Like I said on the other post, this doesn't have to be about personal dislike between the Vice President and the Governor.

They had a policy disagreement. A serious one. One that led a Senator from Tennessee to write an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that was reprinted by the Eugene Register-Guard.

And as I wrote previously, Gore was wrong. The Oregon Health Plan, when it was fully funded, provided more and better health care to more people in Oregon than traditional Medicaid would have.

Good follow-up questions: Twenty years later, does Gore still think the Oregon Health Plan was a mistake? And does Bradbury agree with him?

Thank you, Mike:

"Good follow-up questions: Twenty years later, does Gore still think the Oregon Health Plan was a mistake? And does Bradbury agree with him?"

If Gore and Bradbury can't answer that question, will all the money they raise (even if it is twice as much as expected) help with voters who want such intelligent questions answered?

So what else is new- Kitzhaber is fixated on fish and cares about poor people when they need to pay a Doctor-

are you kidding with us,horse is dead, you can stop beating it now

I'm sure everyone that took the time to write and submit articles over the last few months, without response, will be delighted that this merited a second post, rather than updating the first.

Besides overreacting to legit questions on the other post, your logic is specious, dude. Yes, some asked if you were stretching the connection or projecting a soap opera. But you act like the fact that identical logic appears in WW means that the charge was baseless. Is it beyond comprehension that you both are doing the same thing? I guess so.

Posted by: sjp | Nov 6, 2009 7:24:37 PM

Maybe Matt Davis can ask them about the OHP. After his remarks about BB's 30-inch kielbasa, there's no way he's not getting into the presser.

Has anyone noticed that Jason Wurster's name means "sausage maker"...and that he is the best examples of the phrase, "politics is like making sausage; it's ugly"?

Man, off topic on this thread is a virtue!

1. Nothing underhanded is going on here; it's just two campaigns each trying to re-frame an incident in a way that best suits them.

2. In this post, Mr. AuCoin does an interesting dance of implying that he is not biased towards Kitzhaber without ACTUALLY making any such statement. (Read carefully!)

Not that it's in any way underhanded if he did, but I think an interesting question to Mr. AuCoin would be: "Did you coordinate -- either implicitly or explicitly -- with the Kitzhaber campaign -- either directly or through an intermediary -- with regards to the presentation of information regarding Al Gore?" (That should be a yes or no answer.)

Kitzhaber's camp is doing a good job re-framing the Badbury-Gore connection in terms of the health care issue -- an arena where he can easily come out on top over that duo. And he's doing it in such a way where his camp doesn't look whiny. Both campaigns are making the "correct" moves, politically.

This is going to be an awesome primary.

Well Mr. AuCoin, I appreciate your forthrightness.

But of course an apology from Mr. Burr does not constitute a denial on your part. :)

Chuck, 1) Issues have changed a lot since he was in Congress.

2) As someone who supported Les in the election against Bill Moshofsky (for the reasons you cite) but thought he was a disappointment in the 1992 US Senate primary (What "progressive values" was he fighting for there? I recall snarky ads and not wanting to go into detail on issues any more than any of the current Gov. candidates have done so far.) I think sometimes it is better for newer people to be running for office.

Now, if he were to be discussing the issues that Ben Westlund has been talking about recently, issues also mentioned in this article,

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009911080353

Those are important issues. The opening to this post is the opposite, "over at Willamette Week, reporter Hank Stern admits that, journalistically, I simply beat him to a interesting background story.

Gee, someone wrote a post on BO and then someone at WW wrote the same story. This is a way to motivate young voters to be involved in the process?

that would be a different story

Posted by: Rev. Chuck Currie | Nov 8, 2009 4:56:44 PM

I’m still wishing we could bring Congressman AuCoin out of retirement.

Oh, my. I had pictured a high school senior, cutting his teeth on political rhetoric. Oh my, indeed.

BTW, you rule, Rev. Chuck!

AL GORE opposed our health plan.

Al Gore picked right Wing Joe Lieberman as a running mate.

Sec. Bradbury tarnishes his image as a good Democrat by associating with the likes of Al Gore!

