Merkley has awesome quarter; Smith campaign continues downward spiral

Democrat Jeff Merkley's U.S Senate campaign in Oregon announced today that they raised $1.42 million in the second quarter of this year. This total is three times what they raised in the first quarter.

From today's press release:

Online contributions soared for Merkley over the past three months. The Merkley team raised more than $420,000 online in the second quarter, double the previous three quarters combined.

That's a great online fundraising number, demonstrating Merkley's surge in the netroots. Meanwhile, Gordon Smith's campaign continues its bizarre spiral.

Oregonian reporter Jeff Mapes wrote yesterday on his blog about Smith's weird attempt to blast Merkley on tax increases. When Mapes asked for documentation for the accusation, Smith's campaign sent the reporter what appears to be a cobbled-together contrivance. Mapes explains:

For example, most of the money came from two income-tax measures referred to the ballot in 2002 and 2003 when a recession had taken a huge whack out of state revenues. Voters defeated both of them, but the fact is that the Legislature would not have referred the second measure to the ballot if the first had passed.

The other interesting tax vote that the Smith campaign included was on a 2007 bill to divert some $300 million from the "corporate kicker" tax rebate into a rainy-day fund meant to help cover schools and other services in a future downturn. That diversion passed with the support of 17 Republicans in the House and such powerful business groups as Associated Oregon Industries.

So the Smith campaign doubled up on two ballot measures and included an extremely popular bipartisan legislation to create a rainy-day fund in Oregon to make up their total. That's some pretty interesting "new math", even for a Republican.

This is great reporting by Mapes - too bad it's stuck on his blog and not in the paper edition. It deserves to be much more widely read. The Smith campaign's continued problems haven't escaped the notice of editorial pages either. Last week, The Daily Astorian asked, Is Gordon Smith Losing His Edge? An excerpt:

Smith has been uncharacteristically sloppy in recent weeks. First was his statement about gay marriage in which he seemed to be justifying Mormon polygamy before it was outlawed in Utah. Then Smith tried to couple his image with that of Barack Obama, to which Obama objected. As recently as July 4, Smith pulled a boner.To defeat a Senate incumbent, the incumbent must cooperate in his own demise.

After speaking at an Oregon Farm Bureau event, the senator attacked the Rainy Day Fund that House Speaker Merkley helped move through the 2009 Oregon Legislature. Smith said the kicker took money from hard-working Oregon businesses.

The kicker was viewed by Republicans and Democrats as one of the Legislature's great accomplishments. It passed with bipartisan support. Smith's perception that Oregon businesses lost money when the corporate kicker was redirected into the Rainy Day Fund is most curious. The great majority of the corporate kicker goes to out-of-state corporate headquarters, not to Oregon-headquartered businesses.

The editorial also notes that generally for an incumbent to be beaten, the incumbent has to cooperate in his own demise. Smith certainly seems to be showing signs of moving in that direction.