Ridenbaugh Press

Mike Erickson

Kevin Mannix

The hottest Oregon race at this moment is a U.S. House hot enough to break through to the national political dialogue, and hot enough that the Oregonian seems to suggest one of the two main contenders drop. Whichever is in the wrong, that is.

The 5th District Republican nomination race - contenders being businessman and 2006 nominee Mike Erickson and former legislator and state office candidate Kevin Mannix - has become nearly unpredictable. It could take another twist, of course, if one of the candidates turns out to have a teflon shield against the newly-dropped bomb. But . . .

The bomb was Mannix’ release of an e-mail, and followup statements (supported by the writer of the mail) saying that Erickson (who has run on a strong pro-life campaign) in 2000 impregnated a much younger woman and paid for her abortion; there are subsidiary charges (such as cocaine use) as well. Erickson has denied the substance, and argues Mannix is releasing the material because he is behind in the polls (which he seems to be); otherwise, he has maintained a low profile since the story broke. Mannix said he wanted to show what kind of person Erickson is. Mannix met with the Oregonian on Tuesday, and the paper said in an editorial today that “for the moment he appears to have the superior credibility.”

A few thoughts. (more…)

Jeff Merkley

Steve Novick

The big battle this morning over at Blue Oregon has to do with the latest polling results - two of them - in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary.

The Portland Tribune and KPTV-TV poll (Davis/Hibbits poll, 4.8% MOE) has attorney Steve Novick leading House Speaker Jeff Merkley 29%-23%. The other, third in a series of SurveyUSA polls (MOE 4%), has Merkley moving in a lead (after being behind previously), 31%-27%.

Two things jump out from both of these polls.

One is the high percentages still being attributed to the other, lesser-known candidates. Candy Neville has turned in some solid debate performances, but she doesn’t have a large-scale campaign, and we’d be stunned if she got the 11% SUSA now projects (Hibbitts’ 3% seems closer to the mark), and the others aren’t likely to reach much past a percentage point each.

More striking is the large number of still-undecided voters - 43% according to Hibbitts, 24% according to SUSA.

Bearing in mind the margins of error, the high votes for the other candidates and the massive undecideds, the take-away from these polls seems obvious: No one knows what the hell is going to happen.

Can’t pass this one up. The Hill newspaper at D.C. asked all of the U.S. senators - all but the three running for president - what they would say if asked to join a ticket and run for vice president.

A few suggested that, sure, if asked, they’d probably do it, or at least give it serious thought. (Great answer from Georgia Republican Senator Johnny Isakson: “I would not be so presumptuous as to think I’d even thought about that. And I’d have to talk to my wife. Hey, that’s an honest answer.” And it doubtless is.)

Senators Gordon Smith of Oregon and Mike Crapo of Idaho simply dismissed the prospect; Patty Murray of Washington said she would be “honored” but figure the prospect unlikely. Maria Cantwell of Washington: “Does that include any sports picks or anything like that? … I would certainly consider it.”

Ron Wyden of Oregon had a more involved answer: “I have a unique perspective on this. I am the only senator to have announced I am not running for president because there should be someone here to serve as the Senate’s designated driver. I intend to stay in that position. The Senate needs a designated driver to stay behind and work on healthcare.”

But first place for top answer goes to Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig (whose recent background surely needs no description here). Succinct: “I would say ‘No, Hillary.’ ”

The three-week mail-in stretch for Oregon voters, the period from when they get their ballots to the deadline for submitting them, has subsidiary effects, including the difficulty of running a hard last-minute attack on one’s opponent. Those 11th-hour bashings usually depend on the opposition getting little chance to respond; but what do you do when voting takes place over a three-week window?

Kevin Mannix, and his Republican primary opponent in the Oregon 5th House District, Mike Erickson, may find out. Today, Mannix released an e-mail (though only the first name of the sender) who alleges that Erickson used cocaine during wild boat parties several years back, and also paid for the abortion of a woman he had impregnated. Mannix says his campaign checked out the information and stands by it. Erickson says it simply isn’t true.

The primary election deadline is a week from tomorrow. Ballot returns so far are estimated at 13%.

The release comes just as polling seems to be showing Erickson moving decisively ahead of Mannix, who had been the presumed frontrunner.

