I hope this means that Jim Gilbertson will run again!

Maybe this time, he will have the name-recognition edge, and receive some funding support from the Democratic Party of Oregon...

I was Jim Gilbertson's consultant last time, having grown up in Fossil in the heart of #59. Jim didn't announce until almost filing day in '06 and didn't really start walking until the summer, but he knocked on every door he could find in Jefferson Co. and carried it by ten points. He campaigned whenever he could find time elsewhere (he still works as a hay farmer) and narrowly carried Wasco CO., Dallum's home County, as well as Gilliam. Ultra-conservative Grant COunty only gave Jim 38%

Jim raised $10,000 and kicked in nearly $20,000 of his own. The only money he received from Future PAC was the $800 from the "rural initiative", and SEIU and UFCW were the only two PACS who gave any money, about $250 each. The Deschutes CO. Democrats gave $500, and Judy Stigler gave $200 from her '04 account. It was very hard to have phone calls returned.

Jim was out "outspent" 2-1, but we spent our money far more effectively than Dallum. We sent two mailings to all likely voters, one to all Ds and one to all voters in R precincts stressing Jim's timber/ranching background and his A rating from the NRA. Dallum only sent one mailing. Jim and I developed the message/text, several of us photographed Jim, and Witham/Dickey and their graphic designer did an outstanding job of putting it all together. We also outspent Dallum on newspaper/radio and had far more signs up.

This was Jim's second close race. In 2002 he was outspent 7-1, but won 47% against John Mabrey, whose Wes Cooley like "marriage"/money problems came out in Oct. Even when that story broke, Jim was on his own (I didn't really know him then and was working out of state on a campaign) and most of the $8,000 that Jim spent was his own money.

It's too bad that with that near win in '02, Jim didn't receive more help/attention last time. It's hard to believe that the Republicans will be caught napping again. Still, it is a swing district and Jim is thinking of running again. I just left a message for him.

I second everything that Grant and Garlyn said.

If Democrats want to increase their majority, they need to take races like District 59 seriously.

And if I EVER hear anyone use the phrase "lousy R to D ratio" again, I will know the person speaking has no sense of history and no common sense.

There are those "professonals" who say "we have limited resources and we have to target. Let's hear such people defend the level of non-support in District 59. Or is the Democratic party the party of listening to consultants because of course they always know more than anyone else--incl. those with experience in rural elections?

Jenni, the campaign committee sounds like it is the best one in a long time (certainly better than years ago when it "decided" Democrats should take a stand on a coastal vs. inland issue--the inland point of view--in a year when there was a major coastal state senate race).
You mentioned people who " have been involved in the DPO's Campaign Committee to increase the amount of support candidates receive".

If FP can't provide any more support for District 59 than $800 Rural Initiative, why do they exist? Is it about electing Democrats, or all about raising money doing pass throughs? It is time for those active in the Democratic Party to start having that conversation. And I do mean conversation as in people talking face to face. It would be a good topic for one of the campaign committee meetings--maybe invite one of the state reps or staffers from FP to answer questions.

Didn't something similar happen to Sal Peralta last time around? No one gave him much of a chance, and I don't think the DPO gave him much party support given that it was a "losing" race, did they? Of course Sal came within a few hundred votes in the final tally.

If I'm remembering right about the institutional party support, what kind of assurances do we have that the party leadership won't make the same mistakes again that they did in the Gilbertson and Peralta races?

Great news!

And I will print the message above about lack of funding and give to "someone" at a House Democrats get-together tomorrow night... it is a meeting of donors to House Dems... hopefully they will throw more money thataway next time!

Bradley, Yes money spent in 49 tied down Minnis so she and her supporters weren't spending money elsewhere. But after the election I was weeding out old emails and had saved all the ones from FP. The emails about various candidates went something like Brading, Brading, Brading, someone else, Brading, Brading, Brading, someone else. Was he really 3 or more times as worthy of FP attention than any other challenger? And what if institutional funders had taken Brading seriously the previous election? Was this a way of making up for that mistake?

It took 16 years for FP to win a one vote margin. For all the talk of candidates needing "seed money" and "R to D ratio", 2 candidates named Peralta and Gilbertson had neither the amount of "seed money" (measured as amount in April C & E ) nor the R to D ratio which the "experts" at FP claimed was necessary. And yet, if you were to rank the election results, who came closer to winning--Brading, Gilbertson, Peralta?

There are those of us old enough to recall the days before Future Pac. The curtain has been pulled back on the "professional expertise and judgement" of FP, and they should never again be taken as seriously as they have been in the past.

All sorts of incumbents on the GOP side are not running for re-election. If FP can't see their way clear to support the challengers in those districts without preaching that FP knows the districts better than the candidates themselves (esp. in cases like Gilbertson and Peralta) then they owe it to activists to show cause why FP should not be disbanded.

