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| Click: Winning message |
GOP primary election ads show what is forbidden and punished.
Bipartisanship is heresy.
Oregon's rural 2nd Congressional District is considered a safe-red seat. The various Republican candidates got a total of 112,000 votes. The Democratic candidates got a total of 71,000 votes. The incumbent Republican is retiring from Congress, as this blog had long predicted. Four people ran big, well-funded professional campaigns to replace him, with plausible candidates and well done ads.
Their ads were nasty, often funny. They pointed out the problems with each other candidate, and the problems were glimpses of heresy. They reveal what Republican candidates think primary voters want to hear.
Toe the line.
Jimmy Crumpacker entered the race as a blank slate other than his name, so he created what he thought was the ideal candidate for the race, someone who checked the boxes. In an interview with me he told me this Republican primary election was a marketing task, and he expected to win it with the only tool that mattered, he said, campaign money. He said he had lots of it, and could raise more of it, and was going to spend it on ads, and he did.
Toe the line.
Jimmy Crumpacker entered the race as a blank slate other than his name, so he created what he thought was the ideal candidate for the race, someone who checked the boxes. In an interview with me he told me this Republican primary election was a marketing task, and he expected to win it with the only tool that mattered, he said, campaign money. He said he had lots of it, and could raise more of it, and was going to spend it on ads, and he did.
The first job was to teach people his name and make it into a positive. He was a gun-packing, send immigrants packing, Trump backer. Thats Jimmy Crumpacker.
His ads run through a checklist of presumably desirable attributes. He was a hunter. He cut brush on his parents' rural property in the District. He was "a sixth generation Oregonian." He opposed abortion. He was a businessman, not a politician. He supported timber and agriculture.
His ads run through a checklist of presumably desirable attributes. He was a hunter. He cut brush on his parents' rural property in the District. He was "a sixth generation Oregonian." He opposed abortion. He was a businessman, not a politician. He supported timber and agriculture.
He appeared so formidable at first that the anti-abortion Oregon Right to Life made a startling decision to endorse and run ads for Crumpacker, urging anti-abortion voters to focus their support on him as the one best chance to defeat the two-time candidate for statewide office, Knute Buehler. Buehler had displayed moderation on abortion. He was presumed to be the front runner based on his previous campaigns and ability to raise money himself, including from Nike founder Phil Knight. The anti-abortion group feared that votes would be split among the other three anti-abortion candidates, former State Senators Jason Atkinson and Cliff Bentz, and allow the abortion-choice-curious Buehler a winning plurality in a split race.
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| Click: Perry Atkinson: dismayed, betrayed. |
Still, this issue demonstrates an area in which independence is impossible: abortion. To be a Republican in good standing, one must oppose abortion. That means making hardball choices to concentrate votes on a candidate who can best carry that flag. The result is that Oregon Right to Life looks cynical rather than principled. Worse yet, they look foolish. They backed a candidate who lost, while a different anti-abortion candidate won despite their endorsement. And worst of all, by election day, their preferred candidate was best known for being laughably phony. They got conned.
The campaigns all demonstrated a second area of required conformity: Trump-loving. Each campaign mentioned Trump, showed images of Trump, and assured voters that the candidate would personally support Trump.
Knute Buehler had, in a statewide race for Governor in 2018, carried out during the Kavanaugh nomination fight, said he opposed that nomination. In this race Buehler's opponents jumped on that, as well as statements suggesting independence from Trump. Those were fatal negatives. Buehler was described as unreliable, not fully on board with Trump.
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| Click: Anti-Crumpacker ad: He is from Portland! |
Ads opposing Crumpacker mocked him for being a phony, actually a carpetbagger from Portland, with an eastern boarding school education, brand new hunting clothes worn over a button down shirt, a hunting license acquired for a photo shoot, and a history of support for the Portland ballet. Men in tights!
The ads were devastating.
Portland figured into attacks on Buehler, too, with ads taking a clip of a longer speech in which Buehler praised infrastructure improvements that would deal with traffic congestion in Portland. That was enough; he mentioned Portland among whatever else. Traitor.
Cliff Bentz was criticized for bipartisan cooperation with Democrats in creating a tax bill. Traitor.
Jason Atkinson was criticized for working with sportsmen to protect a fishery, and therefore getting kudos from a conservation group. That was the lingering problem for Atkinson. He rode a bicycle. He fly fished. He cared about rivers for fish, not just for irrigation. He cooperated in a coalition to protect a river in the District. He gave off a light scent of being concerned about the environment. Traitor.
Jason Atkinson was criticized for working with sportsmen to protect a fishery, and therefore getting kudos from a conservation group. That was the lingering problem for Atkinson. He rode a bicycle. He fly fished. He cared about rivers for fish, not just for irrigation. He cooperated in a coalition to protect a river in the District. He gave off a light scent of being concerned about the environment. Traitor.
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| Off-brand for a real Republican |
The election results are in: the winner was eastern Oregon former State Senator Cliff Bentz, with 31% of the vote. Bentz was less the winner than the candidate who failed the heresy test the least visibly. Bentz is not wrong on abortion (Buehler), not from Portland (Crumpacker), and not maybe sort of moderate on conservation (Atkinson.)
Crumpacker and Buehler destroyed each other, Right to Life pulled the rug out from under Atkinson.
That left Bentz.
That left Bentz.
2 comments:
Buehler would have made a great SOS, out of which he was arguably cheated, as the state's newspapers almost universally agreed.
He would have made a good governor. Ironically, his opponent ran against Trump, which played perfectly to metro area voters who couldn't distinguish the state from the nation.
This campaign was painful to watch in its tortuous reinventions.
I think Bentz will be fine.
But your detailing of the machinations of the fight casts into further relief how insanely devolved the Oregon GOP has become, from the decades we grew up in.
Here's to hoping Hass holds.
On another note, Peter, you should be taking some fair large measure of credit for the defeat of Lisa Greif. Anyone who did a quick Google would land on your site, which covered it far better and more thoroughly than did the local newspaper (which barely is one).
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