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Posts published in “Day: August 13, 2008”

Inspiration

August 13, 2008

The Seattle-based blog Horse's Ass has an unusual biographical distinction: It was prompted by a specific person. The blog's founder, David Goldstein, had pursued a satirical effort to declare, via ballot issue, that initiative developer Tim Eyman was a horse's ass. After that effort failed, he founded the blog, and named it, in effect, for Eyman. So far as we know, this has been the only political blog in the Northwest so inspired.

Until now. The editors at the Nampa Idaho Press Tribune have launched an editors' blog - nothing unusual in these days of widespread newspaper blogging - with an unusual distinction:

"Wayne Hoffman, the man behind today's launch . . . If you haven't read the Idaho Press-Tribune's editorial in Sunday's paper, read it now. In short, it took Rep. Bill Sali's office and his spokesman Wayne Hoffman to task on several issues. It's created a bit of a firestorm. Bloggers seem surprised that this 'rightwing' newspaper would speak up on this. . . ."

Hoffman is the press spokesman for Representative Sali, and he was quoted in part as responding, "They took the entire matter out of context in my mind, and I worked for the Press-Tribune for four years. It borders on libel."

Response to that = new blog. Evidently, the editors at Nampa will have more to say on the subject of Sali and Hoffman. (Then too, Goldstein still gets in his digs at Eyman now and then . . .)

Multiple parties

August 13, 2008
1946 ballot

1946 ballot

You could look at this way: What's more important, the candidate or the party under whose banner they run? If like us you're of some independent streak, that would lead to the conclusion that a ballot should foremost list the candidates, and then any political party backing them. If parties are more significant, then you give each party a ballot line (wherever they have a candidate) and then just fill in the name in the slot.

The latter approach is what you've most commonly seen in recent years in the Northwest. But some states, such as New York, allow candidates to run under the banner of two or even more parties. Could they legally do that in Oregon?

Maybe.

The Oregon Secretary of State's office says no. But the Independent Party of Oregon, which has endorsed candidates running mainly under Republican and Democratic banners, points out that multiple-party candidates have appeared on Oregon ballots in the past (see above) and argues they could again, and now has filed a suit.

Most directly, this affects three candidates - Senate candidate Jeff Merkley (a Democrat), treasurer candidate Ben Westlund (also a Democrat) and U.S. House candidate Joel Haugen (a Republican). Westlund, for one, said that "The statute seems to indicate that both nominations should be printed in this case."