Of course, I could be really radical and mention that retired Oregon Supreme Court Justice (and active member of the recent Public Comm. on the Legislature) H. Linde has said often that pass throughs are on shaky ground. That,a check written to Friends of Virgil Tibbs, for instance, doesn't belong to Virgil, it belongs to the legal entity of the campaign and should only be used for campaign expenses, not to contribute to other political causes.

Under that legal reasoning, FP and all the other caucus campaign arms are just pass through organizations at a time when people are getting fed up with partisans. Of course, few politically active people even want to have that discussion, as they like the status quo.

Yes, we won the majority (although on revenue matters we don't have the super majority we need.) Future PAC and the caucus/lobby helped a lot of challengers win and Riley and Galizio survive in tough districts- Great Job!

It is unfortunate, though, that we often end up spending a lot for landslides, while candidates who come close (Jim was one of about four or five last time) receive no help, or not enough to matter. At least one D candidiate, for example, spent over $400,000 and won by 30%. He was a great candidiate from the beginning who raised a lot of money walked non-stop, stayed on message, and had a tainted, cluless opponent. Did his campaign really need the tens of thousands he received at the end? Even though we couldn't know what the magnitude of the Democratic sweep would be, I think some of the candidates were overfunded at the expense of others. Another $30,000 for Jim and our candidates in Medford and Yamhill might have made the difference. I also realize this is hindsight and there has to be a cutoff point somewhere.

Caucus/party control and keeping the consultants happy seems to be the primary reason for this. FuturePac has two favored mail consultants who can only take on so many races. Those consultants always want to design and mail roughly 10 mailings per candidiate, and those don't come cheaply. The candidates they work with often cause unlimited brain injury to the consultants, and they probably would have a hard time taking on more clients even if they wanted them. Jim and I talked to one consultant who would only consider him if he agreed to a minimum of seven mailings at a cost of $50,000. With salary, radio, newspaper, signs etc.. added on, that went way over Jim's budget.

Candidates who aren't favored/targeted/funded are typically left out of the loop. It is up to them to find people with campaign experience and the time to help to guide them through the process that is foreign to most new time candidates.

My fear for '08 is that neurotic incumbents will insist that they are in danger, and that they will be overfunded at the expense of good challengers. This is true for the Senate and House. In 2004, I must have seen Re-Elect Ryan Deckert ads more than beer ads, even though he really didn't have a race.

I understand the mentality of going all out in the targeted races and not looking back, and it is all too easy to coach the game when it's ended. Granted, the blowout wins we had last year often don't happen. In too many races in the past we have lost legislative seats by a few points. We won the majority and that's what counts.

I still think, though, that adding an eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth mailing to a targeted campaign isn't necessarily as effective as adding a fourth, fifth, or sixth mailing to a competitive but not first tier candidiate. For that matter, a second or third mailing could make a difference. Susan Van Orman from Hood River told me that she could only afford one mailing, and she still won 45% of the vote. I know many consultants don't agree with that strategy, but some, like Kathy Shaw, who mangaged Alan Bates' campaigns, do.

As is written several times in this thread of dialogue, the mythology that the Future PAC strategy of targeted races over a period of six years restored the legislature to the Democratic Party control is stated.

People who should know better repeat this as if it were the truth. Well, it falls far short of being the truth.

Back in the early to mid 1980’s and again in the early 1990’s I participated in various professional groups and political action committee’s that advocated for various children’s services and human services. Back then, the “professionals” in the political end of things told us that we needed to allow them to pick targeted races, to get our best chance at electing Democrats that would support our agenda.

And that is how we lost the legislature to the Republicans.

We seem to have forgotten over the 14 year period while the Republicans controlled the Oregon Senate, and the 16 year period while the Republicans controlled the Oregon House, just how we got to that place of their controlling things. We got there thinking we would run a race here or there, and focus just upon these individual races. We won battles, but lost the war.

The attribution that Future PAC won back the legislature for the Democrats by targeting races is complete nonsense. In fact, the Republicans ran out of time. They came to power with broad based support on the idea that government cost too much and could be cut, time and again. 1990 is when Measure 9 passed, our first property tax limitation, and this is what brought the Republicans to power. Well as time went on, the Republican cut this program and that program. But in Oregon, we the voters all have our favorite programs. Some like the Extension Service (4-H and County Fair stuff). Some like smooth highways. Some favor children’s services, or senior services. But the largest one of all is our education system. University tuition has doubled and doubled again. K-12 class sizes are larger than during the peak of the baby-boom, and classes such as music have been cut. As time went on, more and more Oregonians were seeing their favorite State programs cut to the point of dysfunction. If you gore enough oxen sooner or later you gore my ox. That and the Federal stuff, Iraq, etc. makes the Republican Party’s believability level lower than ever.

