For Jeff, being the statesman that he is, working as an effective Speaker IS working the campaign. He is competent. He is efficient. He is effective at holding off the Republicans, yet also working with them.

Novick can only stand around all day long, reading the news reports with Jeff's name on them, waiting for Jeff to fall down on his face... which ain't gonna happen.

Jeff will look good all through Feb. Novick will look feeble all Feb. Jeff wins. Novick comes in a respectable second place.

Great. Merkley and his supporters in legislature are trying to rig the rules to let him take PAC money during the session.

It must be good to be the speaker!

With so many serious issues to deal with, the gamesmanship suggested as a partisan ploy is an asinine prediction. If such immaturity were to occur, the electorate would toss the bums so fast it would be tantamount to political suicide. While no fan of the GOP, I do not believe even the most die hard politico would engage in such sabotage.

Novick can only stand around all day long, reading the news reports with Jeff's name on them, waiting for Jeff to fall down on his face... which ain't gonna happen.

Jeff will look good all through Feb. Novick will look feeble all Feb. Jeff wins. Novick comes in a respectable second place.

Oh, Maria! You couldn't leave well enough with a very positive and appealing first paragraph? I've been saying up to now that while I support Novick in the primary, "if Merkeley wins the nomination I'll put his sign in my yard, send him money, and call all my friends." You, Mitch Greenlick, Kevin at Preemptive Karma, and other Merkeley partisans have managed to change my mind.

Increasingly I'm feeling that if Merkeley wins the nomination, I'll vote for Frohnmayer.

as a novick supporter, i sincerely hope that jeff merkley is able to helm a successful progressive legislative session this year. that is good for oregon.

how that will play out in the senate primary and/or general will remain to be seen. but i wish speaker merkley all the best.

Right On Sue, in case anyone is paying attention, it's not only the Oregon GOP, the national GOP in congress have been exploiting the obstructionist card the entire session.

Since Democrats control both chambers and the governorship, Republicans have every incentive to shut down the session and blame Democrats for government inaction. Embarrassing Merkley would just be icing for the GOP.

(I am not saying that is a good thing).

I like that Merkley is taking his role as Oregon's Speaker seriously. It's important for the legislature to see if annual sessions would be feasible, and the Speaker can have a significant impact on the success of the session. It will be interesting to see what comes from the session. Good bills will benefit both Oregon and Speaker Merkley.

A.Rab--------

It is only "icing" if it causes people who were not going to vote Republican otherwise to vote Republican in 2008. Given the graciousness of Huckabee and the seriousness of McCain, no one should believe that Rove tactics automatically win in 2008.

LT,

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think politics has changed to the point where a political loss does not hurt. If anything, if the GOP can hurt Merkley in the special session, it would be a double bonus for them: they knock Merkley down and Smith does not have to get his hands dirty in the process.

As I said, I hope I am wrong and the GOP lets the legislature get things done.

Do you understand the difference between a federal campaign and a state campaign?

Kevin, do you understand why that's a distinction without a difference? If it's bad for legislators to take PAC donations during the legislative session, it doesn't make a lick of difference whether those donations are going into a state or federal PAC.

Jeff will look good all through Feb. Novick will look feeble all Feb. Jeff wins. Novick comes in a respectable second place.

This is clearly a poorly thought out piece of pro-Merkley spin. Novick will look feeble but still come in a respectable second place. If Novick looks feeble (which is highly improbable) then he'll be trounced and not come in a respectable second place. If he comes in a respectable second place then he would have to be something more than feeble.

Novick's biography and career should make the suggestion of his being feeble utterly preposterous. That's the sort of thing that bias will do to you sometimes. Get's people talking a lot of BS.

Don't state legislators from states that have a year round (or at least annual), professional legislature have the same issues when THEY run for Federal office? I don't really see what the big deal is.

Besides, all anyone in Merkley's situation would have to do if they wanted to allow money to influence their legislative decisions while running for another office is ask PACs to make pledges that they make good after Feb 29th.

Seems like a non-issue to me.

But the original suggestion seems quite reasonable. Look at the partisan behavior in DC. Look at the all the tricks the R's played to prevent Oregonians from getting to vote on M50 (without having to make it a Constitutional amendment). Didn't we have to send the police after the R's when they just walked out and refused to make a quorum? I just hope I don't live to see Democrats do the same. I'm sad to hear about the behavior during Emerging Leaders day. Don't they get that one day they'll need young people to take their place, and the old guard shouldn't discourage the young folks from wanting to participate? I spend a lot of time trying to get youth to feel like their involvement makes a difference, and I am just sick to hear Jenni's report.

"Hunt said the rules also would not apply to House Speaker Jeff Merkley, D-Portland, who is running for U.S. Senate against lawyer Steve Novick and other Democratic candidates. He has a federal, and not state, candidate PAC."

Kari, are you seriously suggesting that Majority Leader Hunt didn't run this past Merkley before agreeing to the deal and making it public? If Merkley doesn't plan to take PAC contributions during the session, why doesn't he just issue a press release saying he won't take PAC contributions?

Which only seems fair since none of his primary opponents are going to forego any PAC money during the session just to keep things fair.

Your view on this is astonishing, Kevin. Steve Novick is not a member of the legislature (remember how you keep pointing out his lack of real leadership experience?). Novick doesn't have a conflict of interest when accepting PAC donations.

