Good evening, Blogtown!
Your Mercury’s Very Own News Team—Denis C. Theriault and Sarah Mirk—is camped out with a couple dozen debate watchers down at Claudia’s Sports Bar on Hawthorne. There are many TVs, a row of high-backed blue leather chairs at the bar and very, very good food. No, seriously. The soup is to die for.
It’s a hair after 7 pm, and we’re waiting for the bartender to turn on the sound on the big screen so we can hear all the action. KGW quickly cut over to our two debaters, Democratic ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber and Republican ex-Trail Blazer Chris Dudley, and man does Dudley tower over the ol’ cowboy.
Show time is only seconds away.
UPDATE 7:05 PM Dudley is asked about his qualifications, given that he’s never, ever, ever had a political job. Dudley doesn’t answer that, necessarily. Instead, he goes off about taxes, taxes, taxes.
Kitzhaber retorts and says “we don’t have a lot of time for on the job training.” Someone shouts: “Tell ’em governor.”
UPDATE 7:10 PM Good question about Dudley’s capital gains tax plan. Why should a trust fund baby should be taxed far lower than a working class Oregonian? Dudley doesn’t flinch. We need to keep capital and revenue in this state, he said. People here snickered.
Kitzhaber sharpens the knife and sticks it in—in favor of Democratic interests. He says its time to give union members more jobs.
UPDATE 7:11 PM Now its Kitzhaber’s turn to answer about his motivation for serving an unprecedented third term. He talks up his time as governor in the 1990s and hits a lot of applause points: women’s rights, middle class, no oil drilling, etc.
Dudley fires back: Unemployment went up. Spending went up. Wasn’t he playing for the Knicks by then?
UPDATE 7:13 PM Sarah notes this observation from Reverend Chuck Currie: “Why is KGW having Lars Larson on to provide ‘analysis?’ He’s not a journalist or even an Oregonian.”
UPDATE 7:15 PM Jeff Mapes of the Oregonian doesn’t like that neither candidate could be bothered to get specific when he asked which three programs would you cut. And when he asks again, Kitzhaber still doesn’t give a straight answer.
Dudley at least mentions one: energy tax credits.
UPDATE 7:16 PM Uh-oh. Time for Chris Dudley to tell us about global warming. “I don’t know how much is man-made and how much is natural.” REALLY?
UPDATE 7:18 PM Kitzhaber comes out stronger. It’s a man-made problem. No more drilling. Cut back on fossil fuels.
Keep reading for more updates
UPDATE 7:24 PM The Camas question! That’s an unfair criticism, he says. You pay taxes on every game you play in Oregon. And he mentions his charity giving. But he conveniently neglects to mentions all the other taxes he didn’t have to pay, like on his investments. Kitzhaber has no response, but the crowd does. Laughter.
Now it’s Kitz’s turn: He’s asked about his questionable home loan. He comes back with a Thomas Pynchon quote. Dudley says that “destroys trust.” “When I am governor, that will not happen in my office.”
Commenter Atomic says: “I’m glad I got here in time for the Pynchon quote.” Kitz lookin’ literate.
UPDATE 7:32 PM Oh, good. Audience questions. Tax reform: sales, income and property! In one minute!
Dudley says giving rich guys a tax break, on capital gains, will be good for business. “People don’t want to hear about taxes,” he says. “Close the libraries first,” one woman just shouted. Sarah says: I think Dudley forgot for a second the name of the tax he wants to lower. “Capital uh capital uh I MAKE A LOT OF MONEY.”
Kitz gets in a good line: “I’m actually going to answer the question.” And he did. He almost said he wanted a sales tax and even mentioned the other two.
UPDATE 7:34 PM What about the kicker? Kitz says we should tweak it so the state can put away some money. Dudley says the corporate kicker, about to kick, isn’t “a big deal”?! Then he says taxes again. If we had a drinking game based on the word “taxes” you’d all be drunk.
