Three vie to lead Oregon Republicans back to power
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — It's a tough time to be a Republican in Oregon.
Relegated to the margins of power, the Oregon Republican Party will get a new leader next weekend to take a fresh stab at putting the party on a path back to relevance.
The GOP hasn't won a statewide race in a decade, controls just one of five congressional seats and is now in the minority in the House and Senate. The party didn't recruit candidates willing to run for treasurer or attorney general last year.
Five candidates are running for chairman of the state GOP, and attention has focused largely on three of them: A former two-time congressional candidate from southern Oregon, a two-time legislative candidate from Portland and the Clackamas County GOP chairman.
They all agree that something has to change, that Republicans have to do a better job communicating their ideas to the voters. But their ideas for how to do that are different.
"You can't win with just Republican votes," said John Lee, chairman of the Clackamas County Republican Central Committee who is seeking the statewide chairman's job. "The people are with us on the issues. Now we have to get them to be with us when there's an 'R' behind the name."
Lee is running on the strength of the party's success in Clackamas County, which has been a rare bright spot for conservative ideas at the ballot box. Republicans now have a majority of seats on the county commission, and voters have sided with the conservative position in several local ballot measures regarding light rail and a new tax to pay for a bridge replacement.
The party needs to do a much better job defining Republicans on their own terms, rather than the Democrats', he said. But it also needs to get much better at the nuts-and-bolts of campaigning. County operations need good training and coordination so they're being effective and not duplicating their efforts, he said. And the vast array of organizations that believe in Republican values — the party, legislators and conservative political groups — need to coordinate their message and speak from the same page.
He's said he'd try to raise enough money to be paid a salary so he could focus on the GOP effort full-time — a position his rivals have criticized.
Just under a third of Oregon's 2.2 million registered voters are Republicans, and they're outnumbered by Democrats by 190,000.
Making up for that disparity will require an army of volunteers, said Suzanne Gallagher, a former legislative candidate now running for GOP leader. The state GOP needs to find creative ways to reach new volunteers and motivate them to reach out to friends and neighbors.
She says the party needs to rally around an economic question: "Who's money is it?"
Gallagher ran for the state House in 2004 and Senate in 2012 from districts that heavily favored Democrats.
"Did I win the race? No. But I did win a lot of people to our way of thinking," Gallagher said. "That's what we have to do as an organization. We have to get more bodies. I'm a body hunter, that's who I am."
The next chairman will be selected Feb. 2 by 118 members of the state GOP Central Committee when they meet in Salem.
The winner will serve a two-year term through the 2014 election, which will be headlined by races for governor and U.S. Senate. Republicans tend to do better in Oregon in elections that don't feature a presidential contest and the higher voter turnout that comes with it.
Republicans have a more-difficult message to communicate than Democrats because the GOP asks voters to take a long-term view, said Art Robinson, who has twice unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio and is now running for GOP chairman.
"The whole country has drifted toward an era of big government and overspending, and difficulties that I think come about by not limiting our government to the jobs that it really does well," Robinson said. "The people of Oregon have been a part of that."
The Republican soul-searching isn't limited to Oregon after President Barack Obama's re-election victory in November and a failed effort to retake control of the U.S. Senate.
Still, the GOP has had some especially frustrating defeats here. In 2010, when an anti-incumbent wave propelled Republican candidates into office, it stopped short of Oregon, where Democrats retained all four U.S. House seats they controlled and Republican Chris Dudley was narrowly defeated for governor. The GOP picked up enough seats to tie Democrats in the state House, only to lose four of them in 2012.
"The whole country has drifted toward an era of big government and overspending..."
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Welcome to 1981.
