The problem with political gluttony.

Denise Krause can breathe a sigh of relief.

Her opponent, Brad Hicks, went negative and contradicted his own campaign message.

He sabotaged himself. 

It's the problem of having too much money.

I am writing again about the Oregon Senate District 3 race between Democrat Denise Krause and Republican Brad Hicks.

What is happening here has analogs that made national news: the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where Elon Musk gave million-dollar checks to people who backed his favored candidate, and campaigns this year where lavish AIPAC spending hurt the candidate it was meant to help. This week President Trump released three campaign videos starring himself, paid for by that deepest of all pockets, the U.S. taxpayer. These, too, are backfiring. 

The money keeps pouring into the Hicks campaign. One Republican PAC, of the dozens funding Hicks, just gave another $250,000, bringing the total of it alone to $649,000. But I sympathize with Hicks' problem. People he knows send him checks, and they expect him to use them. Some are small checks, at least by Republican standards: $500, $1,000, $5,000. Some are personal checks of $25,000 and more. It would be an insult to decline the generosity and a second insult to take the money and not use it. 

So Hicks spends it. Of course he does. It is too much and too good to resist.

He spent the first half-million or so of this plentitude on a false but almost-plausible message: that he was an independent, bipartisan candidate, a former chamber of commerce CEO. Most chambers of commerce are, in fact, careful to avoid overt partisanship, but this local chamber under Hicks' leadership was the exception. It operates a PAC to help Republicans. The record shows Democrats need not apply. Hicks is an excellent Republican. That isn't an accusation. It is the record. 

Still, a half million dollars claiming bipartisanship probably shaped some impressions among voters. Few people check campaign finance reports.

Denise Krause's campaign aired an ad saying Hicks and his corporate and Republican PAC sponsors were squeezing people. I thought the ad leaned too much on out-of-date Hicks quotes, and I discouraged her from running it, but I may have misjudged its value as bait. It worked.

Hicks immediately began airing an avalanche of nasty, partisan ads of the familiar negative variety: ugly black-and-white photos of Krause and Democratic Governor Tina Kotek set to spooky music, resolving into bright sunshine, happy music, and a smiling Hicks. I have seen lots of these ads. After all, the Hicks money is pouring in and must be spent. 

First this

Now this.

The new ads contradict the first ones, creating a new meta-message for local voters: The Mr. Nice Guy, bipartisan Hicks we were introduced to was a phony. It was typical politician BS. He is revealed to be a Republican street fighter, as partisan and nasty as Trump. The takeaway is that Hicks is just one more Republican brawler, now exposed by his own campaign. Yuck.

My advice to Hicks six weeks ago was to give away most of the money to Southern Oregon University. I knew he would not take the advice. Hicks may have two million dollars by now, and this is a tiny media market. He has a weapon too good not to use. We are going to see what a brute-force campaign can do. That is self-defeating. The received message of a gigantic brute-force campaign by the Republican party is brute force itself. And the Hicks campaign has turned brutish. 

Hicks' money made Krause's case for her: If you like what Trump has done to our politics, you'll love Brad Hicks. This is a light blue district at a time when Trump's GOP is at a low ebb of support. She could not have made that case stick on her own. No one would have believed it coming from her. Only Hicks could do it, by doing it to himself.

Irony is not dead.

I urge readers to check my work. Go to the Secretary of State's website and see where Hicks gets his money, and what his Chamber of Commerce did with its own money. It is the opposite of bipartisan. Click the "Campaign Finance Transactions" tab on the left, then enter his Campaign ID, 24485, in the box. To see whom the Chamber PAC supports, enter Campaign ID 5067.

You will see.

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