360-417-3500 or jbrewer@peninsuladailynews.com.
