Margaret Carter May Run For Senate Seat She Left in 2009 →

This could be a tough race. Carter could use "first African-American woman elected to the Oregon Legislature" in her campaign to some powerful effect in a comeback effort. Frederick isn's the incumbent, but has represented half of that same district in the House. Carter and Frederick are both quasi-incumbents in this scenario. Neither are technically the incumbent, but both have legislative experience that is beneficial in a Senate campaign. Lawmaking experience is obviously not a pre-requisite, but I think some voters certainly prefer their representation in the Senate to have some experience.

Multnomah County Commissioner Jules Bailey Is Preparing to Run for Portland Mayor →

Bailey, who tells WW he has been recruited in part by organized labor, says his priorities will be affordable housing, environmental sustainability, jobs and homelessness—an issue where he accuses Wheeler of peddling simplistic solutions.

Interesting that labor is recruiting against Wheeler. Are they afraid he's going to be too protective of business?

Rep. Gilliam: 'I am likely one of the thousands of Americans' with ALS →

State Representative Vic Gilliam:

Thank you for the honor to serve as your State Representative. I still marvel as I walk (perhaps not as smoothly now) through the rotunda of our State Capitol to our district office. But if symptoms should make it too difficult to continue, I will leave with the greatest love for this State and our District and celebrate our optimism for the future.

Powerful words. It's worth reading the full letter.

(Via Denis Theriault at The Oregonian)

Kate Brown: Defender of the status quo

An article in the East Oregonian recently explained Kate Brown is seeking a review of ODOT's management. The first two sentence of the article tell you everything you need to know about how ineffective this course of action is going to be.

Gov. Kate Brown wants the Oregon Department of Transportation to hire a consultant to review the agency’s management practices. he review is supposed to reassure lawmakers the agency is doing everything it can to operate efficiently, as the Legislature gears up to pass a transportation funding package in 2017.

1. Opportunity for corruption

ODOT gets to pick the consultant that will review ODOT's management practices. That doesn't necessarily mean they will try to pick one that favors preservation of the status quo, but it does create massive opportunity for just that. It's not acceptable to create this opportunity. The Governor's Office, the Legislature, and state agencies should strive to be above reproach. We shouldn't have to just hope they won't do something wrong.

2. A request to do nothing

Reviewing ODOT's management practices is a fancy way of saying they will move a few dollars around and then say that everything is fine. This won't result in reform, it will result in minor revisions to the status quo.

3. Avoiding responsibility

Gov. Brown wants an outside consultant to do the work. In political circles, this is a popular way to create non-partisan recommendations. In reality, it's a good way to shift responsibility and waste money.Brown could easily leverage the power of the Governor's office and get help form the Secretary of State's audit division to assist ODOT in actually being more efficient instead of wasting money try to convince legislators that ODOT already is efficient. Brown may be concerned that her administration might be viewed as not being hard enough on ODOT. That's a fair assessment, but instead of passing the buck she should just direct her office to scrutinize ODOT more than usual. That's the way you convince Republicans and the public that you care about leading reform.

4. Creating political cover

The whole purpose of this requested review is not to reform the agency, but to assure the legislature that ODOT is efficient. This review is not intended to change the agency, it's intended to change the legislature's opinion of the agency. This gives political cover to those in favor of shoveling more money into ODOT,and makes those who are opposed look unfair. It's not about efficiency, it's about avoiding a confrontation of systemic issues inside the agency.

The Most Competitive Race in Oregon Today

HD 20 Election Results — 2010

Oregon Secretary of State | November 2015

Although HD 40 is garnering a lot of attention as a swing seat, Republicans have failed to capture it the last two cycles. HD 40 tends to get more attention because it has been one of the most expensive legislative races in the state the last few elections. The past performances of the parties have led me to rate the seat at Lean Democrat for the time being. It's not the most competetive seat in Oregon.

HD 20 Election Results — 2012

Oregon Secretary of State | November 2015

A seat that has flown under the radar until recently has been HD 20. It's currently held by Democrat Paul Evans. A few days ago, Laura Morett, a Republican, announced her intention to run for the seat. She's been getting national attention, and was even noticed by the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee (RLCC), a national GOP group that weighs in on state legislative races to help Republicans, noted her announcement in a tweet:

HD 20 Election Results — 2014

Oregon Secretary of State | November 2015

This suggests she's not just another Republican wanting to run for office, but potentially a candidate hand picked by the RLCC and the Caucus to contend for a swing seat. The data suggests this is the most competitive seat in the state. Both Evans and Morett have equal shots at picking up the seat.

Before Paul Evans, HD 20 was held by a moderate Republican, Vicki Berger. In the previous four elections she protected the seat well, handily winning re-election each time. The disaster of 2014 took a couple of seats thought to be solid Republican, and revealed them to be swingy suburban-rural seats where Democrats can compete under favorable conditions (which right now in Oregon is almost all the time). HD 20 is one of them. You can take a look at the results on the right and what happened the last couple of cycles.

Why is this race more competitive than any other? It's because this seat is actually closer in voter registration then any other seat out there. Evans is the incumbent, but by all accounts he shouldn't hold this seat. A moderate to Conservative Republican can hold this seat with 55-60% of the vote even in bad cycles. In a good year for Oregon Democrats (such as 2014) they would be able to pickup a seat like this, but everything has to go their way. In 2014 it did. However, Paul Evans background isn't stellar. Just because it didn't hurt him in 2014, doesn't mean it won't in 2016 or 2018.

The current turnout models favor Democrats in Oregon by 3-5 points at least in even or near even districts. Favorable turnout, coupled with incumbency are the factors boosting Evans and keeping him in this race. It is for these reasons that HD 20 is currently rated Toss Up and is, without a doubt, the most competitive race in Oregon today.

HD 20 Voter Regisration

Oregon Secretary of State | November 2015

Vote Totals in HD 20

Oregon Secretary of State | November 2015

Shields' announcement creates more open seats

State Senator Chip Shields is the first Oregon Senate incumbent to announce he won't be returning in 2017. Before this we'd only seen re-election announcements in the Senate. This will have two major impacts for Oregon politics.

The first is in electoral consequences. Open Senate seats usually result in fairly large chain reactions. Shields' announcement is no exception. House members are always top prospects for open Senate seats. The current State Representatives in Shields' senate district are House Speaker Tina Kotek and Rep. Lew Frederick. Kotek is clearly happy where she's at for the moment (seeing as since she passed up previous opportunities to run for higher office). However, Frederick was clearly aware this was coming since he announcement came 13 minutes after Shields' did. Frederick's senate run will create an additional open seat in House District 43. All of these districts are completely out of reach for Republicans.

The other aspect of this announcement is its legislative impact: Shields held spots on several coveted Senate committees. These will become available in 2017 so we're likely to see some shake-ups in committee appointments as well in 2017.

How presidential campaigns could be putting your data at risk →

“Many of the sites will ask you profile questions when you donate. What is your view on gun control? On women’s rights? There’s a good reason a candidate would want to know that, but what happens when that’s let out?”

It's my opinion that campaigns should be required to post (in plain english, not legalese) what they are going to do with your data before you give it to them. It would be appropriate for campaigns to be heavily fined or even shut down for violating those requirements.

Rules like this are important both for privacy and integrity. Voters should be able to trust that campaigns won't abuse their data, and that trust should be rewarded. This is small way lawmakers could rebuild confidence in the political system.