NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

Oregon Republicans choose Monica Wehby as Jeff Merkley’s November opponent; Dennis Richardson to face Governor John Kitzhaber

As in sev­er­al states on the East Coast, tonight is pri­ma­ry night in two of the three states in the Pacif­ic North­west: Ore­gon and Ida­ho. Vot­ers belong­ing to or iden­ti­fy­ing with the coun­try’s major polit­i­cal par­ties are choos­ing the nom­i­nees who will go on to the autumn gen­er­al elec­tion as the par­ties’ stan­dard bearers.

In Ore­gon, there isn’t much excite­ment on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side, because most of the state’s top elect­ed posi­tions are already held by Democ­rats, and they’re all seek­ing reelec­tion. On the Repub­li­can side, there are at least two note­wor­thy con­tests, as sev­er­al Repub­li­cans are vying to take on Jeff Merkley for U.S. Sen­ate, and sev­er­al more are vying to take on John Kitzhaber for Governor.

With 209,985 votes cast and count­ed as of this hour (that’s turnout of 9.91%), it looks like each race has a run­away winner.

For U.S. Sen­ate, Port­land pedi­atric neu­ro­sur­geon Mon­i­ca Weh­by is eas­i­ly in the lead, win­ning not only a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote, but a major­i­ty. The vote for the guber­na­to­r­i­al nom­i­na­tion is even more lop­sided — State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Den­nis Richard­son has more votes than all of his oppo­nents put togeth­er twice over.

Here are the numbers:

U.S. Sen­ate, Ore­gon (Repub­li­can Nom­i­na­tion)

Mon­i­ca Wehby45,876 votes53.18%
Jo Rae Perkins2,305 votes2.67%
Mark Calla­han5,509 votes6.39%
Tim­o­thy I Crawley2,255 votes2.61%
Jason Con­ger29,973 votes34.74%
Write-in Votes349 votes0.40%

Gov­er­nor of Ore­gon (Repub­li­can Nomination)

Bruce A Cuff6,847 votes8.63%
Gor­don Challstrom7,864 votes9.91%
Tim Carr4,909 votes6.18%
Den­nis Richardson52,635 votes66.31%
Mae Raf­fer­ty5,585 votes7.04%
Dar­ren Karr829 votes1.04%
Write-in can­di­date712 votes0.90%

Weh­by had cred­i­ble com­pe­ti­tion in State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jason Con­ger, who had hoped to cap­i­tal­ize on a round of bad pub­lic­i­ty for Weh­by near the end of the cam­paign. Con­ger is well behind Weh­by, and not like­ly to catch up. The Merkley cam­paign has called both Weh­by and Con­ger deeply flawed can­di­dates.

Mean­while, in the 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, Jason Yates has a nar­row lead over Delin­da Del­ga­do Mor­gan for the right to take on Demo­c­rat Suzanne Bonamici.

In the 2nd Dis­trict, Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers are favor­ing Aelea Christof­fer­son to go up against entrenched Repub­li­can incum­bent Greg Walden.

Walden is the only Repub­li­can mem­ber of the state’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion; he him­self faced a Tea Par­ty-backed can­di­date in Den­nis B Linthicum, but is pre­vail­ing with a very com­fort­able three-to-one margin.

There are no con­tests in the 3rd or 4th Con­gres­sion­al Districts.

In the 5th, Demo­c­ra­t­ic incum­bent Kurt Schrad­er is eas­i­ly dis­patch­ing chal­lenger Ani­ta Brown. Tootie Smith is the Repub­li­cans’ choice to oppose Schrad­er in Novem­ber by an almost two-to-one margin.

In oth­er results:

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One Comment

  1. Jeff does­n’t have much have to fear, methinks. 

    # by Pamela Marlowe :: June 17th, 2014 at 9:13 PM
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