Oregon Governor Campaign Ads: Democrats

TV ads don't tell us what candidates believe.

TV ads tell us how candidates hope to position themselves.

We get impressions from TV ads. There is nothing in a four-second statement saying, for example, "We need to fix the problem of homelessness" that tells us what an officeholder would do--if anything. It is political babble. No one will remember the comment because there is nothing to remember. A TV ad like this, however, would draw attention:

On the day I take office I will direct the state police to remove every tent and RV on public property in Oregon within ten days, using bulldozers if necessary. We will reclaim our sidewalks and parks. Some of the people we move out will finally go into treatment.  Good. We have treatment facilities available. Some will just complain and leave the state. Bye. We have indulged them too long.

 A Democratic candidate wouldn't run that ad, but it would get noticed. Many people would complain that it is too harsh, that living under tarps in parks is a human right, that people are too addled by drugs to move. There would be an uproar. People would remember the ad and the uproar.

Trump did something equivalent to this when he announced his campaign: "They don't send their best. They bring drugs. . . ." 

The ads of leading Democratic candidates for governor are inoffensive. They say mushy, anodyne things. If they have any impact at all it will be with the lingering impression they leave.

The intended message of Tobias Read's ad is that he is discontented with the status quo. He supports "real change" and Oregon can "do better," the narrator says. 

https://youtu.be/qrcCAUDKKrw

The ad is illustrated with sweet photos of Read looking casual and relaxed. There is typical Democratic narrative about community. Read supports lifting up Oregon families, whatever that means. He supports affordable child care, and universal pre-K. Nice. Read suggests he will clean up the homeless encampment problem because "we help the homeless get into stable housing" as if doing that were easy, or even possible. The ad essentially has no content beyond the fleeting impression that Read is an easy-going guy who favors change and the nice things Democrats wish we could afford. It is pie-in-the-sky, but it is change. Or would be, if pie were free.

The Tina Kotek ad leaves a different impression. She isn’t taking my unsolicited advice. I had suggested to her that she position herself as a change agent. Instead, her ad proudly takes credit for Oregon government. "Just look at what she's done as Speaker of the House," the voice-over says. The ad says those good, progressive things are because she is so tough and effective. Kotek says to the camera, "It's one thing to talk about the problems. It's another to make the tough calls to actually get things done."

https://youtu.be/IKLa2oW9xag

I had shared my opinion with Kotek that casual voters might conflate Kotek and the current governor, Kate Brown. They are both Portland women in late middle age, neither are heterosexual, and both are unabashedly progressive. They have about the same policy positions, as far as any voter knows. Kotek's ad has a progressive feminist vibe, with women making straight-to-the-camera endorsements. It leaves an implication and impression of women in leadership: “If you like Kate Brown, you will love Tina Kotek.” 

Am I trivializing these ads? I suspect the two campaigns would think so. After all, I am saying the denoted content of the ads flies by unnoticed. But each ad leaves an impression. For better or worse, here is what I think sticks:

Tobias Read: Nice easy-going guy, says he will change things. No real answers.

Tina Kotek: Another feminist from Portland with a progressive agenda. Same as now, but more and tougher. 

[Note: I have contributed approximately similar amounts to both campaigns.]

     

Jared Kushner versus Hunter Biden

"Peter, you are wrong: Kushner's corruption is worse than Hunter Biden's. Way worse."

The comments rolled in.

Some said that yesterday's blog post misunderstood addiction and its affect on family members.

Most of the comments said I was wrong, wrong, wrong to compare Hunter Biden to Jared Kushner.

One of the first comments I got was from a college classmate, Steve Wolfram. 

 I agree that it should not be the responsibility of Democrats to defend or seek to excuse Hunter Biden.  Yes, he should be cut loose politically.

But I would not put him on the same plane as Jared, as Republicans will no doubt seek to do.  

Wolfram

Hunter never had his hands on the levers of power. He exploited his proximity to power and the appearance of power.