This has been a stunningly roughhouse Oregon primary season. And this big of roughness may set the new mark.

We’ve suggested in a few posts that the 5th District Republican contest, which has been broadly assumed to be lining up for legislator and gubernatorial candidate Kevin Mannix over rerunning businessman Mike Erickson, may be turning. The weight of Erickson TV ads, mostly aimed hard at Mannix, could be having effect.

There’s not been a lot of polling, but a SurveyUSA poll from April 13-15 put Erickson at 44% and Mannix at 40%. That was within the margin of error. But SUSA was back in the field last week (through Thursday) and putting Erickson at 49% and Mannix 41%, right at the margin of error. With not many votes left undecided. With polling happening during the early part of actual ballots cast.

This could turn into a nailbiter.

This report is a little frustration specifically because it lacks some of the most specific stuff: Statistics. Yet the case study details in it are more than compelling.

This is a just-out report called (in over-long title) “A Survey of Human Trafficking in the Spokane Region: Conducted by the Inland Northwest Task Force on Human Trafficking,” prepared by Debbie R. DuPey for the Western Regional Institute for Community Oriented Public Safety at Washington State University-Spokane.

How widespread is this activity? What are the numbers that could give some perspective to it? Those aren’t here, as the report’s introduction says: “The interview instrument and methodology were not quantitative in nature, and therefore a formal numerical estimate of trafficking victims in the Spokane region is not included in this report.”

Still: “The data obtained in the survey is subjective and based on the interpretation of the interviewees, reflecting how they extract meaning from the definition posed and apply it to their interactions with the individuals they serve. However, all of the interviewees were professionals trained in working with vulnerable populations. It is assumed that their subjective interpretations have merit for the purposes of this survey.”

And there is enough to put some parameters on the problem. It is broken down by type (gang-related, prostitution, “mail-order brides” and so on) and these are described with some detail.

Till more comes in, this is a report of value.

There’s a commonplace in looking at election polls: They’re a snapshot in time, and changing conditions can and do change the numbers as time goes on. When, for example, you have two political parties, and one has a settled nominee while the other has candidates still fighting it out, you have a condition that will change with time. Once the party still fighting it out settles on a nominee, its numbers (reflecting in part the new-found unity) tend to go up.

You can take that as a commentary on the presidential campaign: The fact that Republican John McCain’s numbers, when matched against either of the battling Democrats Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, currently are close, is a long-term ominous sign for McCain.

But consider the local implications for the Oregon U.S. Senate race. The Rasmussen Reports polling just out shows Republican Gordon Smith winning 45%-42% against Democrat Jeff Merkley, and 47%-41% against Democrat Steve Novick. The season in Oregon has been dominated by the Merkley-Novick battling, and many Democrats in the state are as partisan in their choices between them as many Democrats nationally between Clinton and Obama. If they’re this close now, in the heat of the battle - indeed, as the battle has been heating up - what will happen a few months from now?

Add to that the trend lines. Since polling February, according to Rasmussen, Smith has shed three points of support while Merkley has gained 12; in the race with Novick, Smith is down one and Novick is up six.

Could this have something to do with the unusual sight, on Oregon television, of attack ads from the Smith campaign hitting before the Democratic primary is even over? An unusual kind of action for a front runner to take . . .

Amid the mass of coverage and other materials (for those living in-state, e-mails on top of everything else) from the presidential visits today, we’ll draw some attention to a piece in the Corvallis Gazette Times which actually included transcript of a short interview with Barack Obama.

It’s a well-rounded piece of coverage from the stop at Albany (which is about 10 miles from Corvallis).

Obama office

Clinton office

The comedian Lewis Black has a great bit about how he discovered the end of the universe, and it came to mind today.

He said that the end of the universe has a specific location on this planet - in Houston, Texas, on a street corner in its downtown. There, one day, he paused on a walk and noticed that he was standing in front of a Starbucks. Then he looked up and saw that directly across the street, on the same block, directly facing the Starbucks, there was another Starbucks! [Pause to catch breath.] And that, he told the audience, is the end of the universe.

