Let's tell the whole story about the dunk tank. The plan was to have me be the one wearing the Ron Saxton mask...

This is so lame, it'll surely turn off younger people, rather than intice them to participate.

If you really want to make something funny, you need at least some humor. Help me out, please tell me the funny part. All I see is Lame and Boring. Yawn.....next!

A Leave It To Beaver rerun sounds funnier, and somehow this sounds scarier. Kool Kids for Kool Ted, huh? Sorry. I'm not buying, biting or -- god forbid -- swallowing.

sounds like a good time to me, a member of the target audience. i'm not sure at what time i'll be getting into portland tonight - how late will this thing go?

For Adam, the event starts at 7 and should run until 9, 9:30ish. To Sally and Boring Stuff, I'm sorry that you dismiss non-traditional campaigning so quickly. Did you read the whole thing? Because if you did, you might have caught that the point is not to be cute or funny, or to be the Kool Kids for Ted (when really, that should be Kool Kids for Kulongoski); the point is that FINALLY, a campaign is willing to put aside predetermined notions about how to campaign in Oregon and a) give a group of politically savvy kids a shot, and b) address that voters in Oregon are not all over 40. Either you are both members of the Oregon political establishment and like to keep things nice, neat, and consistent, or you are just cynical and pessimistic. Again, we'd like to say thanks to the Kulongoski campaign for this opportunity, and we hope that other campaigns--particularly those in college districts--will follow suit and reach out to involve us. Come to our comedy show and you just might see Jim in that Saxton Mask. (Maybe we should start manufacturing those...great for parties.)

Go Dems, Go! Somebody smarter than I am needs to figure out a way to spice up this election, and 3 cheers to those of you who are trying to get the under 30 crowd involved.

I stand corrected on "Kool Kids for Kulongoski," Will, but me a member of the political establishment? Not hardly. But do you not see Kulongoski et al as The Establishment? Your "politically savvy kids" are to my eyes as radical as a communist youth brigade. The rest is as you note, your show in service. I'll await politically savvy elsewhere -- and yes you can accuse me of being cynical.

http://www.tedforgov.com/2006/08/pizza_beer_poli.html About 200 people showed up. You can read a bit about it here, but as someone who was actually there I'd like the record to reflect that it was a tremendous success. Hopefully we will have the opportunity to do something like this again before the election; stayed tuned, and try to participate if you can in the future.

Wish I had heard of the dunk tank idea!!! I'm Ron's older cousin, and I would have gladly volunteered, as our looks are very close!! Even though he's my cousin, I want to see him LOSE this race- Oregon cannot afford his kind of leadership.

Fantastic, truly fun event. Now return to work immediately.

Who is the intern on the bottom right? Cute!! I remember seeing him on election night. Can this be a dating site too? wink

Well, funny you should bring that kind of thing up: stay tuned this fall for a sub-site of TedForGov.com focused on the interns--an InternsForTed.com without the extra bandwidth. We should have that up in a couple of weeks and it will be a fun place to check back to during the campaign. We're going to keep it updated with fun videos, behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, maybe we can add some sort of dating feature. Hey Intern, you can see another picture of him here: http://www.tedforgov.com/2006/08/pizza_beer_poli.html. I forwarded this link to him, and who knows? You may just get some sort of a response. But your idea is good, and we may just steal it for the Interns for Ted site. Check back to Ted For Gov in a couple weeks.

Message to "Hey Intern!"

Email me! I'm single - [email protected]

~Mike

As a 22 year old liberal-leaning voter, I consider myself part of the target audience for last week's 'Interns for Ted' Slice of Comedy night. I attended the event and I can say that while mildly entertaining, it did very little to excite me about Governor Kulongoski.

I'm certainly not going to fault the Interns and the Kulongoski campaign for using pizza, bear and a few second-rate commedians to entice young voters to attend the event - heck, it got me to go - but what I was very dissapointed about was the lack of any attempt on Governor Kulongoski's part to actually engage the young audience in anything remotely political.

Early on in the evening, Ted was introduced and given the mic and a chance to address a whole room full of young voters, and potential volunteers and supporters. What did he decide to do with his time? Tell us all about what he has done and plans to do to support young people, to set us on a path towards a future we can be proud to inherit, to help our failing education system, make sure we have adequate funding for our university system, protect the environment, set us on a path to a sustainable energy future, etc., etc., etc.? NO! What he did was use his few minutes in front of all of us to tell a lame joke about getting his hair cut at a salon in east Portland where the stylists cut hair in the lengerie. Nothing about his policies, nothing about why we should vote for him, nothing about what he has done or will do for us. Nada, zilch.

Ted, my question to you is this? Do you consider us young voters so simple minded that we can't handle even a mildly political message? Do you think this is some high school election and all you have to do is bribe us with pizza and promise us more vending machines in the cafeteria?

ENGAGE US, DAMN IT! That's what young voters are crying out for. Why do you think so many of us sit at home on election day, don't come out to volunteer, and could give a rats ass who wins what race? If you want to get young voters on your side, engage them in the political process, talk strait to them, tell them what you're going to do for them if they vote for you - in short, treat them like just about any other demographic whose support you are trying to gain.

Ted ended up sitting at my table for a short while before his waste of a few minutes at the mic, and failed to use that chance to engage any of us either. When I attempted to engange the governor by congratulating him on his victory on the tougher California-style vehicle emissions standards, I recieved not even a one word response - all he uttered was a kind of non-committal 'ah'. No, "I appreciate it and thanks for paying attention", or "yes, I'm particularly proud of that victory and will continue to work to protect the environment for us and for the young folks like you that will inherit it", no nothing.

So, this young voter at least went away from the 'Slice of Comedy' meeting with a sour taste in his mouth, and with even less excitement about Kulongoski's race for reelection than when I went in. Maybe I'm alone here and the rest of the folks there were perfectly fine with pizza, beer and absolutely no political content. But not me. I'll still vote for Ted, because honestly, with Westlund out, what's the alternative? But I won't get excited about it. And when he wins, I'll do my best to implement his policies on clean and renewable energy (because that's what I do), but I honestly hope to see Kulongoski and his campaign make a better effort of actually engaging young voters. We're smart, we get it, and we honestly want to get involved. We may not have loads of cash, but we have free time and we make great volunteers, and of course we have votes. Talk to us like you care about us, and we just might help you out.

Now, contrast the 'Slice of Comedy' evening with a typical house party for the Bus Project (and I've attended a few now) and you'll see how much better the Kulongoski campaign could do to engange young voters. The Bus Project's parties always feature a short presentation from the Bus and their young staff of PolitiCorp fellows that inspires and enages young voters by showing them how they can become involved, the power and success they can have when organized in key campaigs (9 of 10 senate candidates supported by the Bus Project in 2004 won their races!) and why we should all get off the couch and GET ON THE BUS. The rest of the party can be all fun, or as it typically does, can be a mix of fun and politics, with smart, young and engaged folks talking about their visions of the future and how they want to change the political landscape. These are the future leaders of the progressive movement, and they're looking for a leader to rally behind today.

So, if you want to get involved with progressive Oregon politics and you want to make a difference, head out with the Bus Project on one of their Saturday bus trips to canvass door-to-door in key swing districts in support of progressive candidates. I'll be with them on Saturday helping out Rob Brading against the Wicked Witch of the East, Karen Minnis.

And Ted, we all know you can do better...