You are kidding right?

No mention of Barack Obama winning the Presidential straw poll?

SUNRIVER, Ore. (AP) — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton may be leading in national polls, but among Oregon's Democratic faithful, she's running a distant third to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards.

Obama won a straw poll Saturday taken among attendees of the Democrats' biennial retreat at the Sunriver resort. He picked up 49 votes, just edging out Edwards, who finished with 47 votes. Clinton came in third, with 36 votes out of about 175 votes cast. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson followed with 12 votes and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich had 10.

Obama and Edwards have made campaign stops in Oregon, and Clinton has yet to visit. The state has voted for the Democratic candidate in the past five presidential elections, but by relatively narrow margins.

Glad to read on Jenni's what Greg Macpherson said on M. 49. If anyone saw Kroger there, let me know.

Read the straw poll results over at a post at Beaver Boundary.

Its all good!

Whither the "frontrunner"?

Very interesting subject. I just read the Mapes blog and the AP story in our local paper.

Here is some of what Mapes said:

Mehta's real pitch, though, was for a new Democratic voter outreach program that seems to have been enthusiastically embraced by the Oregon party. The idea is to build a network of a half-million neighborhood leaders who in turn will each reach out to some 50 voters on an intermittent basis over the next year. These neighborhood leaders will be using and expanding on a sophisticated database that tracks individual voters (the Republicans have one of these databases as well, but Mehta said it's not as good at following voters when they move).

Mehta said knocking on doors, the oldest political trick in campaigning, is increasingly becoming important as voters are hard to reach by any other method. TV ads are less effective as people migrate to DVDs, TIVO and the internet. And a third of people under 35 don't have a land line - meaning they are next to impossible to reach by phone banks. Democratic strategists hope that neighborhood leaders will be more closely attuned to the values of their neighbors .............. Trent Lutz, the state party's executive director, said the party plans a major door-knocking drive for the two measures on Oct. 23 that he hopes will also serve as a way to tune up the party's grass-roots machinery.

The AP story by Julia Silverman talked about the Jerome project: block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood looking for an "opinion leader" in every precinct.

It mentioned a goal of becoming more active E. of the Cascades, certainly a worthy goal.

The last paragraph mentioned M. Russo of FP, "the fundrasing committee run by House Democrats".

The next to the last (and sorry, I am typing this from print version, have not seen the article online) paragraph is:

"Winning many elections in such conservative areas will be fiendishly tricky for Democrats, and the party likely will spend the bulk of its money in swing districts such as the Portland suburbs, relying elsewhere on its volunteer corps."

OK folks, here is where the rubber meets the road. For those of you who live in major metropolitan areas (esp. the Metro area), there are lots of Jeromes out here in the rest of the state. In many cases they are people who worked their hearts out in multiple election cycles, only to be told by people on political payrolls that there was a "lousy R to D ratio" or some such rot, so precious resources couldn't be spared for the race they were donating so much spare time for.

In some cases (esp. House Dist. 24 and 59) those "conservative" districts came within a couple hundred votes of electing a Democrat. In some areas (House Dist. 20, for instance) an "impossibly underfunded, doesn't have a chance" first time candidate with only a volunteer campaign manager and not even that for much of the election cycle knocked a well known entrenched incumbent down to a re-elect margin of something like half the number of voters registered outside major parties. How is that a "conservative" district?

Without a guarantee of funding ("the party likely will spend the bulk of its money in swing districts such as the Portland suburbs, relying elsewhere on its volunteer corps" ) why would the Jerome types who got worn out in the last couple legislative election cycles become Jeromes just because the party wants them to be?

Or are Jeromes envisioned as younger people? Are they seen as neighborhood activists? Or former candidates, or local government activists? Assuming such people have the time, why would they want to work on the Jerome project instead of some more organized statewide campaign? And in some areas, such people have friends in both parties. There are a few common sense Republicans around, and if one of those runs the locals who have known that person for years might decide that is the best candidate.

Jerome may be a great idea, but implementation is everything. And will everyone from Yes on 49, for instance, really want to be involved in party politics? Or might there be people who are willing to do something concrete (like specific actions for 49) but have a "been there, done that" attitude about general party or regular candidate politics? Or have friends who are Republicans of the old fashioned McCall variety but who were active in Yes on 49?

It would seem to me that one thing Novick and Merkley have in common is more familiarity with Portland/ paid professional politics than with small town grass roots efforts. If either is willing (on visits to smaller towns) to listen to experiences of those grass roots activists rather than a "this is how politics works, and if you don't like it tough luck" attitude some young staffers have, that ought to get more positive word of mouth advertising than all the money and endorsements could ever bring them.

But it would take an admission that no one in a political office in the Portland area knows what is going on in the counties where Yes on 49 farmers are a big part of the campaign. Is either of them big enough to admit that insider efforts from the 1996 Bruggere campaign to FP over the last several years did not win friends and influence people downstate? That friends of those downstate candidates thought games were being played at the expense of someone who is not just a legislative candidate to them but an old friend?

If either Jeff or Steve can explain to downstate audiences what mistakes they believe were made and how they came to understand that downstate folks don't see politics the same way Portlanders do, that person would deserve to win the primary. The US Senate nominee is second only to the Presidential candidate on the top of the ticket. It deserves to be someone who understands that over 30 counties in this state have Democratic activists who don't like Portlanders explaining it all to them--to the point of making jokes like DPO stands for Democratic Portland Organization.

Kevin, the national polls are reflecting her name recognition. Where the real campaigning is going on and people are getting to know the candidates up close, as in Iowa, it is a very very close race.

Andrew, as I am on the Polk mailing list, I know that. Maybe Steve or one of his supporters could post something about that meeting. Was he asked questions he hadn't heard before? Were there people in Polk County worried about Frohnmayer being a spoiler? Or were there concerns ranging from Iraq to impeachment to Measure 49? Was there a lot of talk by people other than Steve in Polk or Wheeler about Jeff's 2003 vote on a resolution?

About Steve's birthplace, many of us were born somewhere other than where we now live. But how many people would say "Portland political establishment" if Steve's name is mentioned, and how many would know where he was born?

By the same token, how many people think Gov. Ted is still the same person he was when he was a legislator from Junction City? How long has it been since Dr. John Kitzhaber has lived in Roseburg?

I attended the Summit and taped many of the speakers.

Here are just a few. They will all eventually be here: www.washcodems.org video Gallery

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3848995611300565658&amp;hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed> The Red and the Blue Gordon Smith - Exposing a red senator in a blue state. Bill Bradbury talks about Gordon Smith.

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5184894716855447622&amp;hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed> Breakfast with Congressman Earl Blumenauer at the Oregon Summit

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-3360575467829350339&amp;hl=en" flashvars=""> </embed> Senator Ron Wyden Addresses the Oregon Summit

For all of the videos look here: www.washcodems.org video Gallery