Why does he say everything twice? Everything twice! I guess because they are important points. Important points!

I know Allen personally and I worked for him for over five years. He is an honest person, intelligent, and creative. I will not vote for him and here is why:

1. He led the effort to outsource dozens of top-paying engineering jobs to China. He called it the "ten-for-one deal", getting ten Chinese engineers for one Oregonian. The reality is that Pixelworks owed its success to the brainy Oregonians that Allen brought into the startup. It tanked after they got fired.

2. Risk is a way of life for Allen. Ferraris and million dollar deals give him his adrenaline fix. His personality is not suited to leading in government, where a "disruptive" idea no matter how creative can harm thousands of people if it fails, and cost tax-payers billions.

3. Merit is not as important as favor. Allen simply assumes that every transaction is an exchange of favors. Some people owe him favors and in turn he owes other people favors. This has cost him in business where mediocre managers are rewarded and high-performing managers are punished, because he is mostly blind to merit. In government, this behavior borders on corruption.

4. Government should not be run like a business. There is no democracy in business. Shareholder meetings notwithstanding, the CEO is the king. And if you think government is wasteful, ask Allen about Equator Technologies, which burned up over $100 million, which is more than the total value of Pixelworks today.

Allen you're a great guy and I enjoyed working for you. But sorry, you really should stick to creating jobs and controlling spending in the private sector.

"I'll use my experience missing free throws to create jobs." Hilarious.

I agree that the editing seems a little awkward (as does the delivery of the "I'll use my experience creating jobs, to create jobs"-type lines). Also... "Trillion dollar deficits are not the answer" is pretty irritating to me -- you're running for governor of Oregon, not a federal position. It might be effective though, given that people who are upset with "government" these days generally aren't making the distinction between federal/state/local.

He's a complete cipher

Dudley is a program. He's Arnold-light with a better education for the folks in Oregon. He played for the state's only major league sports team; went to Yale; is tall and good....

All he needs is the best media and plenty to spend spreading it around, courtesy of well-heeled interests with big interest in the behavior of state government.

His destruction will be an ad showing a basketball backboard. A series of basketballs fail to go through the hoop. First a clank off the side of the rim, then on in humorous variety, ending with either the ball flying over the backboard or sticking between backboard and rim.

The voice over lists Dudley's failures, or goofy statements, or wrong-headed positions; one per shot.

Schonley would likely complain about ending it with

You've got to make your freethrows.

but something else appropriate could be conjured, I'm sure.

Dallas, if putting favor above merit in government “borders on corruption” I have to say that it also borders on business as usual in Salem.

Dallas beat me to the point, though he missed one: when Alley was finished running his business into the ground he got a tidy little going away compensation package that, while tiny in comparison to some of the things in the news now, won't play well in Oregon.

Dudley is a political catastrophe waiting to happen.

"Too bad Alley's going to get crushed by all of Dudley's out-of-state millionaire donors."

In other words, money is all that matters.

Unless, of course, the most effective way to campaign is face to face.

Alley, Dudley, and Bradbury really missed a bet not coming to the Mission Mill debate in Salem. CCTV has played that many times (it may also have been live). I think I have seen all or part of it 3 times.

This year will be a test of "money is all that matters" vs. candidates trusting their audiences are interested in details.

Seems to me that Dudley is the more vague of the major candidates. Why would any serious campaign be scared of that?

Having watched Alley in both the 2008 and 2010 campaigns, it seems he learned some lessons from his 2008 experience.

To pass any legislation, the next Gov. (whoever it is) will need at least 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate. If Dudley drowns this state in campaign spending but Democrats retain majority, he will need 31 and 16. If someone wins all 36 counties and their party has a supermajority in the House and Senate, it will still take 31 and 16.

But some of the political rhetoric seems to gloss over that reality.

No one will win in Nov. without attracting the votes of people who don't register with major parties.

If BlueOregon is going to become involved in Repiglican primary races, there are a couple incumbents in NE Oregon who voted to support some or all of the Measure 66/67 tax hikes who are facing Tea Party opponents and who could use some kind words here and elsewhere. OPB is doing the stories today I think.

Steve Buckstein, you're absolutely correct that the legislative process is all about quid-pro-quo. It seems the merit of a bill is secondary to gaining favor for lawmakers, regardless of party.

But one of the most important acts of a governor is appointing his or her staff. Those appointments must be based first and foremost on merit and ability. The governors which govern best have the most talented and devoted staff. That's hard to do in Salem where cronies and lobbyists thrive, and even harder if merit is a foreign concept.

LT wrote:

In other words, money is all that matters.

It's not all that matters, but statistics suggest a very strong correlation between money advantage and election.

I think this is about the health of the political system.

There are any number of reasons not to be involved in politics (working more than 40 hours per week, parent of 2 or more children under the age of 5, working parents, other activities have high priority, etc.)

I was at a luncheon today where one woman made a comment about the responsibility of people to get involved.

Why would anyone work on a campaign if the attitude is "statistics suggest a very strong correlation between money advantage and election"?

Some of the most rewarding experiences of my life have been those campaigns which "didn't have a chance in the world". Some were close wins, some were close losses, some were wins that were unexpectedly large. The largest of those was probably the 59% primary win of an insurgent against the establishment candidate back a few decades ago.

The BUS Project emphasizes citizen participation, esp. among young people. In their first year, 2002, they ended the Republican control of the St. Senate. Did they do that because every one of their winning candidates outspent the loser?

Or was an army of volunteers a large part of the victory? I talked to one of those winners in 2003 who said he believed the BUS support was a major factor in the win.

I'm no fan of Alley, but I do think he is much improved over his 2008 campaign (which was not only sometimes snippy, but an opponent corrected a misstatement of fact in a debate).

If Alley is able to do that to Dudley in a debate, esp. on a major issue, my guess is that people who know about that (as opposed to those too busy to pay attention to politics) may develop the attitude that Dudley made a major mistake and even if he ran commercials every hour on the hour, they still wouldn't vote for him.

And that's what elections are about: individuals making decisions. In more elections than I can count, statements of "look at all that money buying all those commercials" turned out in the end not to be predicting the winner.

And Greg, go to OPB.org and then click on news. The text of the story is there. It mentions Jenson, but most of the story is about Greg Smith's challenger.

I happen to be a great admirer of Rep. Jenson. Don't agree with all his votes, but he is a gentleman of the old school capable of talking to people regardless of party. We need more legislators like that.

LT wrote:

In more elections than I can count, statements of "look at all that money buying all those commercials" turned out in the end not to be predicting the winner.

And you would have a much harder time counting all the elections of the candidate who spent more money. I do not mean to dampen your spirit of democratic participation in candidate campaigns, but minimizing the importance of money in campaigns makes it easier for people to underestimate the corrosive effect of political giving on democratic governance. This will only increase with the present SCOTUS antipathy toward campaign finance regulation.

Great comment, Kari!

<h2>Alley lost me completely when I checked out his web site. He wants to protect the kicker, keeping it "untouched" and calls it "the most important taxpayer safeguard against unchecked government growth." The kicker is almost certainly the stupidest public policy idea to come out of this state in the past few decades (and it's got some stiff competition for that title). If Alley's not willing to make even modest suggestions to reform it, it tells me he's not at all serious about confronting this state's on-going fiscal crisis.</h2>