I am sorry that Chris Dudley has left our state. I appreciated his attempt to govern our state. I am still reeling from my fellow Oregonians choosing John Kitzhaber instead.Â
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There is nothing anyone can "DO" if Oregonians refuse to elect in credible leaders like Mr. Dudley - but shake our heads and remain hunkered in for another four years - because that is ALL we can do.Â
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I do not understand nor appreciate how the GOP can possibly find fault with backing Chris Dudley. He was the right candidate for the time. And the party needs to never, ever regret his nomination and his honorable run for that public seat.Â
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If only Dudley had won... if ONLY Oregonians would vest themselves in leaders not owned by public unions and elitist status quo special interests entrenched in Salem - that arrogantly don't want change. Ever. Or solutions. Or fiscal solvency and government transparency.Â
 @englishdaisy Dudley had lots of rhetoric, but no solutions. If the Republicans want to win, they need to put out candidates with lots of real detailed plans and information. Talk (Rheotic) is very cheap. Details are what is needed.
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I'm sorry, Democrats. It's not your inability to accomplish your goals that bothers me, it's your ideas themselves.We've become a state controlled by unions, and the effects are clear at places like Mt. Hood Community College, the Portland Police Department, the Clackamas school district, Occupy Portland. (Union cops working overtime while the SEIU donates support to Occupy Portland and then city pays union workers $16,000 to refurbish a bench and $5000 to pressure wash the sidewalk. At the Steel Bridge protest, all of the cops were union, all of the protesters were pro-union, and everybody else had to find another way to get to work downtown or to defend themselves.)
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And if a Democrat governor decides he doesn't like the way we've chosen to defend ourselves (capital punishment) he'll have his way with that even if the condemned agrees with the public. By the way, I'm a flight instructor and scenic pilot and if I suck at my job, people die. Most flight instructors live in poverty, but, I don't personally know any poor teachers or professors and even -they- complain about how you can't fire the bad ones. So get off your high horse; we all have difficult jobs to do.Charlie Hales (D), Mayor of Portland, says: ""Military-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines have no place on our streets. They are designed to kill large numbers of people quickly, and they have no other use in civilian hands," and then equips his civilian private security with them while his liberal counterparts in DC and California write similar exclusions to protect gun ownership for themselves. Judging strictly by your words, you intend for your civilian security contracts to kill large numbers of people quickly after the rest of us have given up our guns. Why don't you equip the courthouse guards with muskets or revolvers? What are YOU afraid of, and why shouldn't we be prepared for whatever it might be as well?I saw the train construction in Portland today. They outright admit that it will lose money and cost taxpayers somewhere around ten million dollars a year after revenues just to operate, while friends of mine have to fill the potholes in their streets themselves because the road looks like something out of a war movie.
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I'm sorry. I gave you a chance and wished you the best of luck when you won elections whether I agreed with you or not. We could really use your nonpartisan support to stop idiots like Cuomo and Feinstein from outlawing good people's property and hoarding rights for their police state and themselves, but, it doesn't appear to be going that way.
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I'm disappointed, and I am forced to consider voting for the Republicans in the next election. In any case, I won't be voting for Democrats.
 @Playanekes Just think, if we can keep the "stupid party" out of office for a couple more decades, we just might be able to fix all the damage they've done.
 @correct That's exactly why we need to get the Democrats out of office. Â
 @correct "and all-out efforts to block whatever the Democrats would like to try"
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That's because Democrats do things like ban guns in the hands of veterans while writing exemptions for themselves, and being such knee-jerk halfwits that they accidentally ban their own police force's weapons.Democrats do things like send women into combat because it seems like the fair thing to do, but they don't have any problem maintaining the male-only Selective Service while hollering for equal rights.Democrats demand legalization of weed to end the War on Some Drugs, because Prohibition Failed, and then try to tell me that Prohibiting Some Guns will somehow work better. But the biggest problem is that the Democrats official mascot ought to be kneepads, because they kneel and beg at the whim of unions and crazy liberal kids with guns.
 @Playanekes Today's Republican movement revolves around harmful ideology, and all-out efforts to block whatever the Democrats would like to try. That's why it's the "Stupid Party". Six hundred years from now, when political science students in Dubai are studying the fall of the American empire, there will be much discussion about the role immaturity, subversion, and duplicity in the Republican party.Â
 @correct  @Playanekes lol, Democrat run state, and you manage to blame Republicans. I'd say your dumb as dirt, but that would be an insult to dirt.