Prowling around the political websites today, we saw the startling news that the Barack Obama campaign was opening a campaign office in McMinnville, Oregon, one of 19 (at last count) offices around the state. This was actual news; presidential campaign offices often have appeared in Portland, but not in the smaller communities. McMinnville is a city of 30,000 people, and only 45 minutes from either Portland or Salem. So far as a number of long-time residents we’ve talked to know, McMinnville has never had a presidential campaign office. This assertion had to be verified.

A stroll downtown, on the city’s attractive Third Street, confirmed it. Hand-crafted Obama signage was out on the sidewalk and on the doorway, and on the stairway that led upstairs to an office suite where a clutch of Obama backers (most or all volunteers) were at work, and other volunteers came and went. The square footage there was generous, and the space was donated. It was not especially fancy, but it was quite functional, and more important, busy.

The Obama list of Oregon offices includes some unlikely places - St. Helens, Tillamook (a third the size of McMinnville), Pendleton, North Bend, Oregon City. (And, two in Portland, and Beaverton, Hood River, Corvallis, Salem, Roseburg, Forest Grove, Eugene, Medford, Astoria, Bend, Gresham.)

The Hillary Clinton Oregon office list is a roster that would be mind-boggling impressive under any other comparison: Portland, Asotoria, Beaverton, Corvallis, Bend, Gresham, Medford, Salem, Springfield. No McMinnville.

But on exiting the Obama office and glancing to the left, a familiar-looking sign appeared off the sidewalk. And there it was: Just down Third Street, barely 100 yards, just a block away, on the same side of the street - a Hillary Clinton headquarters, just being opened this very afternoon, boxes being unpacked and signs being posted.

We’ll not call this the end of the universe. But something significant is going on.

One of the places where political contests traditionally have been influenced by individual judgments, community by community, has been the relatively low-key judicial race. If a contest - whether local or for a state supreme court - becomes a cause celebre, it tends to run on normal political tracks. But the low-key ones: How can most people realistically tell whether a judge is doing a good job or not, or whether a challenger might be better?

The traditional rule there is, a lot of people seek out or pay attention to what an attorney they know thinks about it.

That principle may just have gotten a big expansion. The Idaho State Bar has taken an unusual step into a judicial race, which judge may or may not like but which has some real public benefit: They polled attorneys to find out what they think about two contenders for the Idaho Supreme Court this year incumbent Joel Horton and challenger (and 2nd District Judge) John Bradbury.

That race has been quiet, though there are elements of interest: Bradbury, for example, would like to see a prohibition on judges who are appointed to the office - which is most of them - from running for a full term from the position of incumbency. (Bradbury’s web site includes a fine YouTube clip in which he simply explains his reasons for running.) But few voters probably know enough about either candidate to have a basis for judging.

The Bar survey, which is available on line, doesn’t come with analysis: The Bar (wisely) withheld an assessment. It did note that 4,130 surveys were sent and 437 came back from attorneys.

And what did they conclude? The difference between the two was not drastic, but Horton’s numbers were generally better, almost across all categories and regions of the state.

As the incumbent, he probably has an edge anyway. But the survey may give Idaho voters at least some basis for making a decision - some basis that has something to do with the work a judge does.

We’re among those thinking the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is strategically over - all that’s needed is for the next steps, over the next few weeks, to play out. (Actually, we’ve thought that for a couple of months; only the precise percentages in specific contests, not the overall structure and dynamic of the race, has been in doubt since early March.)

So what does May 20, Oregon primary election day, mean in that context?

Spokesmen for the Barack Obama campaign have said they see it as a big milestone. And it may be, to a point. The Democratic procedure for apportioning delegates, giving both major candidate similar numbers of delegates out of each state whether they win or lose (Pennsylvania did not massively wipe Obama in the delegate count, nor did North Carolina cost Hillary Clinton much margin). Rather, once one candidate early on was able to establish a majority of delegate votes, that majority would become almost impregnable thereafter if both candidates had comparable strength. And since early March, that scenario - no matter all the hoorah in the headlines - has been playing out smoothly. In the next few weeks it will play out again. At this point, Obama has collected enough pledged (elected) delegates that he needs just 38 more to have collected more than half of all pledged delegates - a major marker other delegates are watching closely.

After next Tuesday’s election in West Virginia (which Obama likely will lose decisively) he probably will gain another 10 or so delegates. Week after that comes Kentucky (which Clinton will probably win) and Oregon (probable for Obama), which between them should yield to Obama another 45 or so delegates. Which crosses the line.

