UPDATE: Independent candidate for Congress in Oregon's 2nd District

Mark Roberts is on the ballot for Congress.

The League of Women Voters thinks he's a candidate.

He has some strong opinions.  It makes him interesting, but it doesn't make him a candidate. 

Mark Roberts

Voters in southern and eastern Oregon will see three names on the ballot for Congress in November. Greg Walden, Republican. Jamie McLeod-Skinner, Democrat. Mark Roberts, Independent.

Voters will have heard of two of the three of them. Who is this Mark Roberts fellow?

Roberts calls himself a Medford-area trucking executive, a conservative, an expert wind surfer, and someone "focused on replacing dated and ineffective leadership with fresh ideas an a  pragmatic common sense approach. Pledged to voters throughout the state to write definitive Oregon Federal legislation that proliferates quality and prevailing wage jobs."  That is from his campaign Facebook page.

He has a website with complex descriptions of his positions on energy and forest issues and more. He says solar and wind power are expensive, taxpayer ripoffs, and unsuitable as base power because they are unpredictable and expensive. He says nuclear power is the future, and that we can retrofit coal generation plants with new generation nuclear plants.

The League of Women Voters have invited him to participate in the Candidate Debate. They set criteria of campaign viability and Roberts met their standard for a viable campaign. This is the sole third-party evidence his campaign is real beyond the fact that he got onto the ballot by running unopposed on the Independent Party ticket. Roberts says he is eager to debate. "We can nail down why his forest work has produced zero in 20 years. Ask specifics like the Blue Mountains Resiliency Project. . . . and why he doesn't like to show up in person anywhere."

There is no word yet over whether Walden will appear. 

A page on Mark Roberts Website

Is Roberts a real candidate?  

I think not.

He isn't a candidate because he is not using his various political positions and ideas to build a political movement. 

It could have been different. Early in the campaign there was some potential that Roberts would get out there, make some points, and effect the campaign.  

Roberts has opinions, many of which would have found an audience. The traditional view is that solar and wind power are great. He shows evidence of their limitations and expense. He offers up details on nuclear power's potential as a non-carbon source of base power. There is an audience for anti-carbon voters concerned with climate change to give him a close look. I see no evidence that he has reached out to them--or to anyone.

Roberts demonstrates an important point about politics. It isn't primarily about ideas. It is about eliciting engagement with those ideas by people who will spread that message and identify leaders. Robert didn't do that part of it.

He is a prolific tweeter. He is direct and pugnacious in style, and his tweets get an audience of 2,000 followers. Example: two days ago he tweeted "Oregon listen up and listen good. When a candidate offers you a solar panel or wind farm walk away, it's proof they haven't done their homework. It's just not that simple to replace caseload energy."

On August 23 he poked at Jamie McLeod-Skinner, saying he wrote a guest view opinion "putting the ignorance of our Dem contender @JamieforOregon on full display for the Mail Tribune but they didn't accept it." He linked to what he wrote on Facebook where there is a long comment about Oregon fuel taxes and truck mile use taxes. Click Here.

If he has a campaign there is no money trail, and contributions and expenditures are required by federal law to be reported. So I assume there is no money received or spent.

In-District media is ignoring Roberts. He undermined his credibility with a diversion into tweeting that Melania Trump was a prostitute, then making comments many read as anti-Semitic about people who criticized him. That got national and international news coverage, but not much notice here in the District, even though the focus of national media was on a local candidate for office. Strange, but perhaps explainable by an editorial conclusion that Roberts was simply not remotely serious as a candidate, and therefore a story about the misadventures of a tweeter troll isn't newsworthy. In-District media considers covering candidates, not tweet provocateurs.

His presence on the general election ballot shows an opportunity for future political activists. Simply filing for the position as an Independent may put someone onto the general election ballot. A candidate with strong views on one or two single issues might file, have a clear path to the nomination, and then run a real campaign that has an impact. I can imagine a candidate with an anti-abortion or "Stop Climate Change" or a strong message for or against guns getting votes. Such a candidate might put real pressure on either of the two major party candidates to match those views on the issue, or else lose portions of their base. The power of the Independent Party is leverage. They may not be able to win an election, but they could determine who loses an election, and thereby who wins it.

That is power. Roberts did not do that. Lacking a pre-existing base, he needed to get out there and market himself and his ideas. He stayed invisible,. It is too late for him to shake a million hands--the tactic suggested by his website name--but it isn't too late for him to spend serious money to broadcast a serious message. This is the season when people begin paying closer attention.

As it stands now, I expect him to get a few votes from "a pox on both Parties" voters, but to have no effect on the outcome of the race between Walden and McLeod-Skinner.