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October 23, 2004

Oregon state district 29 race

My intention coming into this election was to vote a straight Dem ticket because I feel that the Repubs badly need to be slapped down until or unless they reign in the NeoCon wing of their party. Carla and I got to talking about it one day and I mentioned the legislative district race on my ballot. She lives in a neighboring legislative district.

Mary Gallegos is the incumbant Republican running for re-election. And Chuck Riley is the Democrat running against her. Incidently, Tom Cox, the Libertarian who ran a reasonably strong third for Governor against eventual winner Kulongoski and GOPer Kevin Mannix, is the third candidate for this seat. All three candidates have professional and business experience with computers, oddly enough. Although perhaps not too odd since this district is on the edge of the so-called Silicon Forest (Carla's district).

Anyway... Carla mentioned to me that she'd have a hard time voting against Gallegos because she had stood up to the rightwingers in the legislature. That gave me reason to pause and reconsider, since moderate Republicans are who I prefer to vote for most of the time. And slapping down the rightwing is my primary motivation this election...

So I get my ballot and Voter's Guides in the mail and was pondering my choice when a piece of political junk mail arrived. It was from group calling itself Majority 2004 with a P.O. box in Salem. It was an attack piece on Chuck Riley. So I read it. Now... for those readers who haven't been with us from the beginning here, I was and remain a huge fan of Howard Dean. The relevance is that this attack piece on Chuck Riley was all about out-of-state funding sources for Riley's campaign. Normally that would indeed be of interest to me. But I read the fine print and noticed that they listed Dean's Democracy for America as one of Riley's out-of-state sources of funding. So I jump on my computer and go to the DFA website (listed on our sidebar under Links) and did a search. I couldn't find anything about Chuck Riley. But, in any case it wouldn't have mattered. Believing as I do that our political system is seriously Cheneyed up and that DFA is one of the few organizations out there fighting for real change... I took even the accusation of Riley accepting money from DFA as an endorsement.

I guess you could say their attack backfired. My ballot is filled out and in the mail.

Posted by Kevin at October 23, 2004 10:54 AM