Salem Political Snark

Peter Fernandez' retirement is good news for Salem

Peter Fernandez, the thoroughly sleazy Public Works Director for the City of Salem, announced he's retiring effective January 6, 2023. 

This is cause for joy among those of us who follow goings-on at City Hall closely enough to be aware of what a disaster Fernandez has been during the fifteen years Salem has had to put up with his lies, dissembling, and poor decisions.

It's remarkable that Fernandez wasn't fired long ago, given how poorly he's performed as Public Works Director. This shows that Salem is willing to put up with a lot of crap, so long as the crap-producer is part of the Good Old Boys/Girls Network.

Hopefully the new City Manager, Keith Stahley, will hire a replacement for Fernandez who is much better suited for the job -- ideally someone who isn't now a Public Works manager, since those people have the stench of Fernandez associated with them.

From what I've said so far, does it sound like I can't stand Peter Fernandez? I sure hope so, since that's exactly how I feel.

Here's nine blog posts that I've written about Fernandez' failings. The first one set the stage for my subsequent criticisms of Fernandez, so I'll share a fairly lengthy excerpt from that post.

Sad stump with flower memorial to needless killing of this U.S. Bank tree

(1) Outrage: the true story of Salem's U.S. Bank tree killings

This is a case study of how city government shouldn't work. 

Here the Public Works Director, Peter Fernandez, ignored the law, facts, expert advice, advisory committee recommendations, and lots of public testimony so he could keep a back-room verbal promise to the U.S. Bank president, Ryan Allbritton, to cut the five large, healthy, beautiful trees down. 

The extra-legal promise itself is bad enough. Worse, Fernandez made that promise two years before the bank started the required process of filing an application to remove the trees. 

Even so, Public Works Director Fernandez was all set to order that the trees be pruned, rather than removed, until bank president Allbritton reminded him of that "just between us" deal they'd made together. It didn't matter that Albritton was unable to give a single coherent reason why the trees needed to be killed.

After Fernandez spoke with the bank president, everything changed. 

Allbritton got an unusual second chance to argue his extremely flimsy tree-killing case. He lobbied city councilors, who weren't bothered by Allbritton's mention of the verbal promise.

Maybe because this is the way the City of Salem habitually does things under its current leadership -- working out deals with special interests behind the scenes, then going through a show of holding public hearings and issuing a formal decision.

Like I say throughout the report, outrageous. There's more juicy details in the 18 pages, of course.

Download Outrage - Salem's U.S. Bank tree killings

The report includes an opinion letter from my land use and environmental law attorney which demolishes (1) Public Works Director Fernandez' false claim that he was obligated by an ordinance to allow the trees to be cut down, and (2) the repeated inaccurate assertion by City staff that Fernandez' decision couldn't be appealed. 

(2) Why Salem's Public Works Director should be fired

(3) City Manager is OK with a developer illegally removing trees

(4) Salem City Council bamboozled by staff on Taybin Road property purchase

(5) Neighborhood association criticizes city officials for not enforcing tree ordinance

(6) City official issues tree removal permit 105 days after they were cut down

(7) Shady stuff associated with Salem City Council agenda item

(8) Devastating critique of Salem's Urban Forester program by a job applicant

(9) Key questions remain about Salem's botched response to toxic algae water problem

Wacko group fails to recall Salem-Keizer school board members

The good news is that Salem Keizer We Stand Together, a wacko group that sees "wokeness" as the biggest problem in our children's education, failed to get enough signatures to recall three school board members who didn't conform to the group's extreme right-wing agenda.

None of the three Salem-Keizer Public Schools governing board members targeted in a recall effort will be removed since petitioners failed to collect enough signatures before the deadline.

Casity Troutt, vice president of the parent advocacy group Salem-Keizer We Stand Together, filed paperwork on Aug. 25 to recall board Chairwoman Ashley Carson Cottingham, former Chairman Osvaldo Avila and co-Vice Chairwoman Karina Guzmán Ortiz.

Brian Van Bergen in the Marion County Clerk's Office said none of the three proposed recalls was able to collect enough signatures before the deadline.

