My home is Oregon. Gordon Smith's home is nowhere near mine.

Last week, Gordon Smith's campaign released a new television ad (yeah, again--Smith is swimming in loot and running through it like water) attempting to tout his "Eastern Oregon roots".

Here's the script:

I See Oregon's natural beauty and more...

Its people, jobs and way of life.

I'm Gordon Smith and I believe no part of our state should ever be left behind.

Some say lock the land up and the people out. No way.

Because no one loves the land more than the farmers, loggers and ranchers who care for it.

I approve this message because what some call 'the rest of Oregon,' we simply call 'home.'

Besides attempting to pander to farmers, loggers and ranchers (most all of whom do love our state and its land dearly--but I daresay not more than the rest of us who call Oregon "home") the ad attempts to lasso Smith as a man of Oregon who lives here and embraces the rural life.

The ad has little to do with the biography of Senator Gordon Smith.

Smith was indeed born in Pendleton, Oregon. But the family moved to Maryland when Gordon was a child as his father accepted the job as assistant secretary of Agriculture under President Eisenhower (this blog post claims that the Smith's moved in 1954, but I have no cooberating evidence). In any case, Smith left Oregon and didn't return until sometime in the 80s.

Smith was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. For the last twenty years, he's again gone missing from Oregon.

While Smith's Senate counterpart Ron Wyden has kept his promise to hold a public town hall meeting in each county in Oregon every year, no such promise was made by Smith. Nor to my knowledge has he even come close to anything similar. And while Smith has held some joint public town hall meetings with Wyden, a call to Smith's office this afternoon didn't yield an answer as to how many Smith himself has held in the last year.

A Google search didn't show much in terms of Smith town halls, either. I'm waiting for a call back from Smith's office to find out when and where they've taken place in the last year, if at all..

Unlike Smith, I wasn't born in Oregon. I was born in Idaho. But my family moved to a small town in eastern Oregon when I was a toddler. I lived in that small community until I graduated from high school. I attended college in Oregon, too. In fact, the only time I've moved from the state is from 1987-1995 to live in Washington state. I'm an Oregonian not just in name but in spirit. And unlike Gordon Smith, this is truly my home.

Smith owns a brick mansion in Pendleton and a frozen food plant about 20 miles out of town. How often he visits his house, I'm not sure. But he hasn't run the business since 1996, when he was elected to the Senate.

On my travels to eastern and central Oregon, I've asked people about their visits with Smith. The vast majority of the time I hear that they never see Smith (but they see Wyden and his people a few times a year). For a man trying to claim the mantle of "Oregon is home", Smith sure isn't in contact with his neighbors (or his constituents) very much.