Will the woman win and save a democracy?
It’s been a helluva week in local, state, national and international terms, as well as personal. I’ll do my best to condense it, starting with the personal because that provides my excuse for not writing every other day.
Covid’s hit more family members with one a bit ragged at the moment. A friend had laparoscopic surgery yesterday after several days of overly complicated pre-op stuff.
Other friends and relatives have drawn my attention for a variety of ailments. I’m also trying to make time to assist the son of a friend who died to get stuff moved from his father’s house while I’m also still dealing with my new arthritis-on-the-knee pain which makes me very hoppy, enough to interfere with everything.
I know…. grin and bear it. My kingdom for more sleep, the peasant explained…
Disclaimer: I’ve long been an advocate for poor folks, both the working class and homeless citizens, much of the time over the past 42 years.
The local and state politics here in liberal Eugene is worrisome currently because a lot of well off people are mad about petty theft and inflation and the bus system and there’s not enough doctors and it’s the fault of parents not providing enough consequences and the homeless people who are being coddled.
Somebody stole a sprinkler. A sprinkler! And a Halloween scarecrow! And some solar walkway lights! And cars get broken into, people are casing houses, porch piracy has increased and it’s all because of the homeless who are on meth and are mentally ill and this can only be fixed by replacing the governor or the city council or the mayor or the judges who decided they want it this way and nobody cares about the hardworking homeowners who just need to get guns and vote out everyone or impeach them.
The social media site NextDoor is how I know all this stuff. Unlike Twitter, NextDoor is real. It’s a place where everybody has Ring Cameras that clearly demonstrate there’s people stealing stuff at night and sometimes during the day. There might even be 50 or 60 people doing this. And it’s the worse that it’s ever been and people are moving away from here (they say) because of this crime wave.
The police logs aren’t demonstrating it but that’s easily explained. Everyone knows the police won’t come so homeowners are not reporting this horrific tsunami of crimes. It’s so bad that property values increased 24% last year. Horrors!
Independent of NextDoor, I can see Rapes and Assaults are up which is certainly very concerning, all snark aside. Robberies, Burglaries, Thefts and Auto Thefts and Arson are considerably lower than they were 15 years ago. And there were 2 murders in 2019, down from a peak of 6 in 2016.
Clearly this graph doesn’t cover enough, as other crimes have very likely risen after the pandemic lockdowns. Homeless people were obviously just waiting to pounce, along with the ‘pro-crime’ Democratic politicians, prosecutors and judges.
Eugene has grown from 156,000 to 179,000 in the past dozen years with a current poverty rate of 20%. People on fixed incomes like Social Security or SSI on NextDoor now say it takes them more than a year to find a rental. There are people still homeless that were burned out of their homes due to wildfires two years ago. All of this because of homeless tweakers and that nefarious woman governor, Kate Brown and the parents who refusetoprovideconsequencesforimmoralbehavior, obviously also Democrats. Why, those socialist Marxist godless mothers.
Nobody actually says dirty words on NextDoor. Except in their descriptions of people that broke the law or addicts or homeless people. Because their ‘stuff’ matters more than people according to Free Market Theory which is taught in schools.
So now in Oregon, we have a retiring D governor, another D with similar executive skills applying for the gig, a former D now Independent who claims she occupies the reasonable middle and casts the other candidates as extreme, and there’s the obligatory R. Not mentioned by the media is these four are all women. Because who they party with matters more than women according to Free Market Theory which is taught in schools.
Tina Kotek (D) was Speaker of the Oregon House from 2013 through this year, the longest serving Speaker in Oregon history at 9+ years. It suggests people consider her adept at her work. She has a Bachelors of Science degree in religious studies and a Masters degree in international studies and comparative religion.
Wikipedia: Before being elected to office, Kotek worked as the policy director of Children First for Oregon, prior to which she was a public policy advocate for the Oregon Food Bank.[12] She co-chaired the Human Services Coalition of Oregon during the 2002 budget crisis and served as the co-chair of the Governor's Medicaid Advisory Committee.
Children First For Oregon pursues the goal of healthier children and stronger families so all of them can thrive, including foster kids.
Wikipedia again: Kotek considers herself a lapsed Catholic and attends an Episcopal church.
That’s right, this is the godless ‘pro-crime’ candidate. From Willamette Week, she describes her priorities if elected: The biggest issues up there right now are housing, behavioral health, and making sure people have economic security when things have been so unpredictable. I would add to that climate. The climate crisis is the challenge we cannot ignore.