 What we are learning about Jared is far worse.  He shaped policy in favor of a foreign leader by exercise of the very real power conferred on him by his position within the Administration and proximity to his father-in-law and he now appears to be pocketing a pay-off that has all the hallmarks of having been agreed with MLB at the time in exchange for Jared's critical help in getting the murderous Prince off the hook.  

I think we need to be very clear on  the vast difference in  gravity between the two cases.

Steve has lived in Paris for the last three decades. The building over his right shoulder holds Napoleon's tomb. Until his recent retirement he worked as a lawyer in the field of cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He follows U.S. and French politics.

Most comments from college classmates were along the lines of Steve's. They emphasized the different moral and legal responsibilities of people holding office from those of private citizens. No one minimized the mess Hunter Biden has made of himself. They recognized that he got job opportunities because of his father. But his is a kind of garden-variety private-citizen sleazy nepotism, where businesses likely hoped to get indirect benefit by association with the family of a powerful person. As a private person, Hunter Biden has the right to drink himself to death and to seek employment where he can. He is free. 

Kushner is different. He was in government. He was the face of the U.S. in negotiations with Saudi Arabia. Kushner gave cover to the Saudi government at a time when its international standing was under heavy fire its having murdered and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bragged that Kushner gave him CIA intelligence--"here are your enemies"--before his "corruption crackdown" that rounded up suspected rivals in the royal family. The Saudi government's having hired Kushner's new hedge fund, over the objections of their own money management professionals, looks like a payoff. Hunter Biden got a job paying $50,000 a month to decorate a board, which looks sleazy. Jared Kushner's firm gets over $2,000,000 a month. There is a difference in kind and in quantity. Kushner's sleaze is public, direct, and huge. Hunter's, in comparison, is pathetic. It's chump change. 

With Mohammed bin Salman

Kushner's deal exemplifies the worst of the revolving door of holding office then cashing in. We see the pattern: Congress to K Street, top military rank to defense contractors, executive branch to the speaking circuit. Kushner shows yet a new, even more lucrative, way to cash in: Brand a hedge fund and get really paid.

I agree with those comments.  Kushner's corruption is different and worse than Hunter Biden's.

A majority of comments I got were on a different topic completely, and most were sent to me privately. They made the point that my casually saying Joe Biden should "cut loose" his son Hunter misunderstood the family dynamics of parents with addicted children. It was complicated, they wrote me. A family member's addiction affects everyone in the family.

I agree with those comments, too.

The real point of my blog post yesterday was that Democrats should not feel they need to defend Hunter Biden, whatever the severity of his addictions and sleaze. Fox, Trump, and the MAGA world try to make Hunter the alter-ego of his father. Democrats implicitly confirm that if they close ranks around Hunter. It is OK for Democrats to condemn Hunter Biden's messes. Isn't that "ceding ground" and giving in to MAGA? No. It is the opposite. Hunter Biden is only ceded ground if Democrats claim him as part of its team. It is OK for Democrats to say that Hunter Biden messed up big time. He is a sad case.

Jared Kushner's behavior isn't just sad, though. It is dangerous.

Cut Hunter Biden loose

Democrats should admit it: Hunter Biden is a sleaze-bag and an embarrassment.

He is no better than Jared Kushner.

Joe Biden knows full well that Hunter is a miserable mess. He has seen it up close. The alcohol. The drugs. The multiple relapses. The marital messes. The paternity suits. It must give Joe Biden heartache. 

Joe Biden has seen the way Hunter landed cushy jobs and corporate board seats. He saw the wheeling and dealing in China and Ukraine. Hunter is part of the "swamp" of influence, connection, and alliances that connect government, K Street, and Wall Street. Trump criticized the swamp in his 2016 campaign. It is one of the things he got right. Hillary couldn't criticize the swamp. She got paid $300,000 to make speeches for Goldman Sachs. She was part of the swamp. And so was Trump, but he had a story to tell. He said he knew the swamp very well, so he knew how to drain it.

