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Posts published in “Day: May 8, 2007”

Saxton moves on

May 8, 2007
Ron Saxton

Ron Saxton

The Medford Mail Tribune seems to be breaking this: Ron Saxton, last year's Republican nominee for governor of Oregon, is leaving (mostly) his job as a key partner in the Portland law firm Ater Wynne, to become an executive at the Klamath Falls manufacturing firm Jeld-Wen.

Jeld-Wen is a door and window manufacturer; it has more than 20,000 employees. And, the Mail-Tribune notes, "Rod Wendt, the chief executive officer of Jeld-Wen, was one of the top donors in Saxton’s failed challenge to Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski, giving hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Blog intensity

May 8, 2007

The blog tracker Technorati has a new tool we may find useful in the months ahead, charts showing the number of references in blog posts to a specific name or word.

Here, for example, is the measure of mentions of "Bill Sali" - the Idaho representative - in blogs over the last six months.

Posts that contain Bill Sali per day for the last 180 days.
Technorati Chart
Get your own chart!

You might have thought that as election season moved on and the summer doldrums approached, that references to Sali (and other politicians) would have diminished. Not so; in fact, they seem to be rising.

What about other Northwesterners? What's the pattern for, say, Oregon Senator Gordon Smith?

(more…)

Goin’ Hollywood

May 8, 2007

Or, you might call it the grass-is-greener reaction, the boom among Republicans for the candidates they don't (yet, at least) have.

Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics is reporting on the straw vote at the Washington Republicans' statewide auction and dinner. He didn't say how many votes were cast, but of them, former Tennessee Senator (now Law & Order actor) Fred Thompson got exactly half. The distant runners-up were Mitt Romney (16%), Rudy Giuliani (15%), Duncan Hunter (10%), John McCain (5%), Tom Tancredo (1%), Tommy Thompson (1%), Mike Huckabee (1%) and another non-candidate, Newt Gingrich, less than 1%.

Commenter Jeff B. reflects some of our thinking on this: "Fred represents the idealized candidate. And possibly one that is not attainable. Conservatives see things in all of the other candidates that they don't like, and the project their dream for the perfect candidate onto Fred. I happen to like Fred as well, but the reality is that translating the charisma and hope into a well oiled candidacy and money machine is an important part of every presidential race. And that has yet to be demonstrated."