Betsy Johnson (I) per Wikipedia: She operated a helicopter business and participated in international helicopter competitions. She was active in local politics in Columbia County, Oregon, where she served on the boards of multiple groups and she was elected to the Port of St. Helens board in a 1993 special election. She was the manager of aeronautics in the Oregon Department of Transportation from 1993 to 1998.
I think it unusual that her birth year is listed as 1950/51, because both calendars and birth certificates existed in that time. I was taught that in schools.
She has a Bachelors Degree in History from Carleton College and a Juris Doctor degree from Lewis and Clark College.
She’s served 4 years in the state House of Representatives followed by 17 years in the state Senate.
Wikipedia again: She represented the United States at a helicopter competition in Vitebsk, Soviet Union, in 1978. Johnson created Trans-Western Helicopters in 1978, and it merged into Hillsboro Helicopters in 1993. She served as president of the Columbia County Economic Development Council, and was on the boards of the Columbia County Health District, St. Helens Chamber of Commerce, and United Way of Columbia County.[9][10][11][2][5] She was appointed to the board of the Oregon Tourism Alliance in 1989.[12] She replaced Betty Roberts as the chair of the Tom McCall lectureship committee at Oregon State University in 1992.[13] She was the director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Portland Branch for six years.[14]
She served on the Ways and Means Committee. All these suggest she’s pretty knowledgeable about money and status quo organizations according to Free Market Theory which is taught in schools. She also has refused to release her tax records.
She’s previously won Democratic, Republican and Independent primaries in other elective positions. Her dad was also a state legislator. Considered a moderate/conservative, she wants to reinstitute the death penalty, has opposed legislation for parental leave or raising the minimum wage, and several gun control measures, earning an ‘A’ rating from the NRA. She also supports abortion rights.
I presume she, too, is Episcopalian, as the Oregon Episcopal High School she went to is rated as the 13th best private high school in the country. But that’s only a guess.
She’s earned a 100% rating from the No Chance In Hell Of Winning A Statewide Race In Oregon Association which is an organization I just made up because it’s true.
Christine Drazan (R) has been elected twice from her conservative state House district, so she’s served a total of 3 years there before resigning to run for governor. (Kotek has been in elective office for 15 years, Johnson for 21). In her 3 years, she was elected Minority Leader with just 1 year legislative experience by her Republican peers.
She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from George Fox University. In the 1990s she had a brief stint working for a member of the legislature. She also worked as Executive Director of the Oregon Cultural Advocacy Coalition and in some capacity for the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association. Her campain literature’s a bit skimpy on detail but it appears that she spent another 20 years as a homemaker raising 3 children before running for office. (Don’t misunderstand; I think that’s usually just as valuable work as any other. My only point is that Drazan has very limited public service experience, comparatively. Which I consider necessary to be an effective Governor).
Wikipedia: During her time as Minority Leader the Republicans refused to attend legislative meetings in order to deny a quorum so that legislation could not be passed.[14][15] Drazan participated in these quorum denials and left the state.[16] She also forced the readings of the entirety of legislation as a delaying tactic.[17]
She led that walkout in 2020 and didn’t repeat that in 2021. She won the Republican primary for governor earlier this year with 23% of the vote. During her short tenure, she also opposed vaccine mandates, earned an A rating from the NRA and an endorsement from the Oregon Right To Life PAC.
For non-Oregonians, there’s a reason I went to such detail: the recent polling. Successive polls has Drazan around 34%, Kotek at 32% and Johnson at 19%. And Johnson’s been blitzing the airwaves with ads all summer. This late, she has no chance of winning.
But…. she’s got lots of financial support from big name Republican timber company owners and from Nike founder Phil Knight. Knight just threw another big bundle of cash at Johnson…. despite the polls. Despite knowing she’ll lose.
Which leads me to a fresh conclusion. The GOP, which has been aiming at stealing elections since their success stealing the 2000 Presidential election - with a big assist from their Republican dominated SCOTUS - has found a fresh means of being competitive. I call this my Perot-Nader Theory which is not being taught in schools.
Oregon used to be a purple state but shifted more and more blue, so it’s gone 35 years without a Republican governor. But in the old days, governors like Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield and Vic Atiyeh were pretty liberal on several issues. I wholly respected all three. None of them would be acceptable to the current GOP.