UPDATE 7:37 PM Dudley makes a funny. Asked about the difference between the two, he says “besides size?” PENIS JOKE. TOTAL PENIS JOKE. Kitzhaber calls Dudley another George W. Bush, meanwhile. A Bush who wants to take away waitresses’ tip money.
UPDATE 7:39 PM Another Dudley hoops reference: Oregon is on a 14-year losing streak! (When it comes to jobs.) He also says “I’m not reducing the minimum wage. I’m not.” Never mind he said he hopes to tackle it if and when he’s elected. Sarah says: “When you rank 3rd in unemployment, that means there are 47 states better than you.” No one told me Dudley was good at maths!
UPDATE 7:44 PM What is your method of stimulating the economy, a guy with something like a speech impediment asks: Trickle down or bottom up? Kitz: Put the money into consumers’ hands. And let’s modify the capital gains tax—if it creates jobs in Oregon. Dudley: “My answer would be both.” Then he started making a lot of emphatic and strange hand gestures.
UPDATE 7:45 PM Spot poll (of 560 voters by KATU) shows Dudley ahead by 6 points.
UPDATE 7:47 PM Sarah says: I’m glad Dudley and I can agree on one thing. Death to the OLCC! And Kari Chisholm notes: “Another white male audience question [on the size of the federal deficit]. Five out of five.”
UPDATE 7:51 PM Joke from the crowd: “This debate is a study of Chris Dudley ‘looking at things.'” We just watched him nervously answer a question about negative ads, as if he’s an innocent in running negative ads. Kitzhaber calls them “comparative.” And then he rips Dudley for not debating and asks Dudley to meet him at the Portland City Club (where he’ll be later this week, alone). Then Dudley asks him to go to Medford. Maybe post a missed connections ad on craigslist?
UPDATE 7:58 PM Closing remarks! Dudley won the draw to go first. He trots out all the tired stats about Oregon’s so-called malaise he trotted out earlier and then said the word “together” nine or 10 times. Kitzhaber gets a little repetitive, too, but then gets serious. “We’ve got a great state … but it’s going to take a governor who can start on Day 1.”
And it’s over. Who won? What did you think of Lars Larson doing the post-game?
Kitzhaber sounds like a whole lot better choice to me, speaking as a bleeding-heart liberal. The consensus seems to be that he won on polish and showmanship as well. However, how many people watched this debate? Probably not too many. And if Dudley has a 6% lead, even if every single person who watched was Dudley voter who decided, after watching, to switch his or her vote over to Kitzhaber, it might not be enough to make a difference.
Dudley made a smart choice by limiting himself to a single debate. It is depressing to realize that this man will most likely be our next governor.
Chris Dudley: a noun, a verb, and jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs.
Obviously that’s the message that’s testing best this year. Good luck to all those candidates out there running on anti-jobs platforms.
Kitzhaber won. Better at putting two sentences together, and also able to turn a little wonky when necessary. He sounded very familiar with the inner workings of state policy, which is of course to be expected (and pretty much what he’s running on).
Dudley – much like Hughes in the Metro race – seems a little too eager to sell Oregon’s sustainability down the river for whatever cash we can get for it.
I have to say though, my impression of Dudley did improve from at first thinking he sounded a little dopey, to eventually thinking he can express himself decently well. I just didn’t like what he was expressing.
Seeing how Mercury blogging don’t mean shit beyond the confines of Blogtown and this Hipster crew is too cool to go door to door in East of 82nd; May I present to you your next Oregon governor, Chris Dudley.
Lars Larson is kicking himself for not running for Governor after watching those two losers.
The Kitz and the Dud. Where’s the choices?
If Chris Dudley is going to beat Governor Kitzhaber, he should start doing it on the court, and not in the locker room. Please debate Kitzhaber on Friday. If not, you’ve lost any chance of me voting for you. You have to make your free throws. Stonerfluid Somewhere in Portland
If Chris Dudley is going to beat Governor Kitzhaber, he should start doing it on the court, and not in the locker room. Please debate Kitzhaber on Friday. If not, you’ve lost my vote. You have to make your free throws. Stonerfluid Somewhere in Portland
Dudley won the debate…..he crushed in the first 30 minutes, and held on to win in the last half. Anyone outside the cacoon of the Multnomah County liberal fold will see Dudley as being a confident, capable alternative to the status quo cabal that has been leading this State since forever.
