Hm, these might be too small. But maybe you can enlarge them. I hope you can read this first one, because it's easily the best.It looks like Goberman ran for State Senate as a Libertarian in 2000. Surprisingly, he was not elected. I think his greatest qualification is "beekeeper" and my favorite line is "Smith has no faith/integrity, ignores, violates, doesn't support and criminal contempts the Constitution and Code of Ethics for Government Employees." His policy statement about crime is pretty good too. "Crimes: Harder punishment." And who doesn't like a democrat who is also a supporter of the NRA?
It also seems like this year there is an increase in the number of people who have included their grade school as a part of their educational background; who "attended" college, but did not graduate; or who took classes at several colleges over a period of many years. I think we're supposed to be impressed by this. But it just makes it more obvious that they are totally unqualified; no one cares that between 1968 and 1985 you took "night class at 8 or 9 collages [sic]," Richard Nathe, democrat running for Representative in Congress from the 5th District.
The best picture is probably Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet) who is running against Earl Blumenauer in the primary. Check this guy out: I may not want him to take Earl's place, but I think I might want to hang out with him. He's just so happy! Also, he has this line in his candidate statement: "Justice for the farmers who cry out to stop the very Peru trade deal that Representative Blumenauer is always bragging about." Hilarious! It makes it sound like he and Earl are neighbors or relatives and every time they run into each other Earl finds some way to bring up his "Peru trade deal" and Joe is just sick of it. Okay, Earl, he gets it: you're real proud. So just shut up about it, okay? Also, did he have to change his name to "Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet)" to get that in the pamphlet? I know that in some states you can only put your name and some guy in like Utah changed his name to "Only Prolife Candidate" and there was a big hullabaloo about whether or not he would actually be allowed to post his statement.
The most insane candidate statement, by far, is Gordon Leitch who is running against Gordon Smith in the Republican Primary. And by insane I mean "completely unrelated to anything that is happening anywhere in anyway." Sure, his picture says "I'm a sweet old man," but the text says, "Who doesn't know what year it is. Where's my pudding? Who opened that window? Where am I?" Oh man, I hope you can read this. It's all about the value of old eagles in 1834. Seriously. If you can't, go look at the pdf. It's page 51 of the Multnomah County pamphlet.For the people who are qualified, a surprising number went to Harvard. It's like everyone from this state who goes to Harvard does so with the express intent of someday running for office. Actually, that might be true. This is not a big state; we can't possibly have that many Harvardites, right? (I don't know what Harvard students are called and the Internet is not yielding useful results. Come on, Harvard; Yale students are Elis - get it together!)
So yes, I hope you have enjoyed this tour of Primary Election Crazy from the state of Oregon. There is nothing I don't like about the democratic process, except the Electoral College, but that's not really very democratic, is it?
