I wonder why no one has brought up the fact that Sumner knew prior to the election that he was gravely ill, a fact that would most probably have swayed the election to Gilbert. I would have thought that the press would have glomped onto that and the atricle would have actually been on a page rather than listed in a column in the back of the paper.

Victor Hoffer ran against me in 2000 for Labor Commissioner He is the nicest opponent I ever had. I used to call him Mr full service He is a lawyer and an ambulance driver.

Vic Gilliam is the older brother of Joe Gilliam, who lobbies for the Grocers. Vic is a former Hatfield staffer who also did a stint at Willamette University in the alumni office (where I first got to know him). He ran for an open House seat in 1988, but lost in the GOP primary. If memory serves, the guy who beat Vic eventually lost to Rocky Barilla in the General Election.

I'm curious to know why Tootie Smith didn't make the cut. She was elected to this seat prior to Mac Sumner. She gave it up to run for county commissioner two years ago. She was the first one, of the six, to file to fill the vacancy. I find it strange that she didn't even make one of the five for consideration.

Ahem...Gee Kari, you might recall the email I sent back in October to you screaming for coverage of this issue on BlueOregon. I even attached a recent, though albeit gruesome image of Sumner as the cancer-stricken placeholder candidate. So what was your excuse?

One way to cover this story was to pose it as an ethical dilemna for discussion and in fact that's how I pitched it to BlueOregon:

"I would like to pose the following discussion question/scenario on Blue Oregon: In HD 18, the Republican candidate, Mac Sumner has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. If he were to win the election, he would never serve a day in the legislature and his replacement would be appointed by the Republican Party, with the final approval of the Clackamas and Marion County Commissioners. The voters of the district have not been informed of Sumner's terminal condition either by his campaign or by the local media. This raises some ethical issues, including whether it's ethical to run for office knowing you are deathly ill and NOT tell anyone." Oct. 31, 2006

As far as covering it as a reporter, one could have simply asked what kind of lung cancer Sumner was diagnosed with and when. A diagnosis of small-cell lung cancer usually means a six month survival rate of less than 15%. The fact that Sumner publicly stated that his primary treatment consisted solely of chemotherapy and not surgery should have also sounded warning bells as chemo is typically administered palliatively for advanced-stage lung cancer. A quick Google search would have clued a reporter to this.

<h2>Finally, there were plenty of folks in Sumner's district - who had run into him in places such as his oncologist's office - who knew the real skinny about his prognosis. True, their testimony amounted to hearsay at the time, but so what? We could have at least been talking about all of this before the election instead of now after it's a done deal.</h2>