Merkley is the frickin' speaker. He has a serious conflict of interest, and the fact that he's running for federal office makes not one bit of difference. Not one. The Democratic leadership pushed for the moratorium on PAC donations during session. Now that rule might hurt Merkley, so they're splitting hairs.

I call bullshit. If Merkley needs the PAC donations so badly, he should step down as speaker and campaign full time. If he's going to be speaker, he should play by the rules everyone else does.

The Oregon legislature doesn't appear to have the authority to curb campaign contributions to federal campaigns.

This is a legislative rule, not a law. The House imposed the rule on itself last session (the Senate did not) and they're planning to impose it again. The House has the authority to set whatever rules it wants on its members by majority vote, so they can choose to include or exclude federal PACs.

Besides, the issue here is not a technical legal one. It is an ethical one. Should legislators accept PAC money during session? Last session Merkley thought the answer was no, this session -- when it has the potential to harm him -- the answer is yes. That should be troubling to anyone concerned about the impact of special interest money on elections.

You can try to minimize this issue, but I'll bet Merkely issues a press release soon saying he won't take PAC money during session. He knows that doing otherwise raises legitimate questions about his ethics and his dedication to cleaning up our political system. If he doesn't, he's just made it that much more likely that Smith wins reelection in November.

Kevin, if the best response you have is to accuse me of being a Novick partisan, then you've effectively conceded the point.

As for beating Smith, what you and Merkley need to figure out is whether you're better off taking PAC money during the session and giving Smith a big old target to shoot at in the general, or forgoing PAC money for one month and maintaining a high(er) ethical standard that can be turned on Smith later.

Here's the ad:

"As speaker, JEFF MERKLEY took money from special interests while he was supposed to be doing the people's business -- at the same time that he was telling other politicians that it was wrong. Is JEFF MERKLEY looking out for Oregon's best interests . . . or his own?"

Without taking sides on whether it is right or legal for Merkley to be speaker and to take campaign donations for his senate campaign at the same time, there certainly will be a PERCEPTION that Merkley isn't being as clean as he should be unless he can make a clear cut case in his favor.

If foregoing PAC donations for one month is "cutting his own political throat", then maybe Merkley can't afford to take a month off from campaigning and should resign his seat to run full-time.

Personally, I don't think Merkley is in that precarious a position. I think he's going to handily defeat Novick in the primary. But I am worried about Merkley vis-a-vis Smith. Exempting yourself from House ethics rules based on an argument that splits hairs between state and federal PACs seems like an amateur mistake. Not to mention that it's just flat-out unethical.

Sure, I would give Jeff the benefit of the doubt.

But would others?

Hmmm, what was that definition?

Main Entry: hyp·o·crite
Pronunciation: \ˈhi-pə-ˌkrit\ Function: noun
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion 2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings — hypocrite adjective

What happens if Merkley as speaker is shown to have some influence over a vote that favors some group and that group, before or after the vote, gives a big donation to Merkley the candidate? Forget the legality or the ethics question for the time being. What will his opponents, Novick supporters before the primary, or Smith supporters before the general election make of that? Hopefully, Novick will be the candidate against Smith and the second part of that hypothetical will prove to be irrelevant.

Let's say that Jeff had taken a huge sum from a Progressive group lobbying against Rightwing death squads and then Speaker Merkley handled some procedure or vote in a manner which could be construed as beneficial to that group.

Kevin: Your point would be valid if it was a Progressive group and the issue was in line with your "Rightwing death squads," but what would happen if the issue voted on was something more realistic and possible promoted by, say, the teachers' union, a business association or other? If it involved the teachers then the anti-teachers and anti-public school brigade would be all over Merkley. If the vote helped some Portland-area group that could be interpreted as anti-east-of-the-Cascades then a majority on this side of the Cascades would be locked into the Smith camp.

There are innumerable other things which they have zero authority to impose regardless of how many vote in favor of it. And one of those things appears to be federal campaign contributions.

Do you have any basis for this assertion? The House imposes ethics rules on itself, which was the vehicle for the original ban on PAC donations that Merkley pushed for last session. What federal law would prohibit a state legislature from imposing ethics rules on its members?

Oh, and before you accuse me of moving the goalposts later on, I should say that it doesn't really matter. Even if you prove your legal point, it is still unethical for Merkley to accept PAC donations during the session. Unless, that is, you don't believe legislators should avoid the conflicts of interest that Merkley -- last session -- seemed to think legislators should avoid.

To bring up an area where sanity has prevailed, I just read this online update.

Judge lets signature-gathering reforms stand

PETER WONG Statesman Journal

January 9, 2008

A Marion County judge has let stand new state requirements for paid petition-signature gatherers for ballot initiatives.

Judge Dennis Graves, in a decision released by the state today, declined to block the new law despite a request from a coalition of groups opposed to the requirements. The 2007 Legislature passed House Bill 2082 after some instances of fraud arose in the petition-circulation process.

“Plaintiffs may continue to conduct their business under HB 2082,” Graves wrote Tuesday. “I further find that HB 2082 constitutes a reasonable time, place and manner restriction necessary to reduce fraud and increase efficiency in the Oregon initiative process.”

The law requires paid signature-gatherers to register in advance, obtain photo identification, submit a signature sample, and undergo training provided by the state Elections Division. It also requires their employers to keep better employment records; a 2002 state law bans the payment of circulators per signature.

Looks like the legislature and not the initiative industry gets to write the rules.

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