Results will begin to be reported from Oregon in a few minutes. We’ll use this thread to track the returns from OR-Sen and OR-05.
11:20PM ET: Merkley is up by 4 points so far. He’s losing Portland, but has a big lead in Lane County (Eugene). Interesting.
11:57PM ET (David): Merkley’s lead has been holding steady at 4% much of the night. About 61% of the vote has been counted so far.
12:17AM ET (David): My back-of-the-envelope says that it’s unlikely that Novick could squeeze more than another 4-5K out of Multnomah County (margin-wise). Outside of Multnomah, he’s got almost nothing. I’m not sure I can see how he can overtake Merkley’s lead.
12:40AM ET (James): Mike “I Don’t Know What Cocaine Looks Like” Erickson won his primary, amazingly enough.
1:03AM ET (David): Blue Oregon says that Novick has called Merkley to concede.
1:06AM ET (James): The Oregonian has just called this race for Jeff Merkley!
http://www.oregonlive.com/spec…
Merkley slightly ahead right now.
So says the Oregonian. That’s a surprise. I love how Republicans are making that race easier on us.
http://www.oregonlive.com/spec…
Kroger looks like he will win the race for AG.
Sam Adams has won outright the race for Portland mayor and will become the cites first gay mayor.
Kate Brown will be the next Secretary of State for Oregon and I believe the first bisexual statewide elected official in America.
Also Erickson has won the GOPPERS race for the fith. Yeah. The guy who had that big scandal and was supposed to lose.
I would chance that race to lean D after tonight
And would like to give a shout out to sarahlane for her great advocacy of Jeff!
Let’s hope Novick and his suporters can unite and we can defeat Gordon Smith.
Over at Loaded Orygun.
are IMPRESSIVE to say the least(i like our chances to win that open seat)
I would recommend this link.
With 71% of the Portland/Multnomah vote in and only a small margin there for Novick, I think Merkley’s got it. Now Smith has got to go.
lose this race for novick?(point being that she took just enough votes away from the “non-establishment” candidate to let the “establishment” candidate,merkley, win)
To rub it in too much, but I’m really glad this happened. I think Merkley’s candidacy has been mostly dissapointing so far, but I really didn’t think Novick could win.
i doubt that neville was a spoiler. i suspect her voters would split evenly between the other two.
for her to be a spoiler the majority of the voters would either have to know merkley well and want to vote against him which seems unlikely, or novick and neville would have to share a particular issue position that merkley didn’t share which isn’t true.
as i said earlier, i appreciate how excited some folks have been about novick and i credit him for running a good primary for a “nobody,” but i am MUCH more hopeful about this race now.
as i said earlier, merkley’s background is very much in line with every senator and governor in oregon for the last 15-20 years. it will be tough to beat smith but merkley can do it.
smith, wyden, packwood, hatfield, roberts, kitzhaber, kulongoski – all legislative leaders and collegial and respectful (boring?). merkley fits right in.