 @correct  @TreeWizard Focus. He said the Democrats are running the state.  ie, THEIR ideas are the ones that aren't working. Y
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You just checkmated yourself. Well done, Tree.
 @TreeWizard  @Playanekes Your ideas? #notworking
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 @Fed up Fed I don't know that a majority support organized labor, after all, participation in unions shrunk from 11.8% to 11.2% over the past year. 1 in 10 certainly isn't overwhelming support. I'd also like to point out that while Fox is an undoubtedly right leaning news channel, the left has essentially every other media outlet to support their viewpoint. MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NPR, CBS and on and on. I listen to most of these media outlets on a regular basis, including FOX, so before you cast stones...
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Incidentally, both parties are in bed with corporate America, and, both create and distribute propaganda.
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Take care sir.
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 @Fed up Fed I can't dispute the polling data. The pro-union sentiment is strong, yet, Wisconsin re-elected Gov. Walker despite his anti-union legislation. I would think if unions were so highly supported, more effort would be made by the workers of this country to unionize. Perhaps card check legislation will pass this term despite opposition from both parties in President Obama's first attempt.
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Incidentally, I support the right of the worker to unionize with one caveat. Public employee unions should have no right to strike, it's not a level playing field.
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 @Fed up Fed Bias is subjective, so, how can one properly provide factual evidence? Is it the softball questions President Obama receives on a regular basis, or, the lack of coverage of certain stories. Hard to say. NPR, yes, presents both sides of the story on occasion. Under reporting and omission are certainly all media use to slant perception.
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I don't think any source can truly be unbiased, well, except for the McLaughlin Group. I love that show.
 @Fed up Fed Fed up Fed - who is the face of the GOP?Â
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Who is the face of the DEM party? Be careful there - how you disparage individual Oregonians on either side of the political aisle.Â
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We remain two party aligned in this state. RIghts protected and justly able to critique it all - as freedom to speak Americans.Â
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Just because Oregonians are elitist dem controlled does not mean that is "good" for our state or credibly WORKING for our state. All that means is a majority of Oregonians vote in dems. That's all. Far from suggesting doing so - is what is best for this state - all we know - is Oregon is a dem controlled elitist state. And that's about it.Â
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 @Fed up Fed I agree that the Republican Party is out of touch with America.  They care more about giving tax breaks to the rich then any other issues.
@MFMFIM @Fed up Fed You are watching to much liberal news media. Republicans are no different then any one else in this state. We stand for a strong national defense, small government and good family values.We love our country just as much as you do. We are afraid of a government that will take and take and eventually over run us. Take a good hard look at history and the dictators that have gained to much power. Think for yourself and don't be so easily led. "the bigger the lie the more people that will believe it"..
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 @Fed up Fed  @Torino_v2 ...and then we get a Hugo Chavez but somehow I think Portlandians would be ok with that.
 @Fed up FedI find The Economist provides good, outside the wall perspective. Anyhow, I digress, I think we've both made our point.
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Thank you for the discussion Fed, I enjoy it. Take care.
 @Fed up Fed Forgive me, the Democratic Party. I have to agree, the word Democrat makes me immediately think distrust. But then, so does Republican.
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Thanks for the advice about Fox, and don't worry, I don't believe much I see on any network. Like I said before, I digest news from many different sources. Actually, CNN is one of my favorites, Erin Burnett in particular, very easy on the eyes. Yes, Buffet proclaimed he wanted his taxes raised, along with the others who make far less than he does. He can pay more in taxes and doesn't, why? If he is so coddled by the billionaire friendly congress, what's stopping him from putting his money where his mouth is?
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Be careful about your sources as well, they might just be telling you what you want to hear :)
 @Fed up Fed I also forgot, the Democrat party is not a party of the rich, but rather, the ultra-rich. Out of the 20 richest Americans, 60% support Democrats. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison to name a few.