The bad news is that Salem Keizer We Stand Together (the gr0up doesn't use a hyphen) almost certainly is going to continue to meddle in the education of children in our area, having drunk the Trumpian Kool-Aid fantasy that our nation's schools are a hotbed of Critical Race Theory, LGBTQ grooming, and socialist propaganda.

Back in February of this year I wrote, "Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a wacko school group." Here's how that post ended.

After reading the Statesman Journal story, my initial inclination was to write about how wrong Salem Keizer We Stand Together is on issues involving racial justice, LGBTQ rights, public health/Covid, and such.

But I changed my mind about this after realizing that Salem Keizer We Stand Together isn't interested in bringing reasonable conservative views into discussions of school policies.

To echo the Free Oregon web site, it seems clear to me that Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a group of power thirsty ideologues who care much more about promoting their Trumpist political agenda than in improving local schools.

So don't be fooled into believing that Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a bunch of reasonable conservatives who want to bring some balance to the current progressive leaning of the school board. If that was what they wanted, they'd work harder on winning school board elections.

No, Salem Keizer We Stand Together is very much in the mold of Moms for Liberty, the subject of a fascinating story in the November 7, 2022 issue of The New Yorker, Class Warfare: School boards are being attacked by partisan saboteurs.

That story on The New Yorker web site is titled: The Right-Wing Mothers Fueling the School-Board Wars. It has the apt subtitle: "Moms for Liberty claims that teachers are indoctrinating students with dangerous ideologies. But is the group’s aim protecting kids—or scaring parents?"
Download The Right-Wing Mothers Fuelling the School-Board Wars | The New Yorker

Basically Moms for Liberty made up crap about the English and Language Arts curriculum in a Tennessee school district (Wit & Wisdom) that had been carefully reviewed before being adopted, and was well liked by  both teachers and students.

But just as Salem Keizer We Stand Together sees the mirage of Critical Race Theory and woke leftism wherever they cast their Fox News loving eyes, so did Moms for Liberty. Resistance eventually surfaced to the Moms for Liberty agenda, as described in the story.

Moms for Liberty members were portraying Wit & Wisdom as “critical race theory” in disguise. Garrett found this baffling. C.R.T., a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society, is explored at the university level or higher. As far as the board knew, Williamson County Schools had never introduced the concept.

...The Antis jeered at speakers who expressed support for Golden or the district’s diversity efforts. They mocked a woman whose daughters had experienced anti-Asian slurs at school. The mom told the board, “I’ve heard people say that teaching these parts of our history is ‘racist’ or ‘traumatic.’ What’s traumatic is Black, Latino, Asian, and L.G.B.T.Q. kids going to schools where they face discrimination and don’t feel safe.”

A local psychologist, Alanna Truss, said, “I’m yet to see a child in my practice who’s been traumatized by our county’s curriculum choices. I have, however, seen many students experiencing trauma due to being discriminated against and bullied within our schools, related to race, religion, gender, and sexuality.”

I invite you to check out the Salem Keizer We Stand Together web site. It's filled with so many lies I had difficulty choosing one to share in this post. I settled on an excerpt from a Daily Caller story that's featured on the home page. Here's how the story starts out. Like I said, lies piled upon lies.

It’s back to school! You bought all the school supplies and new clothes, but what about insulating your children against school indoctrination? Sadly, indoctrination resistance is now part of going back to school so you must stay vigilant and teach your children personal boundaries.

Lesson plans about “social identity,” which may be called Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Critical Race Theory, cultural competency, or other names, obliterate the personal boundaries of children in order to break down kids emotionally and build them back up as social justice activists.

The process involves forging emotional bonds to influence children to become political proteges of the teachers and peers that emotionally manipulated them. Adopting leftists’ mindsets and behaviors becomes an act of loyalty to a collective identity that is prioritized over individual human value.

Marion County out to undermine gun control and climate action

It's not easy being a conservative in a liberal area, or a liberal in a conservative area, because your elected officials tend to do things you'd rather not have done. 

Of course, a lot depends on what's meant by "area."

I'm a liberal. I live in Oregon, a blue state. So mostly I'm good with what statewide elected officials (all Democrats) do. Within Oregon, I live in Salem -- that's my address, though I'm not in the city limits -- which leans decidedly leftward. So mostly I'm good with what the Salem City Council does, as the council has a clear progressive majority.