Steve Maurer and proof: if you don't find AuCoin's words compelling, who cares? He doesn't "have to offer more proof" to anyone. You apparently have a pretty high opinion of yourself, and the value of convincing you of anything.

It's not often you get to hear an entity think out loud, but that's a tap on actual consciousness in the local Democratic Party.

He was agreeing with what you said about Mauer, in his (thankfully) inimitable way.

Just kidding. You're not alone. Dems just try to make proggies feel that way.

Kari once gave me pretty good advice: never blog when you're drunk or angry. I've been pretty faithful to the first one, and this post is a good example of the pitfalls of the second. It was written in haste and contains errors. I want to be 100 percent accurate and take that seriously. In many years of posting here, this is only the second post where I’ve had to make corrections. (Another post in 2006 incorrectly listed AeroVironment as a Vermont-based firm).

I reached out to Les Friday after he weighed in that he was not in fact a supporter, nor had he endorsed Kitzhaber. However, it seemed like the most transparent way to respond was to sincerely apologize, but not delete the post. It’s kind of embarrassing to have it still up, but that seems better than simply scrubbing it away. Also, if I were to take it down, Les’ follow up piece would not make a lot of sense.

Fair enough. I've put strikeouts through the entire post but left it up. Here's my perspective on Les' initial piece, for what it's worth. Until Les posted his piece, I'd forgotten that Kitzhaber endorsed Bradley in the 2000 primary. My feeling at the time was frustration at Kitzhaber's decision to get involved in this primary between two pretty solid candidates in light of his refusal to weigh on behalf of viable progressives closer to home. I say this from experience, as someone who worked nearly a year of my life in Washington County on behalf of Brad Avakian against Tom Hartung, a Republican with a five percent OLCV rating. I didn't see the Hartung/Avakian decision in 1998 as an especially difficult call. I also strongly believe that we would have been better off without Tom Hartung casting the deciding vote against the employment non-discrimination act the prior session. That was a long time ago to be sure, but was the context of how I viewed the 2000 primary endorsement for Bradley.

Fast forward to Les' post: I did not, for what it's worth, come up with the idea that Les was a Kitzhaber supporter out of whole cloth. Not that it excuses the error, but I had remembered seeing Les become a supporter of Kitzhaber's on FB. And yes, I realize this is totally meaningless, as I am also, like Les, a fan of both on the site. It's just another way of keeping tabs on what candidates are up to, not an actual endorsement of course. But that's one of the reasons I jumped to the wrong conclusion. The other one -- actually more stupid than the first -- is that I was on a conference call and misread Les' headline. I read it as "got YOUR back" (saying, hey, Kitzhaber, I'm looking out for you) instead of the obvious intent: Gore to Kitzhaber: "I Got YOU back." Like I said, embarrasing.

I take Les at his word that he wasn't contacted by Kitzhaber's campaign prior to posting. I read the post differently, and thought it was intended as an effort to dilute an endorsement earned through Bill's hard work and years of advocacy. As a political consultant I know would say, "to piss in his soup." I don't think there's anything nefarious about Kitzhaber's folks working to downplaying the Gore visit by the way; that's what opposing campaigns do. My feelings about this echo what FactBot4000 wrote above; I don't necessarily view it as tawdry. That said, give Bill his day, is my feeling.

Despite the Avakian race, I am not anti-Kitzhaber, although I fear that it reads that way. In 2004, I ran a campaign against a medical malpractice tort reform measure that featured Kitzhaber as a prime spokesperson and endorser. Although we were on opposite sides of a hard-fought patients rights campaign, I came out of that effort with an even greater respect for Kitzhaber than when the campaign began. Kitzhaber showed character and courage by calling out his own side when they attempted to create a fake voters' guide designed -- in my view -- to mislead voters. I am deeply grateful that Kitzhaber is the rare type of politician who would do such a thing.

My apology about the post is genuine, not just to Les, but to readers. We're opinionated folks here, but that doesn't mean we get a free pass when we fail to get things right.

<h2>Why do people over here keep saying horse is dead, you can stop beating it? Is it a regular expression over here?</h2>