Jamie McLeod-Skinner ambushed Greg Walden. She challenged him to hold some debates.
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| Wanting a debate |
Oregon's 2nd Congressional District may get finally get a face to face comparison between the candidates.
Bend Bulletin: "She did what a plucky, determined candidate should do."
Jamie McLeod-Skinner walked up to Greg Walden while he was stuck in a car at a parade in Joseph, Oregon and she challenged him to a debate. He said he would have his campaign look at it.
Her campaign said, "An incumbent who is proud of their record should not be hesitant to defend it in a debate." Asked whether McLeod-Skinner has heard from Walden, her campaign answered, "nope." Walden is getting editorial pressure to debate, Click. Bend newspaper, but debates create a dilemma for a candidate like Walden, so they may not happen.
He stopped doing town halls or other public appearances in the District. Too many of the wrong sort of people were showing up, people who opposed his efforts to end the ACA. The optics were of a congressman under siege by his voters. A debate would be formal and polite, but that, too, creates a problem. His work to abolish the ACA put him into conflict with what he had been saying in town halls about the Medicaid expansion that gave health insurance to the working poor and was a lifesaver for rural hospitals. Plus, he had spoken repeatedly about the need to protect people with pre-existing conditions. In Congress he helped lead the GOP caucus to abandon those positions. There is a record to defend.
A debate leaves him open to someone directly confronting him: You abandoned your principles. Worse, you abandoned your District.
Debates put candidates side to side as peers. Voters can comparison-shop. A powerful incumbent would want to be understood as a giant surrounded by trivial aspirants, not peers. McLeod-Skinner will be hugely outspent and in an advertising war that image of big vs. small is confirmed. But in person she presents as a person of significance, a smart, knowledgeable candidate. She looks determined. She sounds certain. She speaks forcefully. She seems authentically District-based. She has popular issues--health access, pre-existing conditions, the Tax Bill, Klamath water, and The Swamp. She isn't a trivial aspirant.
And Walden is vulnerable.
She has an overarching story to tell that rings true to many people because it fits what is well known and undeniable:: Walden has become a big shot in DC. The question is whether he has been thoroughly captured by The Swamp. She says he has been, and makes his seniority and campaign donations a negative. Nice guy went bad. Power corrupts. He represents big pharma, not Medford. He represents Comcast, not Bend. He represents health insurers, not Pendleton.
Walden, in his ads, tells the different story. Same old Greg Walden, concerned about veterans and opioids.
No one confronts him in the ads. A debate is different.
He stopped doing town halls or other public appearances in the District. Too many of the wrong sort of people were showing up, people who opposed his efforts to end the ACA. The optics were of a congressman under siege by his voters. A debate would be formal and polite, but that, too, creates a problem. His work to abolish the ACA put him into conflict with what he had been saying in town halls about the Medicaid expansion that gave health insurance to the working poor and was a lifesaver for rural hospitals. Plus, he had spoken repeatedly about the need to protect people with pre-existing conditions. In Congress he helped lead the GOP caucus to abandon those positions. There is a record to defend.
A debate leaves him open to someone directly confronting him: You abandoned your principles. Worse, you abandoned your District.
Debates put candidates side to side as peers. Voters can comparison-shop. A powerful incumbent would want to be understood as a giant surrounded by trivial aspirants, not peers. McLeod-Skinner will be hugely outspent and in an advertising war that image of big vs. small is confirmed. But in person she presents as a person of significance, a smart, knowledgeable candidate. She looks determined. She sounds certain. She speaks forcefully. She seems authentically District-based. She has popular issues--health access, pre-existing conditions, the Tax Bill, Klamath water, and The Swamp. She isn't a trivial aspirant.
And Walden is vulnerable.
She has an overarching story to tell that rings true to many people because it fits what is well known and undeniable:: Walden has become a big shot in DC. The question is whether he has been thoroughly captured by The Swamp. She says he has been, and makes his seniority and campaign donations a negative. Nice guy went bad. Power corrupts. He represents big pharma, not Medford. He represents Comcast, not Bend. He represents health insurers, not Pendleton.
Walden, in his ads, tells the different story. Same old Greg Walden, concerned about veterans and opioids.
No one confronts him in the ads. A debate is different.
The invitation letter said that to be eligible candidates would need to meet objective criteria to show they were a credible candidate, via being on the ballot, having campaign staff, having a media presence with position papers and campaign appearances. Walden and McLeod-Skinner have active campaigns. I have seen no published information on whether Independent Party candidate meets their standards. His campaign Facebook page is dormant. A Google search reveals no campaign speeches or activity. The website Opensecrets.org has no information him, which implies either that he has not raised or spent money or that he has not filed required reports. Not a good sign.
The League of Women Voters criteria were created to give them a basis for excluding nuisance or vanity candidates. The presence of the Independent in the debate might be a significant benefit to Walden. He would be able to group McLeod-Skinner in with the Independent candidate and act dismissively about the whole assembly of opposition.
McLeod-Skinner's best shot would be a two person debate. But Walden is a thorough professional and he understands the optics and risks. His best approach may be to beg off, or perhaps to agree to a debate only on the condition that the Independent candidate be involved, to complicate the event if it takes place.
Walden can avoid a debate without looking absent. We hear him on the radio, advertising heavily. "This is Greg Walden and I approved this ad." It isn't a debate.
Tomorrow: a closer look at the Independent candidate. He has been making national news.
[A note on comments. I am now moderating comments. Too many people were posting anonymously, including Curt Ankerberg who submitted disruptive trolling wisecracks. I urge people who wish to comment to own their own comments by signing them.]
2 comments:
Curt Ankerberg had good ideas, his message for the school board was consistent. Getting teachers out of management, it's too bad his personal inability to connect with people will insure that his message never gets out. In the alternative the same is true for Jamie McLeod. The Democrats had a good candidate in Dr Neahring but instead they chose someone with a record of having no record other than getting fired in 3 months from her public job in Phoenix. In the meantime she's still harping on national issues that would only affect people if there was some way to pay for them. America is broke, Oregon is broken. Running around and crying about Walden's failures to provide for our citizens without any solutions is like pissing into the wind.
Regarding the above comment:
Ankerberg's problem in my opinion is not that he has an "inability to connect with people." He connects, but does so using nasty ad hominem insults. I decided his comments, and the ones he stimulated, were turning the blog into an insult pit. I urged Ankerberg repeatedly to get his own blog, where he can write vividly and use whatever vulgarity or insults he pleased. Ankerberg is why I now monitor comments. He would not stop sending insults and wisecracks.
If he files to run for a public office, many of the people he has "connected with" have saved screen shots of his own words--words that will be more harmful to his political ambitions than are the Mail Tribune's discussion of his tax problems. Ankerberg's writing is interesting to read but his insults are hard to respect.
Peter Sage
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