However, when it comes to Marion County, Democrat me often is at odds with what the mostly Republican county elected officials do. (I believe Bill Burgess, the County Clerk, is the only Democrat holding a Marion County elected office.)

Two recent examples:

(1) In the November midterm election, Oregon voters approved Measure 114, which regulates the purchase of firearms. Among other things, a permit is required and ammunition magazines can't hold more than ten rounds.

Seems reasonable to me. I voted for Measure 114.

Statewide, it passed 51% to 49%. But Marion County rejected it 43% to 57%. Which helps to explain why Joe Kast, the Marion County Sheriff, has said he won't be enforcing the magazine capacity provision of Measure 114. Here's an excerpt from a letter Kast sent out.
Download FINAL_BM114_LETTER.doc2 PDF

We recognize it is likely there will be litigation regarding provisions within the measure which will not be resolved prior to the measure becoming law. To protect the interests of our law-abiding community members, we still need to be prepared to assist the residents of Marion County with a pathway to exercise their right to lawfully purchase firearms in the state of Oregon.

We anticipate significant strain on our limited staffing and resources as a result of Measure 114. Moving forward, we will prioritize our services towards the areas of greatest need to best serve the residents and visitors within Marion County, therefore will not be focusing investigations on magazine capacity issues.

Well, as an OPB story says:

Measure 114 was passed by voters, not state lawmakers in Salem. Sheriffs are not lawyers and do not interpret the constitution — that is the role of judges.

Hopefully Sheriff Kast will realize this, that he's not supposed to decide which laws are constitutional, the courts are.

(2) Even more disturbing, because Marion County stands alone among Oregon's 36 counties on this, my county has joined with thirteen Oregon cities in a lawsuit aimed at stopping Governor Brown's executive action on reducing greenhouse gas pollution in this state.

A group of thirteen Oregon cities and one county have sued Oregon's Department of Land Conservation and Development, challenging a new set of environmental regulations that the group argues would force them to change their land use rules in damaging ways and on an impractically fast timeline.

Forest Grove, Grants Pass, Happy Valley, Hillsboro, Keizer, Medford, Oregon City, Sherwood, Springfield, Troutdale, Tualatin, Wood Village, Cornelius and Marion County jointly filed the lawsuit Friday in the Oregon Court of Appeals.

The plaintiffs also filed a motion Monday asking the court to place an emergency halt on enforcement of the new regulations while the lawsuit plays out.

The lawsuit targets Oregon's "Climate-Friendly and Equitable Communities" rules, which the Land Conservation and Development Commission adopted this summer in an effort to get Oregon back on track to meet its climate goals, according to the department's website.

The rules were developed after Gov. Kate Brown issued an order in March 2020 that tightened Oregon's carbon emission goals and directed state agencies to take action to speed up the pace of emission reduction.

Well, hopefully the lawsuit won't go anywhere. But I sure wish the three conservative Republicans who make up the Marion County Board of Commissioners would go somewhere: out of elected office and back into private life. 

I can dream...

Ed Dover makes sense of election results in City Club talk

After every general and midterm election for the past dozen years or so, Ed Dover, Professor Emeritus of Politics, Policy and Administration at Western Oregon University, gives a talk to the Salem City Club about what just happened.

I always look forward to hearing Dover, because he's so entertaining and informative. Today was no exception.

He started out by talking about the power of political metaphors, the goal being to create a memorable image or phrase that will stick in peoples' minds. This year "Red Wave" was heard over and over -- the image being of a 100 foot tall wall of water that would obliterate Democratic hopes.

(An aside: Dover pointed out that long ago, NBC News decided to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats. Since, that tradition has stuck, though never adopted by either party. In Canada, by contrast, the colors for liberals and conservatives are reversed.)

But the Red Wave never broke upon the nation's political shores. It basically was a status quo election. No incumbent U.S. senators were voted out. In the House, 359 of 367 incumbent representatives held on to their seats. In Oregon, just one incumbent in the state legislature lost. 

The prevailing trend that Dover has talked about before held: Democrats did well in urban areas, Republicans in rural areas, with the suburbs being tossups. Yet even though not much political change happened overall, more money was spent on the election than any other, excepting those in presidential years.