This whole thing is psychological, though; Obama will need to continue trudging on after that. And getting the majority of pledged delegates will not translate to the nomination: He will need additional superdelegate votes for that.

But after May 20, those superdelegates may become easier to get. And that may be a mark the Obama forces will want to celebrate.

Today’s recommendation toward more informed voting and citizen participation: Turn off your cable TV news - C-SPAN and some special events like debates excepted. Really. Put a block on those channels. You too can recover from past exposure to this trash masquerading as news: Your take on the world as it actually is will rapidly recover from the endless distortion those operators purvey.

The reasons for that rant are enough to fill several books (and several have been written). Today it is brought to you by one particularly trashy, idiotic and hateful stunt pulled by one of the worst offenders, Bill O’Reilly, one that has a distinct Northwest connection.

It starts [and see this post too from Firedoglake] with two men, business consultants, from the European Union who flew to Seattle to transact business. They’ve been described as appearing as if they might have some Middle Eastern background (to our eyes, based on the photos, they could’ve come from a whole bunch of countries round the globe, including this one). After their business wrapped in Seattle, they decided to have a look around, and hopped a ferry ride.

Their appearance was enough to draw the attention of another passenger, who in turn notified Washington State Ferries officials. Someone followed the two men around, snapped pictures of them (this should start to get a little spooky right about here), and someone apparently concluded they “showed an inordinate interest in the operation of the shipboard systems.” (Tip to ferry passengers: Avert your eyes from the machinery, not that this will be easy since it happens to be all around you.) (more…)

The announcement by Areva corporation that it wants to build a uranium-enrichment plant, estimated to cost $2 billion, west of Idaho Falls, could be a good thing for eastern Idaho. The mere possibility that it might not seems not to have been discussed, pretty much at all. Idaho’s elected officials seem in a permanent come-hither mode as regards businesses moving in; often the news really does signify something good, but the blanket assumption can cover a range of problem areas.

Enthusiasm over the possible plant construction has been ongoing for months, even before the Idaho Legislature passed and dangled a major tax break - let’s be plain, that means a shift in taxes to other, already-present Idahoans - to lure it. The announcement press release went out under the cover of the governor and the region’s congressional delegation - all wanted to get a say in. “Phenomenal news,” “a natural fit,” and so on.

This may be a good thing. Some hundreds of jobs will be created, and they are likely to pay well, no small consideration.

But the public hasn’t seen a whole lot more than that; a lot of obvious questions haven’t been much asked. (Here’s one from the underground.) Areva will be engaging in uranium enrichment; what exactly will be entailed? Might more tasks be added, or changed? What are the implications of Areva’s ownership - which is, in an area not culturally thrilled with France in recent years, the French government? What are the environmental considerations; where will the waste go?

(A shorthand description from Wikipedia: “a French public multinational industrial conglomerate that deals in energy, especially nuclear power. It was created on 3 September, 2001, by the merger of Framatome and Cogema (now AREVA NC). Its main shareholder is the French owned company CEA, but the German company Siemens also retains 34% of the shares of AREVA’s subsidiary, AREVA NP, in charge of building the European Pressurized Reactor. The parent company is incorporated under French law as a société anonyme (SA - public corporation). The French State owns more than 90%.”) It does have close ties to the Bush Administration, which we know because its U.S. subsidiary is now led by former Bush Administrator Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. What implications all that may have, we don’t know.

Guess we’ll find out.

Calling $2.26/gallon gasoline “cheap”, as the Walt Minnick campaign does, seems a little odd to those of us accustomed to filling our tanks for a lot less. But then, these things are relative.

Which means he’ll probably get plenty of takers. From a Minnick press release:

Tomorrow Bill Sali will sit down to a $1,000-per-plate fundraiser for his campaign, a fundraiser hosted by oil lobbyists.
While Bill is busy raking in money from the very people getting filthy rich off high prices, Idahoans are spending their hard-earned paychecks on high prices at the pump!
“Idahoans are being pummeled at the pump while their congressman ishobnobbing with the very people who are getting filthy rich from high gas prices,” Walt said in a press release today. “Sali should be taking a tough stance with the oil lobbyists, not looking to them for a handout.”
It’s an egregious example of what’s wrong in Washington. That’s why, while Sali is lunching and lounging in D.C. with “big oil,” Walt will be pumping gas in Boise.
Regular gasoline at the Cole Village Chevron is currently $3.59 per gallon. From 10 to 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the station will sell regular for $2.26 a gallon, the price it was when Sali first took office. The Minnick for Congress campaign will pay the difference.

