Friday, June 1, 2007

What's the Freaking Point?

This is depressing. The DSCC is still looking for someone to run against Gordon Smith for Senator. Steve Novick, apparently, is not good enough. Obviously, the guy has some superficial drawbacks, but I liked him when I heard him speak.

This is who the DSCC is looking at (after all national politicians have turned them down):

* Tony McPeak was Oregon chairman of Bob Dole for President in 1996, Oregon chairman of Oregon Veterans for Bush in 2000, an adviser to Howard Dean and John Kerry in 2004, and is now an adviser to Barack Obama. See Wikipedia for more.

* Randall Edwards was once an aide to Senator Bob Packwood - and his wife, Julia Brim-Edwards, used to be a GOP campaign consultant. Other than that, he's been a reliable, though somewhat moderate, Democrat in the state legislature and in the State Treasurer's office. He's termed out in 2008 from the Treasurer's office, so a campaign may be in the offing.

* John Russell has never held elective office, though he was once the chairman of the PDC. He is presumably a self-funder: He's donated over $160,000 to federal campaign committees since 1996 - exclusively to Democrats. Here in Oregon, Russell and his company donated $25,000 to Ted Kulongoski, $5000 to Ben Westlund, and $5000 to Ron Saxton in 2006. (Sources: here, here, and here.) In 2002, he donated $4000 to Ron Saxton.

That's right...Republicans and Republican donors. Depressing.

1 comment:

maloney said...

fortunately, the D$CC will likely stay out of the way until the primary. while they might still be looking for candidates other than Steve Novick to take on Gordon Smith, they want to "back the horse" that wins the Democratic Primary election.

There's anywhere between $3-5 million that's up for grabs for the eventual nominee (according to popular accounts), and the D$CC won't spend much, if any, of it on anything before the primary. i think Novick's the guy, and the D$CC will come around.