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http://www.debt.org/faqs/americans-in-debt/economic-demographics-democrats/
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It really gets my goat that Warren Buffet was advocating higher income taxes when he knew he wouldn't be paying them, I found him to be very disingenuous. Even though the investment income tax went from 15% to 20%, it's half the amount those in the 39.6% bracket now pay. I'm not affected, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
 @Fed up Fed I have long supported preferential voting, which, is the same if I'm not mistaken. My main complaint with the two party system is it prevents substantive change. I suspect only 30% of the electorate supports either party platform wholly. The only thing more important to a party maintaining their power, is maintaining the others. They may not agree on much, but, I guarantee they agree that a third or fourth party is in neither of their best interest.
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Can you imagine how fast the R's and D's in Washington would coalesce to defeat any attempt to implement preferential voting?
 @Fed up Fed
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The Republican party lost me when I realized they are not the party of small government, but small government rhetoric. Does anyone remember how much the federal government grew under Reagan? They're all talk on spending, and they try to push a religious social agenda, no thanks GOP.
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The Democrat party lies, just about different things. We don't have a spending problem, right? Are you comfortable with how large the federal government has become under the past five administrations? I'll be honest, it scares the crap out of me.
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Both parties are as crooked as a question mark and I can't stand either of 'em. Gary Johnson should have been included in presidential debates, he presented a real alternative. We need to start fighting them and stop fighting each other.
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Sorry, but I'm grouchy this morning.
It would be wonderful to have change, but don't worry Democrats and Republicans the general voting public will keep voting in the two parties that have been in control and running this country into the ground for decades;-)
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Keep fighting over gun and birth control, because those are the issues that really matter to most people!!! Who cares about the economy, feeding, sheltering, and clothing your families. God forbid that we have guns or pills out there that can kill our kids when many are living on the streets starving to death and politicians don't pay any attention to that. I know, this is the America that will send money away to all those poor kids over seas, but ignore those on our own streets.
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LOL, I'm not sure we can get our priority's straight. Go back to watching your "Reality" TV.
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Anything would be better than the Democratic path of destruction we have been on. Our State/Nation can not afford more Democrats in power.
Every Democrat should cross his/her fingers that Art Robinson wins.
NO! NO MORE REPUBLICANS! NO MORE DEMOCRATS!
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Let's get some AMERICANS in office for a change.
 @Mikey We're there. It's time. We gave the parties their chances, each had control, both just left things worse off than when they got there. The corruption in government has started to fossilize into something that is going to be much harder to remove.
 @Mikey Gary Johnson and the Libertarians have some great ideas, you should look at them.
@Mikey I hope you are referring to those who believe in being a part of the nation rather than party!
Becoming irrelevant is a understatement. The Republican Party is a scattered circle **** caught between their more moderate, reasonable past and the religious fundamentalism and social extremism of their current incarnation. While the classic mantra of âsmall governmentâ remains party dogma, in truth, their misguided insinuations into reproductive politics, LGBT equality, and other personal elements of social policy have made transparent their selective use of the word âsmall.â Thereâs a narrow-mindedness there, a mean-spiritedness thatâs reflected in their media spokespeople from Rush Limbaugh to Bill OâReilly to Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. Itâs a party tangled in the past, run by âold, white menâ so deeply entrenched in outdated paradigms, blinded to the true nature of America, that theyâve become increasingly less relevant as America continues to evolve past its sepia toned beginnings.
@noneofyourbizzness ........do you watch and listen to those people very much?
@Rob C 503 Yes sir.I listen to everybody,left,right and center.
 @noneofyourbizzness I hate it when people say "I never listen to them. They lie!" HTF do you know if you're not listening?I like to see how they play off of each other. Lars Larson is dead wrong on pot but not too far off on most things. It's the talk radio arrogance and angry-white-man-on-the-radio syndrome (not Eminem) that I think is what's so toxic. I believe in small government, and I always vote for personal liberty to those who aren't hurting anybody. And anybody who's ever had an affair or a divorce doesn't need to preach to me about the sanctity of marriage, either. That's makes me more conservative than the Republicans, IMO. Cheers.
@noneofyourbizzness .......good on ya. Wish more people did !
"back to power" ???? When were they ever in power in this state?? Way to many socialists and social engineers to permit that !