One of the things you can do if you have, as Minnick does, an ample campaign treasury.

Sali is not one of the top recipients of oil and gas money, but he has received substantial funds from that sector. In addition to individuals in the field, he’s gotten money in the 2008 cycle from the American Gas Association ($1,000), Chevron Corp. ($2,000), Exxon Mobil ($2,000), Halliburton Co. ($1,000), Independent Petroleum Assn of America ($2,500), Koch Industries ($2,500), Marathon Oil ($1,000), Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association ($1,000), Occidental Petroleum ($2,000), Valero Energy ($2,000), Williams Companies ($1,000). In fact, opensecrets.org lists oil and gas as Sali’s top business sector for contributions.

The brief Seattle Times editorial on executive compensation at Fisher Communications pretty much says it all, but we can’t help pointing it out here.

Call it a small, but encouraging, indicator. If others do in fact take enough notice.

The editorial page at the Lewiston Tribune has been - has been literally for decades - one of the region’s newspaper treasures: Uncommonly sharply and brightly written editorials, two of them a day, and a solid roster of columns. They’ve been a mainstay of ours since the early 70s.

The paper’s editorial output (it’s behind a pay wall, which is why we’re not linked to it) will still be a mainstay, but it will be diminished. The page’s editor, Jim Fisher, ran today what he described as his last column. The page’s staff, which has been two people these many decades (not many papers the Trib’s size have had as many), has been cut in half - Fisher’s workload is abruptly increased, though his column is going away, as are half of more of those superbly-written editorials. Editorial writer Tom Henderson (previously of western Oregon), is departing. It’s the widespread story: Industry cutbacks, bad finances. And this wasn’t some greedy out of state corporation doing it, either: The Trib is locally owned, family owned, and the man in charge (A.L. “Butch” Alford) is the same man who’s been proudly running it for a very long time. You can only imagine how he feels about this, or what conditions must be that it had to happen.

What’s happening to newspapers has a real cost. Here’s one of them.

The primary season in Oregon this year has its real points of interest toward the top of the ballot - Democratic presidential, Democratic Senate, both parties in the 5th U.S. House district. But less so down ballot.

There are some notable city and county races; the Portland mayor’s office could be decided in this primary (there’s a growing sense that businessman Sho Donozo’s one-time balloon has burst and Councilor Sam Adams, rising steadily, with good media and heavily endorsed, just might clear the 50% mark in the primary despite the multiplicity of candidates). On the legislative front . . . not so much.

The differences between a lot of these legislative candidates are subtle and stylistic more than on policy. (You probably could say that about Adams and Donozo, too, if Donozo’s views were expressed more clearly.)

There aren’t even all that many legislative primaries: 19 in total, for 75 legislative seats on the ballot with potential for 150 ballot slots. And some of those look, simply, minor, contests in which one candidate clearly will roll over the other. (See for example, in District 4, veteran incumbent Republican Representative Dennis Richardson against Ronald Schutz, a retiree whose political background seems to consist one failed run for the Grants Pass City Council.)

Let’s take a quick look at the contested legislative primaries in Oregon this year, the 10 Democratic and nine Republican (two each in the Senate, the rest in the House: (more…)

Geoff Simpson

Alot of political calculation probably is going on about now in and around the 47th House district, on the subject of Representative Geoff Simpson, D-Covington. He’s got some trouble, the kind that might not be politically survivable.

Only but so many details are publicly available; we do know the case involves an evidently bitter divorce, a meeting between the legislator and his ex-wife, a call to local law enforcement, and Simpson charged in King County District Court with fourth-degree assault and interfering with a domestic violence report. (A police report has bee posted via Sound Politics; sounds like the case in question, but the names have been blacked out.) Simpson has predicted exoneration. Meantime, we learn today, House Speaker Frank Chopp has removed Simpson from his committee chair.

