U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley is challenging Republican Gordon Smith for the U.S. Senate in Oregon.
Merkley released a new web vid yesterday about the incredible progressives unifying with the campaign!
Check it out…
Carla–Netroots Outreach, Jeff Merkley for U.S. Senate
Yesterday, Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley became the first U.S. Senate challenger to sign on to A Responsible Plan To End The War In Iraq.”
Click on the video to below to see Jeff Merkley discuss signing on to the Plan:
Carla–Netroots Outreach, Jeff Merkley for Oregon
Steve Novick released a new campaign ad today. While the campaign was filming its ad, it was able to make another at the same time entitled "Beer with Steve,". The spot offers a humorous take on Steve's 'unusualities' and his determination to find a way to make things work. So take a moment, watch the video, and pass it on to friends, neighbors and colleagues to help get the word out about Steve.
The first new ad for Steve Novick for Senate, produced by Eichenbaum & Associates (of Russ Feingold campaign fame), has been released!
Just $5,980 will let us purchase time on the Late Show to show our support for Letterman’s pro-labor stand during the writer’s strike, reach the influential Oprah audience and advertise on CNN during the January 21 Democratic Presidential Debate.
Help us get the word out about this “savagely smart, issue-driven, relentless as a junkyard dog” progressive candidate (Oregonian, 4/19/07)!
Thanks,
Andrew Gorry
Novick for Senate
We are almost exactly one year away from Election Day 2008. One year from now, will Oregon voters choose a candidate who will stand for Oregon, or with President Bush?
Learn more about Smith’s record at http://www.stopgordo… and link to the video at http://www.stopgordo…
“A year from now, Oregonians will have the opportunity to choose change or more of the same,” DPO Chair Meredith Wood Smith said. “They can choose more of someone who has stood by President Bush’s conservative U.S. Supreme Court, his Iraq War and his Republican agenda. Or, they can choose someone who will stand up for Oregon. I hope everyone who views this video will sign up to help us defeat Gordon Smith and send a progressive U.S. Senator to Washington, DC.”
Watch the video and let others know how you will vote a year from now, and why.
From The Oregonian:
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said in an interview today that he has decided not to challenge Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore.DeFazio had been the top choice of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, after a DSCC-commissioned poll showed him ahead of Smith. But the 11-term Congressman chairs a powerful House Transportation subcommittee responsible for doling out hundreds of billions of dollars of highway funding.
[…]
“I just did not feel that becoming a junior member of the Senate was going to allow me to serve as well and as effectively, particularly in the short term, as my current position,” DeFazio said.
“This was not an easy decision,” DeFazio said. “You don’t get a poll that shows you’re ahead of an incumbent senator and generous offers of support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and just blow it off. It was a long and serious deliberation on my part.”
With the only Democratic names in the race being businessman Ty Pettit and attorney Steve Novick, all eyes now turn to 3rd District Rep. Earl Blumenauer. Sources tell me that Blumenauer will likely pursue the nomination, but we’ll have to wait and see.
(Hat-tip to hubbird.)
Race Tracker: OR-Sen
While there has been talk for a while that Gordon Smith may face a challenge from the right, it now appears there is a name attached to that prospect. The Associated Press is reporting that anti-tax activist and form gubernatorial candidate Bill Sizemore is considering doing a little bit of our work for us.
National Democrats have made it plain that one of their top targets in the 2008 Senate election will be Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, who has been reaching out more to moderate voters of late.
But Smith also could face potential trouble within his own party at home.
There are rumors that Smith might draw a primary challenge from the party’s right wing. A national group that promotes fiscal conservatism is making noises about possibly bankrolling such an effort.
A GOP primary challenge could force Smith — who has broken with President Bush and the Republican Party on Iraq and other issues — to veer more to the right, which could harm his chances in a state that’s trending more blue….
Anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore, who was trounced when he ran against then-Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber in 1998, said recently that he’s giving thought to possibly taking on Smith.
