Jeff Golden and Jessica Gomez

Two good candidates.

Conscientious. Well-informed. Compassionate. Articulate. Ready to work with others. Respectful of each other.

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Southern Oregon voters are getting something unusual: agreeable people in general agreement, running for the same office.

This won't please everyone.

I watched Jeff Golden and Jessica Gomez, the Democratic and Republican candidates for the Medford-Ashland State Senate District, in a joint appearance on a local live streamed program, the Real Estate Show. 

The host started by asking them how their campaigns were doing.

Gomez: "It's been great. I've been getting out, talking to so many amazing people, knocking on doors, being out in the community, getting a sense for what people are really struggling with, and what are the amazing things that are happening."

Golden: "Jessica is right about this. What this is supposed to be about is a lot of dialog, a lot of discovery about what is going on in people's lives. It's not supposed to be about great big money, not supposed to be about big fancy ad campaigns. It's supposed to be about engaging with people you're asking to represent."

That is how it started. That is how it stayed. They talked about forest fire smoke and forest management, the changing climate, the mistakes of past forest management, and the value of bipartisan groups working to find practical solutions. They talked about the opportunities and problems of cannabis cultivation, its effects on neighbors, its use of water, its need for a state bank. They talked about property taxes, real estate transaction fees, and systems development charges, which affect housing affordability. They talked about homelessness and the need for state and local governments to find some way for small, affordable housing to get built.

The two candidates glided over contentious ground on issues that tear apart the legislature and dug-in lobbies. Is climate change real? Do we need a carbon tax? Should we be cutting more old growth? Who pays to manage forest understory? Should cannabis be legal? Should licenses to grow be allocated by the state? Should rent control be legal? Should system development charges be assessed on tiny houses?

Neither one brought any of these issue up. 

What is going on here is a confluence of two big facts. The first is that they are both friendly, agreeable people indisposed toward conflict. The other is that they generally agree politically.

Jeff Golden

Isn't that good? Not to everyone.

Golden has been a forceful advocate for progressive, anti-war, environmental politics for 50 years, but his manner as a radio and talk show host has been an earnest search for common ground. Can't we all get along? That creates its own problems, put on display in the Democratic primary, where the upstate lobby groups decided to back and fund a newcomer--Athena Goldberg--who was willing to ally themselves with them and their issues. Not Golden. They weren't looking for common ground. They want to win big on their issues and there are hard partisan positions. 

Golden comes across as more of a mediator than a warrior, and he wants to be independent of those lobbies, and this will likely show up in his general election fundraising. He expects to be significantly outspent.

Gomez has a different problem. She doesn't sound like the Republicans we see on TV. The current tone of the Republican party nationally has moved toward the Trump-Tea Party-populism. GOP voters rejected cordial Main Street Chamber of Commerce small town Republicanism. GOP orthodoxy is for abortion to be ended, immigrants here illegally to be deported, Medicaid reduced, protection for pre-existing conditions ended, the social safety net scaled back, and estate and corporate taxes reduced. 

Gomez does not appear to be that kind of Republican. Local political provocateur Curt Ankerberg nearly won a primary election against her, notwithstanding debilitating political baggage and relentlessly negative media coverage. She isn't your standard issue Republican warrior, and Ankerberg said so. 

Some people think she isn't even a real Republican. After all, she gets along well with Jeff Golden.

Jessica Gomez

Isn't this all pretty great for Southern Oregon? We may well be treated to a good information-based campaign and we get to choose between two good people. And isn't Jessica Gomez exactly the kind of Republican many people think the Oregon legislature needs more of, people who look for common ground and bipartisan solutions?  

Yes.

But I have one huge concern. Gomez is in a vulnerable position. There has been a pattern in this district where the upstate Republican State Senate PAC has produced its own ads to "help out" the GOP candidate, offering up the hard hitting red meat attacks the presumedly squeamish political newcomer won't do, but should do, in their opinion. So they do it. Their concern is not the long term reputation of their candidate. Their concern is winning the election, whatever it takes. Their ad campaigns in past cycles badly damaged the reputations for candidates Jim Wright and David Dotterer. They entered the campaigns as community leaders. They ended them looking like dishonest politicians, manipulated by their own team.

Jessica Gomez comes across as nice, which makes her a likely fit to the GOP Senate PAC's profile of the neophyte who needs "help." Jessica Gomez has already established herself as an appealing community leader and she has great potential as a candidate, now and in the future. But her fate is not in her own hands. Her political allies can ruin it for her, and that would be a shame.