[Local Elections]
Deposing the Oregon Speaker.
Last night, as a bonus event on their book tour, Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong headlined at a benefit for Rob Brading. Brading is running against the Oregon House Speaker, Republican Karen Minnis. In Oregon, she has achieved a mythical level of evil, our hometown version of Tom DeLay. No one really cares to hear about her legislative misdeeds, but do a search at BlueOregon and you'll get a sense (she's even got top billing today).
Brading's a good guy and he ran impressively in 2004, scaring Minnis with almost no money or support. He'll have more support this year, and with luck, last night's event helped raise a few bucks. He'll need it. The campaign figures came out this week, and he's getting killed.
Rob Brading: $57,487.78Brading received $13k from FuturePAC (the House Dems campaign committee), by far his biggest donation . Aside from that, he got three or four donations in the thousand dollar range. Minnis's donor sheet is full of major donors, local and not. Her filing sheet is 47 pages long, and I don't want to dig through the whole thing, so here's a few highlights from the first few pages:
Karen Minnis: $282,666.82
$5k - Oregon Right to LifeShe's running a national campaign to keep Oregon in line with the national GOP agenda. This has been catastrophic for Oregon, and even good conservatives should wonder why a GOP leader needs to be sleeping with these tawdry bedmates.
$1500 - Idaho Power
$5k - Weyerhaeuser
$1500 - Novartis Pharamceuticals
$5k - RJ Reynolds
$1500 - Bristol-Myers Squibb
[Correction: those figures aren't cumulative--or may not be. I wasn't reading the form for cumulative amounts, just listing single donations.]
3 comments:
That's good for the cause, yet I'm still disappointed that Kos & Jerome continued the longstanding political tradition of ignoring the fact that there's several significant progressive bases in the rest of the state.
I only hope the state party does better this time around, before that available pool of activism gives up on the party and heds to the Libertarians and Greens.
Actually, they did join the Bus Project on a bus ride from Olympia to Salem in recognition of that fact, and met candidates there.
Plus, these guys aren't being flown in by HarperCollins to promote their book, nor is the DNC funding their extra-curiculars--THEY'RE actually paying for the tour. So don't be too hard on 'em.
I'm not really upset with them. I'm more dismayed by the lack of party organizing statewide.
I think people frustrated by our state govt's paralysis would like to help change that but just need more guidance on how to achieve that.
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