Mr. Excitement he isn't
I'm probably going to vote for Tobias Read to be the Democratic Party nominee for governor, in the primary that's just around the corner. But I'm not betting on his winning the nomination.
Read's campaign is so low key that the motion sensors keep turning the lights off at his headquarters. He's got endorsements from people like Barbara Roberts, John Kitzhaber, and Greg Macpherson, but not from anybody that anybody under 35 has ever heard of. And yesterday a flyer came in the mail that screams, "I only talk to old people!"
Maybe he's got a different mailer for people younger than me. For his sake, I hope so.
The only mildly amusing thing about the flyer is that one panel of it goes negative on Read's main opponent. Even so, it was more or less Portland Polite:
He could have found a worse picture of her, and he could have run it in black and white. And spiced up the copy a little. You know, more Wicked Witch of the West-type stuff.
And if Read is trying to paint himself as some sort of an outsider, I doubt many people are going to buy it. He's the current state treasurer, for heaven's sake, and he was in the Legislature for 10 years before that.
Anyway, I'd love to see him put Kohoutek out to pasture, and I'll vote for him in the primary toward that end. But Read's running such a sleepy campaign that I'm afraid he's headed for defeat.
And even if he wins the primary, he's right, the status quo is terrible, which is why you should vote for Betsy Johnson in November.
Betsy Johnson? To make the status quo even more terrible?
ReplyDelete^Johnson doesn't sound *too* bad?
ReplyDeleteKulongoski could work with her *shrug*...modern union leadership being uh...kinda depressing / him being a bit of a union shill (tho of our governors he's been kinda ok & is from the middle & not part of the Brown CA political snake dynasty?)?
She's got local industry roots & has actually done stuff in her life (fly fire fighting planes etc. for civillian/non military use?).
Brown's no better on farming/big agriculture & environmental issues when it really comes down to it?
If the republicans had any brains they'd get behind her quietly or tap their guy to drop out strategically?
Tho maybe they just keep fundraising, carving out their media career spots & go for their cuts/take of the mafia bust-out as things crash & burn some more?
I'd take local industry that's not explicitly international corporate/finance capital, military industrial or boutique luxury goods/papering over dysfunction some more as that's more explicitly likely what's behind the other face cards or candidtates that alienate industrial, contractor or rural voters even more!
Hold your nose & Johnson it is/devil you know, if no one else?
Never trust a politician, but Johnson might be able to make some deals, sniff out the snake oil salesmen as a wily old fox & who are you going to get that wants the job, anyway?
ReplyDeleteLib lip-service lizards w/international finance capital backing, technocrat time servers/hacks/dynasty families, amateur-hour dreamers that'll get easily bamboozled by the entrenched interests/eaten alive in the shark tank , & bellowing mountebank trumper thumpers/game show hosts?
None of those sound appealing w/what we've been getting?
Someone that trains some civilian pilots, knows some industry mechanics, utlility contractors & has to run something like that on a lean budget in an era where getting *anything* done to help anyone is expensive & lugubrious or prevent disaster before it comes is difficult & is a shrewd lawyer in columbia county doesn't sound *horrible?*
We could do worse & haven't been doing so good of late? What's the score, d00d?
IDK what she'd do to reform the PERS money vacuum...that may be pretty untouchable/too much to hope for.
Greg Mcpherson tried, but he & others didn't do so well with that land mine (he didn't make it easy on himself exactly, either).