Hunter Biden soils the reputation of democratic government. He represents crony capitalism, the special privilege of the elites, and corruption tolerated at the very top. Hunter Biden soils the reputation of Democrats. He soils the reputation of the news media which contextualized Hunter Biden as unfairly targeted by people trying to get at Joe Biden. Democrats can complain that Hunter's messes are an exaggeration and that Fox News cherry picks, but the cherries are there to be picked. Hunter Biden is the swamp, and Joe Biden doesn't stop him. 

Kushner is married to Donald Trump's daughter. Although Kushner lacked any apparent experience in foreign affairs, Trump gave him a senior role in managing America's foreign policy. Trump's national security advisors cautioned that Kushner had suspicious business dealings with foreign businesses and governments. Trump needed to over-ride them to give Kushner the secrecy clearances he needed.

We have just learned that Jared Kushner established a hedge fund, a new venture for him. Kushner brings his set of connections to the enterprise. Against the recommendations of Saudi Arabia's own financial professionals, the Kushner firm got Saudi Arabia as its first big client with a placement of $2 billion, and a sweet asset management fee of 1.25% per year: $25 million a year. Kushner had represented the USA in arranging a multi-billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia in the immediate aftermath of discovery that Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered a Washington Post reporter. That was a big, controversial deal. Trump ignored the murder. Saudi Arabia was grateful.

This is the swamp. Favors. Relationships. Pay-backs disguised and sanitized by work contracts. Hunter Biden brought his negligible expertise in oil to Burisma. Kushner brought his negligible expertise in hedge fund management to Saudi Arabia.

Joe Biden has an opportunity. He could cut Hunter Biden loose. He could announce that nobody, including family members, get special consideration, and that if Hunter Biden broke the law he should face the consequences. He could get in front of the hearings we will certainly see if the GOP regains control of either legislative chamber. If Hunter is found guilty and spends time in prison it would be a welcome symbol of justice and the rule of law.

I don't expect Joe Biden to do it. He loves his son and won't condemn his swampy behavior. Nor do I expect Donald Trump or Fox News or any Republican candidate for president to condemn the cronyism and nepotism Jared Kushner represents. It's too close to home.

There is one group of people who could condemn Hunter Biden, and should. Democrats.  A Democratic candidate for president could say what everyone knows, that Hunter Biden is a mess and his business deals stink. Say that if he broke laws he should be prosecuted. Joe Biden won't like it, but Democratic voters will. Joe has an excuse for his blindness. He is a father. He should have put the country first, but he didn't. Shame on him. Democratic officeholders don't have that excuse.

Let Republicans stick with their team and defend Kushner, Eric, Ivanka, and Don Junior, if they insist.  That group is indefensible, just like Hunter Biden. A smart Democrat will lead a call to drain the swamp. That starts with Hunter.

[Note: to get home delivery of this blog by email every day go to https://petersage.substack.com The blog is free and always will be.]

COVID: Fall back or spring ahead.

Oops. 

I got my hopes up and let my guard down.

Last Wednesday, four days ago, I attended a large indoor banquet. No one wore masks. I have regrets. 

The Southern Oregon Historical Society held a gala announcing plans for a new event center in downtown Medford. By Southern Oregon standards, especially now, after the two-year reset on the meaning of "business casual," it was dress up. Most men wore coats and ties. For the first time in two years I saw familiar people face-to-face in a large gathering. It was a fundraising event with donation-priced tickets and then a charity auction. Pre-COVID, I attended about eight of these a year. 

There was crowding at the silent auction bid sheets, but the event center is a commodious meeting room with 30 foot ceilings. The dinner tables were spread out. We were seated comfortably with friends at a round table that could have held eight. There were six at the table. 

Officeholder speeches, here Pam Marsh

Mentally, I gave a big sigh of relief to being at a gathering. We were back to normal. COVID had downgraded to a rarity and a mere nuisance. No one wore masks. Why should we? COVID counts are way down and I am vaccinated and boosted, as is everyone I know. 

Then, Saturday night, another welcome event: The Roosevelt-Kennedy Democratic dinner. It is a 70-year tradition. Back when Oregon was one of only a few states with primary elections, the annual gala drew Democratic presidential aspirants. John Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey and a dozen other senators had been keynote speakers. This, too, was dress-up. Half the men wore neckties. 