The political issue here involves Simpson’s house seat. So, just a bit of background.

The district is in rural southeast King County, east of the Renton area; the main communities are Black Diamond and Covington, where Simpson has been a visible figure (in city government, too) for some years. Traditionally, this was part of the Republican King County east side, and Republicans did represent it for a long time. In 1996, for example, Republican Suzette Cooke took seat 1 with 62.4% of the vote; two years later another Republican, Phil Fortunato, took it with 52.6%. He lost the seat to Simpson two years later in 2000, in a 50.1%-49.5% squeaker.

In this decade, here is how the Republican percentages for that seat have gone: 49.5% in 2000, then 48.5% (Fortunato losing a second time to Simpson) in 2002, then 46.2% in 2004, and 40.3% in 2006. The trend line is matched on the other side. It’s roughly matched by the other House seat and the Senate seat in 47 as well; in 1998 the district was all-Republican, and today it’s all-Democratic.

Other conditions being more or less equal, you’d expect this House seat would remain Democratic this year. Depending on what emerges next in the Simpson legal case, though, Simpson may or may not be able to maintain that party advantage - this could be the kind of candidate-specific problem that could overcome partisan advantage.

Catch is, there’s not long to decide. Filing time in Washington is just a month away. Simpson has, in other words, some political reason to try to resolve the case in his favor (if he can) by then. Otherwise . . .

Mark Emmert

The theory behind paying those high executive salaries and compensation packages, like the $905,000 for University of Washington President Mark Emmert, usually carries the explanation that top talent needs top pay. Needs it, the theory goes, both as incentive to do a good job (though if they were so good, would such incentive be needed?) and as a loyalty encourager and enforcer: You wouldn’t put any other obligation before the one that pays you so well, right?

Which raises a question of what degree of loyalty two of Emmert’s newest employers - they are paying him for services rendered - might expect. They’re both board positions, but Emmert will be compensated substantially for them: By Weyerhauser $70,000 a year and $70,000 in stock, and by Expeditors International $200,000 a year in stock.

Where exactly does that put him in any dealings those corporations might have with UW?

The story has broken all over the Seattle media; we were taken by this tag on a Post-Intelligencer blog post: “It isn’t untypical for highly paid university leaders to sit on boards. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported earlier this year that the only two public university presidents earning more money than Emmert in the 2006-2007 school year both sat on corporate boards.”

A closing thought: What if we offered to pay university presidents, say, $50,000 a year and reasonable expenses? Might weed out a lot of the money obsession; and our guess is that the level of executive talent wouldn’t change much.

They’ve both got their backers. But in the newspaper endorsement race - for the Democratic nomination for the Senate - attorney Steve Novick is leading House Speaker Jeff Merkley. (Merkley did finally get today a positive story in the Oregonian, but that’s one of the few media breaks he’s gotten in months.)

How the endorsements, so far at least, break down:

Novick: The Portland Oregonian (this is by far the big one), the Medford Mail-Tribune, the Pendleton East Oregonian, the Ashland Daily Tidings, Willamette Week (weekly), the McMinnville News Register, the Portland Mercury (weekly), the Portland Tribune.

Merkley: The Eugene Register-Guard, Salem Statesman-Journal, Bend Bulletin.

Advantage: Novick. His advocates seize on his unconventional style, political and policy smarts and passion; Merkley’s point to a strong record in the Oregon House. Actually, most of the editorials make both sets of points about these candidates, the difference coming in where you put the emphasis. But this has to be said: More often than not, newspapers will go with the more conventional, establishment choice, and the one with the longer resume of public offices. This time, even while offering few criticisms of Merkley, they didn’t. The newspaper editorial boards (at the primary stage at least) should have been a Merkley audience.

ALSO Seems in our review that Illinois Senator Barack Obama has swept the newspaper endorsements in Oregon so far. Or has Hillary Clinton picked up one we missed? (Among the majors and others, we know the Oregonian, the Register-Guard, the Willamette Week have endorsed Obama; the Salem Statesman-Journal plans a presidential endorsement on Sunday.)

UPDATED Edited to add two recent Novick endorsements. And to note here that we’re considering only endorsements by general-interest news publications aimed at a broad community, not a specific interest (and some of those have endorsed in the Senate race too).