Hey, I happen to like the liberal, status-quo cabal. And without it in place, how are we ever going to institute the death panels?
Oh… I’ve said too much.
i love it when people like buch declare The Truth in such an authoritative manner. it’s the basis of most sitcoms: everyone else can see how messed up they are, but they persevere as if it matters.
“your” candidate always wins. in this case, Kitz gave more direct answers, was more specific, and, in the case of the two “house” questions showed himself to be classier, choosing not to attack Duds while CD took the low road and attack Kitz’ character. i think we learned a lot in that little exchange.
You know, Princeton did a study a few years ago and determined that most people judge a political candidates competency within seconds of seeing their face. Period. Issues did not matter. Stance did not matter.
Through their study, researchers determined that they could accurately predict the winners in approximately 70 percent of the races for U.S. senator, and governor in the 2006 elections, based solely upon the faces of the candidates.
So now the question is can Oregonians vote based on content or is this a runway competition.
This election reminds me of the South Park episode (back when it used to be funny), where they had to vote for a school mascot, and had to choose between a douchebag and a turd. Neither candidate is great, so you take the lesser of the two evils. For me, that’s Kitzhaber. Dudley’s right that we need a new direction; unfortunately, his is the wrong direction.
Here’s a hint: depending on which financial magazine you read, Oregon has the fifth or the third lowest business taxes in the country. And the third highest unemployment. You think maybe that shows that lowering taxes doesn’t magically create jobs???
How in God’s name is it that the “progressive” candidate, Kitzhaber, is the one supporting the most regressive form of taxation of all? Sales taxes punish the poor. This inner SE bleeding heart is voting Dudley.
there is not just one kind of sales tax. if Oregon passed any, it would exempt almost everything low income people buy. it would be aimed at higher end products, luxury goods, etc. and it would replace some of the income tax. that would directly benefit low income people. the income tax in Oregon is terribly repressive, mostly because when incomes drop (as they have been doing during the recession), services that low income people rely on (not to mention those of us who send kids to public schools, like to have cops on the beat, etc) get whacked. have you noticed that, ere? we can’t depend on the income tax, and we can’t overturn M5, so we have to find some solution.
and a form of sales tax, progressively structured, is the most likely answer.
A sales tax is only regressive if it is applied to necessary items such as food, clothing, and the like. Many states have sales taxes that specifically don’t target a gallon of milk but rather are payed for more luxury goods like a television or computer. I’m under the assumption that any plan Kitzhaber would put forward for a sale tax (which I doubt would ever happen in the first place) would be similarly modeled, but perhaps I’m just being naive.
Sadly, for those who do not understand how government works and what the role of the legislature is and that for the last 8 years we had K-ulongoski not K-itzhaber, the facile repeating of memorized lines by Dudley..the “just a normal guy but very rich”… and without a clue as to what a governor does held his own because , like an advertizement jingle, he is meant to appeal to the vast uneducated and inattentive.
….In other words, for the “average” inattentive voter, Dudley held his own or won.
The electronic age is a wonderful thing. Between watching on TV and following comments online, the debate felt much more inclusive. While I don’t see an ideal candidate, I know who I’m NOT voting for. Most of Mr Dudley’s answers were canned rhetoric, with a horoscope/fortune cookie vagueness. Mr Kitzhaber knew what he was talking about, and did so with confidence.
The one definitive answer I remember from Mr Dudley? When asked if he would debate in front of the City Club, he simply said, “No.”
As one of them libruls: I don’t want a sales tax and I’m down with the execution of the OLCC. Does this mean I’m gonna vote for the baller? Aww shit.
If Dudley did THAT well in Libral ville- Hawthorne– just think how well he’ll do in the rest of the metro area and the rural areas. 60-40 GO DUDLEY