Again, it was a big banquet room. High ceilings. Lots of air. This time there were eight of us at tables. No one wore masks. Why should we? We are Democrats. Of course we are vaccinated and boosted. 

On January 16, three months ago, I had attended a Republican gubernatorial candidate debate held at the local country club banquet room. I left immediately after I saw that out of a hundred people in the room, with the exception of a woman who said she had lung cancer, I was the only one wearing a mask. 

It was so careless of them, I thought. Omicron was everywhere in January. Hospital emergency rooms were backed up. Hospitals were cancelling surgeries. Public service announcements pleaded with people to get vaccinated. Republicans were responding with "Let's go, Brandon." My blog post describing the event called it a "chicken pox party," an obvious, maybe intentional, superspreader event. After all, they were activist Republicans, proudly announcing on bumper strips that vaccinations were tyranny. 

That was then. Everything changed. The two-year winter of our discontent was over, it appeared. Maybe everyone who could get COVID got vaccinated or got the disease or both. It is spring. Free at last.

Now this. On Sunday I read that a recent gala event in D.C., crowded with 600 Democrats, generated over 60 new COVID cases. Ten percent! Yikes! Then I learned yesterday that two of the people at the Historical Society event, people I had greeted warmly, tested positive for COVID. 

So now we are turning the calendar back into the long COVID winter of discontent. Once again, gatherings represent danger. I have meetings planned for later this month. I expect to go to a college class reunion in June. There will be 800 of us there. Once again, I mentally run through a calculation of risk and reward. Maybe it is back to masks. Or Zoom. 

Or maybe I just stop worrying and assume that I and everyone else will get breakthrough COVID the way I used to get colds, once or twice every school year. It was an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. If people with "Let's go, Brandon" and "Resist Vaccination" bumper strips on their cars get COVID and die, it's their problem, not mine. My COVID will likely be nothing a Tylenol won't fix. After all, I'm boosted and will happily keep getting boosted--whatever it takes.

But maybe not. I hear stories about "long COVID" and long-term organ damage, and sometimes symptoms are serious, especially for people my age. I am seeing break-though cases after people gather. Everything is different again. 

For two glorious springtime weeks, I was carefree. Now I'm not.

Democracy and authoritarianism

     "America stands at a crossroads between democracy and autocracy, and the split is about 50/50."

           Constance Hilliard

Today's Guest Post argues that it has always been that way, back to the beginning.

Hilliard

College classmate Constance Hilliard sent me an email that caught my attention. It was on a subject this blog addresses frequently, the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. She said that Trump's authoritarian is nothing new in America. A significant number of Americans have never accepted the idea that all people were created equal or should have equal economic, social, or legal status.  An autocratic governance preserves inequality. Democracy puts it at risk.

 
I had primarily understood Constance Hilliard to be a student of history and genetics, particularly as they relate to Americans of African heritage. She earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in African history and Semitic historiography. She is a professor of evolutionary African history at the University of North Texas. 

She devoted her early career to tracking down and translating handwritten manuscripts from Timbuktu and other centers of learning in the region known as the Western Sudan (modern day Mali, Northern Nigeria and Chad). Her interests evolved. 

She pioneered a sub-field of ancestral genomics. This methodology brought answers to some of the most troubling and persistent health issues in the African-American community. This group suffers a 75% rate of hypertension, which all too often led to kidney failure. Her research showed that their ancestors occupied the deep interior of West Africa, known to be one of the most sodium-deficient regions in the world. These communities evolved gene variants that allowed their kidneys to function on 200 mg/sodium/day. However, in the U.S., African-Americans consume the national average amount of salt, 3,400 mg/sodium/day. No wonder they struggle with chronic diseases tied to sodium metabolism: They consume 17 times the amount consumed by their ancestors. She told me her research 

led her to examine other genetic maladaptations. These include  new details about the low rates of osteoporosis in Black Americans and their high risk of some aggressive cancers related to calcium over-consumption in ancestral environments.

