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)

Gov­er­nor of Ore­gon (Repub­li­can Nomination)

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:

• Port­land vot­ers have resound­ing­ly reject­ed a propo­si­tion that would have placed water and sew­er ser­vices under the juris­dic­tion of a spe­cial pub­lic util­i­ty dis­trict instead of City Hall.
• There are a cou­ple of close races for coun­ty com­mis­sion­er in Lane Coun­ty, which encom­pass­es Eugene, Ore­gon’s sec­ond largest city.
• Most of the offices up for elec­tion in Lane Coun­ty, how­ev­er, are snooze­fests, with incum­bents run­ning large­ly unchal­lenged.