Just one Senate seat changed hands, the one in Pennsylvania won by Democrat John Fetterman, in part because Republican Oz was a bad candidate. (The Georgia seat held by Warnock won't be decided until a runoff election on December 6.) Four Governor races were won by the opposite party: three by Democrats and one by Republicans. 

So what happened to the Red Wave? Dover chalks it up to a Blue Tsunami metaphor that didn't get anywhere near the same attention. Michael Moore did predict a Democratic tsunami before the election, but he lacked much company.

It's an apt metaphor. Big waves are clearly visible from afar. Large tsunamis, being an upwelling of the entire ocean, are barely visible on the open ocean, creating their massive effects only when they reach shore. Thus a hidden Blue Tsunami stopped the supposedly readily apparent Red Wave.

However, predictions of a Red Wave were largely based on historical precedent. In Reagan's 1982 midterm, Republicans lost 22 House seats. In Clinton's 1994 midterm, the GOP took 54 seats in the House. Democrats lost 63 House seats in Obama's 2010 midterm. Republicans lost 42 seats in Trump's 2018 midterm.

Usually, Dover said, this pattern holds true because of a change in turnout in midterm elections as compared to presidential elections. In a midterm, the party in power in Washington has had some successes in the first two years of a presidency, but many in the president's party are disillusioned that more hasn't been accomplished. 

Programs take time to get through Congress. Then it takes more time for their effects to be felt, as is the case with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act. The party not in power is more enthusiastic about voting, since they want to change things to be more in their favor.

But in 2022 this pattern didn't hold. Dover listed three reasons: (1) Women in general; (2) Issues of concern to women; (3) Donald Trump.

He quoted Jennifer Rubin, a Washington Post columnist, as saying that pundits wrongly insist that women are an interest group. Actually, women are the voters, comprising 52% of the electorate. And the political gender gap is growing larger.

Dover said that in Oregon, Measure 111, which enshrines a right to health care in the state constitution, passed because of women. Same was true with Measure 114, which regulates firearm purchases. Nationally, abortion was a central issue for women following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

He noted that after the United States prohibited the sale of alcohol way back when, some thought this would put an end to drinking. But it didn't, obviously. Soon prohibition was in the nation's rear view mirror. Likewise, allowing states to ban abortion didn't stop support for the procedure. Quite the opposite.

Kansas Republicans put an abortion ban on the 2022 primary ballot because they thought fewer Democrats would vote in the primary, given how much Kansas politics favors the GOP. But the ban was defeated 60-40 in the largest primary turnout ever in Kansas, in large part due to 1/3 of Republicans voting it down.

In Michigan, supporters of a pro-abortion initiative only had three weeks to get 425,000 signatures after the Supreme Court decision. They got 750,000, and the initiative passed easily in the midterm election. Republicans had a disastrous election in Michigan, which usually is viewed as a swing state.

Building on this momentum, Dover said that Planned Parenthood is planning initiatives in every state where abortion is illegal. Younger voters are motivated by the abortion issue, with youth turnout in the recent midterm election being the highest in 50 years. Young women voted 70% Democratic.

Dover didn't have much time to discuss Trump's effect on the election other than to note that the Big Lie election deniers he backed in swing states all lost. And in the Q&A period he said that support for Trump already is declining. 

Asked about how extreme partisanship can be lessened in Oregon, Dover said that getting rid of closed primaries would help a lot, since not allowing nonaffiliated people to vote in primaries encourages Democrats and Republicans to nominate extreme candidates that appeal to the base.

I asked a question about why both Salinas in the 6th Congressional District and McLeod-Skinner in the 5th Congressional District each underperformed Biden's margin of victory in 2020. (Salinas won, McLeod-Skinner lost.) Dover's answer was that neither were incumbents. Thus I see reason to think that if Kurt Schrader had been chosen as the Democratic nominee in the 5th District, he could have fared better than McLeod-Skinner.

Of course, that would have turned off progressives, who heartily disliked Schrader, so Republican Chavez-DeRemer might have won anyway. 

Hopefully I don't regret this blog post about Trump 2024

Yesterday Donald Trump announced that he's a candidate for president in 2024, a full two years before the election. 