Guest Post by Constance Hilliard

Democrats are not too smart. We live in a fantasy world of our own making. My view is that America stands at a crossroads between democracy and autocracy, and the split is about 50/50. As to how we got here, that is easy. We never stepped away from it. In two-and-a-half centuries we haven’t budged a bit. Of course there have been all manner of social changes in our society. But what didn’t change was the fact that the democracy advocates shared power with the authoritarians. And sometimes the latter even took the lead. How else would we have ended up behaving in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, like a slightly more charitable version of Putin? 

The democracy created by our founding fathers was a beautiful construct, in an artistic and intellectual, rather than realpolitik sort of way. The half of the American population that never believed in representative government or even the rule of law lived off slavery for half our history. Their privileges were protected. The South in fact won the Civil War with no land redistribution for the former slaves, with Jim Crow, lynchings, and discrimination within every sector of society.


The only reason we’re now faced with Trumpism and the anti-science craziness of right wing Christians is because, as with the Civil War, our authoritarian side is horrified by the prospect of their white privileges fading into egalitarianism. Having a Black president woke them up. But we Democrats on the other hand pretend that our democracy is so solid that we should keep pushing for bipartisanship with fascists.

Women's Sports

Platonic Forms: We have mental categories that define the essence of something.

Sometimes the reality on the ground doesn't easily fit our mental boxes.

We all know at a glance the difference between a cat and a small dog. A three-year-old child can do it. Apparently it is a hard problem for a computer. 

When we are faced with a Captcha challenge and asked to click examples of crosswalks, we are doing a task that separates humans from computerized spam robots. We humans know the difference between crosswalks and the stripes on a running track. 

The recent Senate hearings to confirm Judge Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court coincided with the controversy over swimmer Lia Thomas. Republicans say crazy ideology-burdened Democrats want to claim Lia Thomas is a woman when she isn't, not really.  "Can you define a woman," was a "got-cha" question posed by Senator Blackburn. 

Lia Thomas, left. Riley Gaines, right.

Lia Thomas and University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines tied in a recent swimming contest. Gaines protested that the playing field was unequal. "This is not OK and it's not fair," she said on Fox's Tucker Carlson show. The outrage! The elites!

The issue is a perfect wedge issue for Republicans. It pits Democratic support for women's empowerment, signaled through respect for women's athletics, against Democratic support for Americans with non-traditional gender and sexual orientation. The issue splits the Democratic coalition. Better yet for the GOP-Fox-Christian nationalist side in the culture wars, there are a lot more women than trans-gendered people. Moreover, the trans issue splits the LGBTQ community.  

Lia Thomas may be uniquely un-sympathetic as a transgender athlete. We have not seen her lifetime of struggles, only her triumphs now competing as a woman. The first-glance male/female assessment of Thomas does not mark her as obviously binary and female. Democrats who defend her right to compete as a woman have the problem of definitions and mental boxes. Sometimes they conform easily with what we see. Sometimes not.  

I have family members who compete in high school athletics, specifically women's cross country and track at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, not far from Nike headquarters. The runners are superb. They are well coached. There is enormous esprit de corps among the athletes. High school athletics offers opportunity for healthy competition, team bonding, self-discipline, goal setting. 

But I noticed something when I looked at a scheduled race.  In a world of political spin, "alternative facts," and massaged data I observe this bit of simple, unadorned data. Here is the seeding for a recent contest in the 1500 meters. 

Among these elite athletes, the 15th fastest male is 15 seconds faster than the fastest female.

Public policy is in transition. There are hard cases, and those become politicized and famous. Gender transition is being worked out in athletics, in bathrooms, and in law. Democrats need to be careful not to take a simple knee-jerk position of opposition to the Ted Cruz-Fox-GOP talking points--easy to do because Republicans are, after all, being so nasty about this. One wants to take the opposite side. If Democrats fall for that temptation they let the cultural right frame the debate. A better, harder strategy is let policymaking be guided by realities and data. Democrats will fail if they try to sell a definition of gender--a Platonic form--that defies a reality on the ground. 

Stripes on a running track might confuse a computer into thinking it sees a crosswalk, but it doesn't fool a human. We know a crosswalk when we see it. Or think we do.