So, the pendulum swung, and here we are. Did Future PAC do that with targeted races? Hardly. (Targeted races means “a lot for the few” – hmmm, sounds Republican doesn’t it?)

What has really won is individual candidates with a message of hope and progress. Government has a good purpose, and people know that in the end, like it or not, government is where the problems of our society get solved or resolved. As long as the Democrats provide candidates that share hope and progress – we will be winners.

What we really need to focus upon is the multi-cycle need to build support for Democratic Candidates across the State. We have seen the downside of targeted races such as Lee Coleman’s pitiful $800 in support from Future PAC, and Sal Peralda’s near win without timely Future PAC support.

I would hope that the Democratic Party and partners like Future PAC work towards establishing campaign thresholds. In particular, a minimal investment in every campaign for State or Federal level positions that would include at least one mailer to every voter in the district should be made available. We need to get that message of hope and progress out to every Oregonian through the fog of Republican controlled media (partial in the valley, total in Southern, Central, and Eastern Oregon) – and the only sure way to do it is with direct contact. We need to do it every election cycle where we have a candidate. Mail is the cheapest and surest way to get to everyone, and increasingly people just hate those phone calls. After the threshold is met, then perhaps some money could be directed to races where things appear to be close.

But if we ever want to build the base of the Democratic Party with voters in Oregon, we have to get off the targeted race idea, and engage in strategies that are directed to ALL Oregonians.

In my critique of how much money is spent on races, I don't want to beat up on Future PAC. The fact is that Future PAC does focus on districts they see as winnable and they try to pick candidates who will work hard and raise money. Brian Clem, Chris Edwards, Dave Edwards and other candidates were worthy of the support they received, and they won.

Jim Gilbertson's personal fundraising wasn't strong and he didn't get started soon like Brian and others. FuturePAC had in years past targeted the more Democratic (old) dist 56 (Wasco/Hood River) and, yet, three targeted Democrats lost there by 10%-20% in 1988, '94, and '00. I can see why the more R leaning 59 didn't seem promising. However, the numbers aren't that bad, and Jim came close twice (very close last time) and Jack Lorts won 43% in 2004 even though he was outspent 7-1. Dist 59 should probably be on our target list for 2008.

I think this discussion is useful to help prospective candidates realize that if Future PAC targets them, they will receive a lot of help. The majority of candidates, however, won't receive much help. The exception is if they do well and are bumped up the next go around. Betty Komp is a good example of a second time candidiate who had earned her stripes in '02 and received a lot of help in '04. Betty told me that when she first ran, no one from the caucus office would return her calls.

I apologize if I missed it, but did anyone answer Glen HD28's question? How is Dallum's replacement to be chosen? I seem to recall something about how his party will choose, but is there a set pool (District Leaders, PCPs) from which they must choose? Or can they choose anyone?

Jenni - I appreciate how you have thought about this to a point. It is important to cost out options.

However, you are using cost to justify a strategy.

On the other end, I am saying that the strategy ought to be a threshold of support in every race. (Hmmm, am I sounding like Howard Dean?) Mailers are an example of what my strategy might look like if implemented - e.g. a tactic. It doesn't have to be mailers, it doesn't even have to be 100% of the cost.

We have choices ahead of us, not set in stone ways of thinking. It has been set in stone in Oregon in the Democratic Party for at least 25 years that most of our money raised for elections should go to a few races that are targeted. This is destructive to the Party, it is destructive to candidates in districts where they are thought of as long-shots, and it is destructive to our support among voters that need message reinforcement to maintain loyalty.

So, Jenni, if you wipe the slate clean, and start all over again, would you choose to pour the vast majority of the money into a few targeted races, or ???? ....

Again, from the big picture - targeted races win battles, but don't even engage in the "war". We lost a war in the late 1980's - early 1990's, and won it these last few years. But those battles had little to do with the wars.

What would Jenni do?

Perhaps things have changed from the late nineties when I ran for the legislature. Then, it was "The Coalition" - OPEU, AFSCME, OEA, and a few junior partners who decided who would be targeted, and FuturePAC went along for the ride. This is not conjecture on my part, but what I was told by Nick Blosser, who was the FuturePAC liaison to candidates.

Regarding the question about the replacement procedure, Republican precinct people from the counties in Dist 59 will be at a set time and date. (A very small portion of Deschutes is in the dist.- I'm guessing only PCP from those few precincts will be included.)

The R PCP will listen to speeches from a field of candidates. I believe those who are interested in running basically show up and sign up, although somewhat might have to nominate them, I'm not sure. The PCP will choose 3-5 potential replacements, although it is usually 3.

County commissioners from the Dist 59 counties will then decide who they want to appoint to Dallum's seat. There are a lot of Dem. commissioners out there who might not like the options. In '98, the Dem. Clackamas commissioners decided to not pick any of the crazies who the R PCPs had picked to replace Sen. Bill Kennemer. The decision then was left to Gov. Kitzhaber, who appointed Vern Duncan.

