It must be the Season of the Chicken. In Oregon, one of the TV spots in high rotation is one from the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kevin Mannix aimed at his main primary competitor, Ron Saxton, accusing him of flipping on position after position and using a chicken in the background footage (with chicken vocals as well) to drive home the point. (Right about now, you can’t miss it on Portland TV.)
In Idaho, most of the gubernatorial candidates haven’t that kind of TV money, but two of them did have the wit to employ the fowl as a visual.
The springboard was the withdrawal a few days ago of Republican gubernatorial candidate C.L. “Butch” Otter from a primary debate (originally set for Thursday, and now cancelled) with his main primary opponent, Dan Adamson. Otter is the presumed easy winner of the race, but his pullout set him up for what he got on Tuesday.
Which was a highly unusual joint press conference featuring Republican Adamson and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brady, both urging that if Otter failed to show up, Brady be allowed to speak in Otter’s place. Not a bad thought: There should be some kind of significant penalty for doing what Otter did.
That won’t happen, of course, even if it probably should. But Adamson and Brady did manage to drive home the point with a visual, by holding their press conference in front of a chicken coop. (Originally misspelled in a press released as “chicken coup,” which probably wasn’t what they had in mind.)
Chickens are going to get a bad reputation this way . . .
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