[Updated. It was Sen. Marsha Blackburn, not Ted Cruz, who asked Judge Brown to define "woman."]

Oregon Campaign for Governor: Democrats

We are getting clarity now. Nick Kristof cannot run. He's out.

That leaves two choices for Democrats: Tina Kotek and Tobias Read

At a distance, they both look about the same. Tina Kotek and Tobias Read both have good experience in government. Kotek has been Speaker of the Oregon House. Read is the State Treasurer. Both are liberal Democrats. Both are from the Portland area. They are both compassionate, earnest liberals, concerned about homelessness, poverty, justice, policing, climate, and wildfires. They are both part of the educated, urban, diversity-conscious, blue-state political mindset that shapes the modern Democratic party. I suspect they would vote identically on nearly every state or national issue put before a legislative body. 

The Oregon primary election is May 17, less than six weeks away. The two remaining candidates are establishing different brands.

Tina Kotek

Tina Kotek "owns" the overall reputation of state government. She has been central in shaping it. She presents herself as a tough, effective go-getter, a progressive Democrat. She sponsored and shepherded into law forward-thinking, controversial legislation. Oregon protects abortion rights. Oregon makes voting easy and voter registration automatic. She sponsored a law addressing housing availability by ending single-family zoning in Oregon's cities. She advocated for a controversial cap-and-trade energy bill.  

I observed Kotek at an event in Ashland. She was asked about two embarrassing failures of state government, the fact that Oregon is the slowest of the 50 states to have TSA-ready driver's licenses, and the Oregon Employment Department's delays in delivering emergency unemployment checks during the COVID shutdown. Her response was that it wasn't her department, since she was in the legislative, not executive branch of government. She said that some changes should be looked at. I considered the answer an important "tell." It was a softball pitch for such a skilled and articulate politician. It was an opportunity to denounce bad administration wherever she see it and to share the frustration felt by all Oregonians, undoubtedly including Governor Kate Brown. She appeared not to want to be critical. After all, she is on Oregon government's team.

I told her one-on-one that I thought her answer made her look like an apologist for an unsatisfactory status quo. It is OK to fire and replace people who do a job poorly, I said, especially when the error is on Democrats. There is no need to defend bad government. She nodded and said she will handle a question like that differently in the future. I can accept a "yes" answer, and maybe she will adjust. But the incident revealed to me her first instinct and mindset. She is a loyal part of Oregon's Democratic-led government and the logical successor to Governor Brown. She represents continuity.

Tobias Read

Tobias Read talks about change. He framed the two-person race this way:

“Continue the status quo in Salem or vote for Tobias Read, someone who isn’t afraid to confront the urgent challenges we face in Oregon.”

His positions on issues do not strike me as markedly different from Kotek's--or Governor Brown's. Both Read and Kotek say homeless encampments in Portland are a dangerous eyesore and cruel to the people encamped. Read says we need to set up shelters and make campers go there to get them off the sidewalks. Kotek says to set up shelters and try to make them leave. That is a distinction  too subtle for anyone but their campaigns to notice. Read insisted that students be back in classrooms a couple of months before students were, in fact, back in classrooms. It is a distinction now moot. Kotek is politically vulnerable for having pushed the energy cap-and-trade bill opposed by rural Oregonians, but Read's Facebook page promises to "lead the effort to decarbonize our economy." This will not be a differentiator.

However, his new TV ad makes a clear branding distinction, if not a policy one. Without mentioning names he is positioning himself as not Governor Kate Brown, not Tina Kotek, and not the status quo. Watch:

Click: 30 second ad

The choice between the two of them may feel like Tweedledee and Tweedledum to Democrats. Yet both candidates seem to understand that Oregonians are restless. There is a malaise that has settled over U.S. politics, and it is here in Oregon, too. Portland riots and homeless encampments changed the politics of liberal Portland. Even Democrats are frustrated with Democrats.

So far, Read is the candidate better positioned as the change agent. 

[Note: I have made campaign contributions of approximately the same size to Kristof, Read, and Kotek.]