Oh please please please run, Bill. If he does, Peter DeFazio or any other candidate can sit back while Smith has to fend off this challenge from his right. If there is anything you can do to egg Sizemore, feel free to do so. 😉
It’s official! Gordon Smith (R-OR) planning to run for reelection as a panderer and opportunist.
In a major speech in Congress on Thursday night, Sen. Gordon Smith called the current U.S. war effort “absurd,” perhaps even “criminal” and called for rapid pullouts. He added that he would have never voted for the conflict if he had reason to believe the intelligence the president gave the American people was inaccurate.
Citing the hundreds of billions of dollars spent and 2900 Americans deaths — and saying he needed to “speak from the heart” — Smith said, “I for one am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. So either we clear and hold and build or let’s go home.”
Gordon Smith is only now at the end of his rope? Has he not been paying attention for the last three years? How is it possible that anyone with so much as a subscription to the Des Moines Register can only just now realize that U.S. intelligence was accurate? Is there something particularly magical about the number 2,899 – the number of casualties Smith cites as provoking his change of heart – that 1,000 or 2,000 doesn’t really move the soul? $100 Billion, $200 Billion: all acceptable appropriations for a failed policy, but now that we’ve hit $290 Billion, Smith has to speak out.
How absolutely convenient that Smith has a change of heart just when it’s time to run again, exactly when the Iraq Study Group and Bob Gates announcement that we’re not winning has given him cover to do so. How convenient that he can now point to another example of principled moderation to appeal to the independent voters of Oregon.
Read Smith’s whole speech in the Congressional Record. It’s like discovering a whole new senator we never knew we had.
(I couldn’t agree more. Smith is one of the few GOPer senators to represent a blue state, and he has got to be a prime target. And if you want a good example of how to defeat a conservative with a faux-moderate record, just take a look at how my man Paul Hodes demolished Charlie Bass. – promoted by DavidNYC)
Oregon has, encouragingly, been trending blue for two decades. 20 years ago, the state had a Republican governor, two Republican senators, and a congressional delegation split 2R-3D.
Since then, we’ve seen 20 years of Democratic governors, a Democratic Senator, no Republican has been elected to state office since an election for Labor Commissioner in 1994, and the Democrats just this month took control of both chambers of the statehouse. The only Republican congressman left is in the Eastern half of the state, which isn’t going to elect a Democrat anyway. But why, then, can’t Oregon seem to shake off our last Republican holdout, Senator Gordon Smith?
Gordon Smith was first elected in 1996, and has spent the last ten years portraying himself in the mold of moderate Republicans who can actually get elected statewide here. Problem: There are no more Republicans like that in Oregon. Gordon Smith replaced the last of ’em! (Mark Hatfield) Since then, the Oregon Republican Party has been increasingly dominated by right wing anti-tax, anti-choice zealots who play well to their primary base, but can’t win statewide. But I digress.
Smith wants, even needs, to be seen like a moderate, sensible Republican in order to get elected, and every now and then drops a position so the mainstream press in Oregon can wax poetic about their dying breed of moderate Republican. Holding out on a budget bill because of excessive Medicaid cuts (although he ended up voting for it), adding Gays and Lesbians to the Hate Crimes Statute (although voting for the Federal Marriage Ammendment), Smith is a die hard social conservative with a knack for knowing just how much he needs to feint to the left in order to preserve the moderate image.
My point is this: the electorate in Oregon wants to believe that moderates of both parties can exist. After the Hatfields and McCalls and even Packwoods of a generation ago, there is a deep seated desire for pragmatic, bipartisan leadership. Gordon Smith looks like he fits this model, and unless the people of Oregon can be shown that he is like every other social conservative they’ve spent 20 years rejecting, he will continue to be re-elected. The only way this is going to happen is with a coordinated, effective campaign by the blogosphere and activist class to show who Smith really is and that campaign needs to start today. Oregon is still a blue state, Gordon Smith is not wildly popular and he can be made to be vulnerable, but his vulnerability will only come about if we make it.