The problem is not comminicating their ideas. They do that quite well. The Republicans have two problems, really. First, their ideas suck. Second, they think if they just "explain" them better, people will get sucked in and like them better. This at the same time they are fighting gay rights legislation, passing laws requiring transvaginal unltrasounds, making life miserable for immigrants so they will "self deport," busting unions, tryhing to pass "personhood" legislation that wouldn't even fly in Ohio, Oklahoma, or even Mississippi. They try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that it was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Probably, given the numbers, the only way that could work is to let Multnomah County become its own state!
@jpk Cool! We'd get two senators and probably 2 reps just for Mult County.
You'd probably need foreign aid too, for all the state tax money presently wasted in and by Multnomah County! LOL
@bikegeek That's only because of the population density in Multco. When considering that the rest of this fine state doesn't agree with the liberal bent of Multco's residents, then there is a problem!
@jpk In fact the rest of the state lives off the taxes paid by Multnomah county. We get back about 70 cents on the dollar for revenue raised were as the more rural districts get back about 1.20 back per dollar.
@jpk ......and move it to Cuba or China. Nah, they wouldn't like the food!
Art Robinson is the clear choice. He wants to abolish paper money:Â http://www.artforcongress.com/issues/sound-money
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Like one of the also-rans said: "The people are with us on the issues. Now we have to get them to be with us when there's an 'R' behind the name." The people of Oregon clearly hate paper money. Art understands this. He'll be able to help the people get over their strange aversion to the letter "R" and embrace the policies they so obviously love.
@Max Quinn Those of you that hate paper money can send it to me. I like it OK.
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 @Mike Smith The Democrats are a lie too  FACT
 @Mike Smith Just like Obama's promised transparency right? "War" end yet? Get your "Change"? The only thing that's happened is the Great Recession......
@oops @Mike Smith Well, gee. One war is over. The other is ending (we may be out of Afghanistan by the end of THIS year). And maybe you have forgotten who took a $300 billion a year surplus, stated the goddamn wars, ignored any and all regulations that might have prevented the recession? The economy tanked (right! effing tanked!) under Bush. It was growing when he took office, and at the end was shedding 700,000 jobs a month. And the Repbulicans? Well, they just fought everything he Obama wanted to do, even if they had liked it before. The Republicans, who have obstructed everything, met the very night of his first inaguration and decided that, no matter what the White House put forward, they were against it. And that, no matter they had championed the same ideas before. " Like what?" you ask. Well, like national health insurance with an individual mandate. Like cap and trade. Like climate change legislation. Like paying the bills that Congress has authorized. And oh, so much more.
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Yes, but Obama ran on ending the war right away in 2008?!? They're ending now, after many years, on the timeline the past president said they would end;-)
@noneofyourbizzness .....ain't that the truth!
@Rob C 503 No, but he is to blame for stuff he did while he was President. That would include squandering the surplus and starting two wars without paying for them.
@Rob C 503 Obama gets blamed for everything under the sun.
@Mechanic ........ah, the George Bush excuse. I wonder if he's to blame for Pearl Harbor and the cracks in my sidewalk too?
@oops @Mike Smith don't forget one of the bigger lies...... no tax increases on those making 200k or less
@Rob C 503 tax rates on dividends and Capital gains should go up. There is no reason they should be taxes at half the rate of other forms of income.
@AmiM yet many of those companies cutting ours while claiming they can't pay healthcare are posting massive levels of profits. Seems like they have plenty of money to pay healthcare, they just refuse to because they're too blind to see how healthy employees make a better company.
@Mechanic .....oh really? Withholding didnt go up? Tax rates on dividends and Capitol gains didnt go up?
 @Mechanic Obamacare IS a tax, and yes, we are paying higher taxes because of it. Many people are also having their hours cut and losing heath benefits because (non union) companies can't afford the cost of doing business under the Obama administration. That is truth.
@kramr Not a lie. He tried and got it done. Income tax rates have not gone up on anyone earning less than $200K. In fact, payroll tax rates(Medicare and Social Security) went DOWN for two years over Republican objections because it didn't affect the billionaires enought! Talk about lies, you promulgate them like there weren't enough out there already.