The big funders of Johnson are clearly trying to divide the Democratic vote, hoping it’ll get their Republican in. And the trifecta of ‘too many homeless’, ‘the old ‘Democrats soft on crime’ and ‘inflation-with-Dems-raising-taxes’ could pull off a 33% win for governor. In the waning weeks of this campaign, I’m expecting them to claim that Kotek is also a pedophile and a godless Marxist because of course they will.
And they intend to use the 3rd Party approach in multiple blue states in coming years because otherwise all they have is controlling women’s rights, making homeless people and immigrants useful bogeymen to fear, plus the biggie: tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, which usually is never enough to satiate their compulsive greed. Those efforts usually fail in blue states unless they also use this 3rd Party maneuver.
They’re punching down, making the weakest in our society the biggest demons.
The homeless and the immigrants didn’t cause the tech stock collapse of 2000, didn’t start a War on Iraq for fraudulent reasons, didn’t cause the Housing Bubble collapse of 2007-2009, didn’t cause the covid pandemic and didn’t elect one of the very worst presidents in US history.
Powerful monied interests from televangelists to Big Tech execs to Big Corporate Polluters to the NRA and Wall Street Cheap Executive Officers are responsible, making it clear their Mommies never held them accountable for Immoral Behavior at all. The Federalist Society also has demonstrated already that all their Originalism talk was bullshit as they’ve gone after women, sensible business regulation like the EPA oversight (under states’ rights arguments because states’ rights have worked so well before at spreading racism and civil war). With next June’s rulings, their SCOTUS will damage the country further. Count on it.
But they don’t just want complete control of the White House, Congress and the federal courts. They need State Legislators and Governors and Secretaries of State to dismantle accurate elections, tear down the Constitutional walls that protect us from theocracy and increase socialism for the wealthiest, while impoverishing everyone else.
In short, they’re close to achieving their 85 year old dream of killing off the most successful New Deal program, Social Security.
While I don’t buy the claim of bothsiderism that the GOP and many lazy journalists rely on today, I’m very well aware that the dominance of any party for too many years can inevitably draw in some crooked officeholders.
That’s just not the real life predicament we face today in every state. And I’m not writing to warn you to fear all the things. I’m saying it’s time to confidently and full of reason and historic examples, go forth and prevent the Anti-Citizens from killing off the biggest ace that citizens still hold: the power to vote in free and fair elections.
The Anticits are not your friends.
Focus on the wealthiest, not the weakest. It doesn’t require a science or a theology degree to see how much they’ve achieved in the last 32 years, installing a multiple failed businessman in the White House to pass a trillion dollar tax cut for them and resurrecting the dreams of past insurrectionists willing to kill (or financially enslave) their fellow citizens because of their skin color, their beliefs, their sex, and who they love. A failed businessman, a blatant misogynist who used extortion against hired archivists legally required to control and secure top secret National Security documents among others. A failed businessman who’s still supportive of the Mad Bomber Vladimir P.
Oregon’s just a case study useful to see the larger picture of an out of control ex-Ringmaster, the Big Tent financiers and a host of stampeding elephants afraid of the three mice of Equal Justice, Equal Opportunity and Equal Human Rights.
Maybe enough cool-headed Oregonians will sense the urgency of this moment and thwart the plans of the ultra wealthy. We shall soon see. As for that homeless guy, that addict, the professional thieves, the college and high school students responsible for this crime ripple…. hey, quit blaming their parents and recognize that they’ve gotta pay higher prices, too, and a rental vacancy rate of 2% won’t magically fix anything.
Good planning, community discussion and effective leadership isn’t magic but that has a proven record of good outcomes. Let us not surrender the light.
Here in a university city where 94% have high school diplomas, 42% have Bachelor degrees and 18% have post-grad degrees, the only thing to fear is voter inaction and indifference to the rise of authoritarianism.
This year’s outcome is all on you.
Notable reads… A former chess champ warns: Winter is Here
I just hope that all those parents who aren't providing sufficient consequences in response to their kids' behavior are more demanding of their adult candidates and leaders. If they fail to anticipate the authoritarianism borne of inaction and remain passive and relentlessly grieving their own failure to advance and participate in solutions, then the consequences will become permanent and irreversible. The clarions are calling. Give 'em a listen and answer the call.