If you're not going to spread it around evenly, you target. How tightly you target, and the way you make your choices are all up for debate -- but make no mistake: Ya gotta pick your battles.

That's a pretty obvious point, Kari. The issue is that FP got it wrong with Gilbertson and Peralta. If those two votes had been there this session, how much easier would it have been to pick off a couple of Republicans for key votes, like Healthy Kids?

I'm not suggesting that they should have gotten it right -- these things are always easier in hindsight. What I'm asking is this: Given how wrong they were on these two races, what has FP learned? What have they done to avoid losing such an opportunity again? Sal's idea above is pretty good -- is FP listening?

I won't hold it against anyone who fesses up to a mistake. But I have yet to hear FP or the DPO admit that it was a mistake. I have yet to hear you say it, either.

Mike Morgan was another close D challenger, against Esquival in Jackson CO. Van Orman and Gilbert (Molalla) were competitive.

I had earlier mentioned paying for landslides. In fairness to FuturePac and the lobby, I looked at the results, and there were some challengers who had narrow wins- Cowan and Chris Edwards. Although Betty Komp's race wasn't mentioned a lot last year, she won narrowly in a tough district, and the Galizio/RIley seats had to be considered endangered. The blowout wins were Clem, Reid, and David Edwards.

I still think that after a house race has gone over, say, $300,000 or $350,000, it makes sense to start diverting some money into these second tier but winnable districts, but many others would disagree.

We also need to emphasize the importance of county parties and local donors/activists. In Jefferson County, Jim Gilbertson had essentially no volunteers helping and just a few small donors. He won based on his own intensive walking in his home county. Wasco county has a good group led by Teresa Hepker and Gwen Schatz that became active calling/walking in the fall, and the county party paid for four big newspaper ads for Jim, the Governor, and two other candidates, which was a big help. We also had a good donor base in Wasco co, and several of them were $250+ donors. Jack LOrts and Larry Kennedy in Wheeler and Dale Thompson in Gilliam were helpful in staffing Jim, canvassing and putting up signs. Unfortunately, the county organizations are very hit and miss, especially in rural OR. Jim lost big in Grant and Sherman counties, which are heavily Republican. Some local volunteers might have made a difference.

Arnie Roblan, was another close race I forgot in my last post.

I live in DIst 59 living in Mosier. Jim Gilebrtson is a good folksy canididate who developed a good message/stump speech. I think some snobs underestiamte him as a country bumpkin, but he is quite intelligent and very knowlegable of the issues. He didn't go all last time, mainly because of his farming business. I think he said he wants to devote more time if he runs agian, but will he? He's no kid, but seems to be in good shape.

Jack Lorts, who ran in '04 seems like a good person with an eduaction admin. background who ran as too much of an orthadox liberal. His brochure virtually copied the DPO platform on every issue, which istn't wise in that rural distrcit, plus he came out in support fo the sales tax. He also didn't spend nearly as much as Jim.

There are some Dem county commisisoners in the dist. Bill Lennox, elected in Wasco last year in Wasco seems quite impressive.

My guess is that no one is no longer looking at this post, but based on this article from The Madras Pioneer, I gave some wrong information about the selection process for Dallum's replacement. According to the article, every county submits their own names for commissioners to choose. Although each commissioner votes, the strength of each vote is determined by county population. Article below:

Search is on for Republican representative

Wanted: Republicans that want to do battle on a statewide stage. Rep. John Dallum's surprising resignation as District 59 representative in July has created a vacancy in Salem, and it's up to the county commissioners of the district to fill it. The commissioners of eight counties -- including Jefferson -- will each get one vote each as to who they want to replace Dallum. Each commissioner's vote will be weighted by the population of district residents which they serve, broken down by percentage basis. Other counties which the district either covers or touches include Wasco, Wheeler, Grant, Deschutes, Clackamas, Gilliam and Marion. Wasco has the most population in the district followed by Jefferson. The commissioners will vote on candidates submitted by their local Republican Central Committee. The Jefferson County Central Committee is chaired by Lou Dobbins. Dobbins said the committee hopes to submit three to five names, but so far, no local resident has stepped forward for consideration. "I've had a few feelers, but that's about it," said Dobbins. Dallum, who served two terms in Salem, and was key in the 2005 fight to get funding for Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras, resigned to take a school superintendent job in Montana. He is no stranger to this office-filling process as he was voted in by commissioners to replace John Mabrey, of The Dalles, who resigned in 2004 when facing legal problems. To be considered, a candidate must live within the district and be a registered Republican. Dobbins said the committee has about 30 days to submit names. Commissioners will likely elect Dallum's replacement shortly thereafter. To find out more about the local Republican's process of submitting potential candidates, call Dobbins at 546-5722.