I can't stand Trump. But I'm pleased that he's running for the Republican nomination again. It'll be easy for me to explain why.

I just hope that after the 2024 presidential election I don't take a look at this post and think, Brian, how could you have been so stupid?

Wouldn't be the first time I've had that thought, of course. I think and do stupid stuff all the time.

However, it's one thing to make a personal mistake, and a whole other thing to be mistaken about the future of our democracy -- which clearly would be threatened if Trump has another four years to complete his authoritarian agenda.

Before the midterms I was much more worried about Trump than I am now.

The big question is whether the failure of Trump's Big Lie candidates in swing states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada -- is a sign that his appeal to voters has stopped working like it did in 2016, or whether Trump is capable of reinventing himself.

My guess is that Trump's popularity is on a downward trend that might reverse itself a bit, yet not enough to get him elected in 2024. Or maybe even nominated by the GOP as their presidential candidate.

What gives me pause, though, is that I was thrilled in 2016 when it became clear that Trump was the Republican nominee. I was confident that this would guarantee a win for Hillary Clinton. 

After all, how could the American people elect someone as unqualified to be president as Donald Trump? Turned out, of course, that they certainly could.

Naturally I could be wrong about Trump this time also. But 2016 is way different than 2022. Now voters know all about Trump's many weaknesses and his Big Lie schtick is wearing thin even among his avid supporters.

Yet Trump still has a good chance of winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, especially if it's a crowded field, as in 2016. His base of GOP support is substantial. But I'm confident that the Democratic nominee would beat Trump, given Biden's victory in 2020 and how well Democrats did in the recent midterm election.

If Trump doesn't win the nomination, this will probably deeply irk most of his base, even, or especially, if Ron DeSantis is the nominee. DeSantis strikes me as too Trump-like in his hateful attitude toward immigrants, gays, teachers, and others to appeal to a broad swath of the national electorate.

I was worrying that Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for Arizona governor, could be DeSantis' vice-president pick, or Trump's pick, since her lengthy background as a TV news anchor makes her skilled at communicating to voters.

But now that Lake has lost to Katie Hobbs, that worry is much reduced. 

All in all, I'm feeling good about Democrats holding on to the presidency in 2024. I think Biden could win, though like most Democrats, I'd prefer that someone else be my party's nominee.

Help Salem Reporter fight City of Salem secrecy

I hate it when government officials try to hide important facts from the public. I especially hate it when the officials doing the hiding are employees of the City of Salem. You know, the agency whose slogan is "At Your Service."

But for sure not when the folks at City Hall are trying to cover something up. Then their unstated slogan becomes "Good Luck Learning What We Did, Sucker."

That's the position the inquiring journalists at the Salem Reporter are in. For quite a few months they've been trying to learn why Steve Bellshaw, who used to be a deputy police chief, walked away with $53,000 in taxpayer money after being put on administrative leave.

Below is a copy of a column by Les Zaitz, the Salem Reporter editor, that explains how city officials are trying to keep a veil of secrecy over what should be public knowledge. He's seeking $4,000 in donations from the community to pay for what the City of Salem is charging for a public record request.

Yes, that's an outrageous amount for documents that should be provided for free. But I happily donated $100 to the cause, because I've had similar bad experiences trying to get information from city officials. They use very high public record request fees to discourage people from learning what's going on at the City of Salem. 

As Les Zaitz put it in his lead sentence, "The city of Salem is trying to grind us down." I've felt the same way numerous times, Les. Hang in there. Help is coming. Please donate what you can to the Salem Reporter public record fund. A donate link is in the column. Or click here.

 

 

 

 

The city of Salem is trying to grind us down and we need your help to push back.

For months, Salem Reporter has dug into circumstances around the departure of a top city official.

Steve Bellshaw was a deputy police chief who left in February. He had been accused of misconduct serious enough to warrant putting him on administrative leave three months earlier.

The city cut him a deal – allowing Bellshaw to retire, paying him an unearned $53,000 in public funds and pledging to keep quiet about it all.

Since then, Salem Reporter has been seeking the truth about this. The city has tried to keep it all under wraps, blocking access to public records and ignoring legitimate questions.

We haven’t given up. We sought one order seeking disclosure of records but Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson sided with the city. Since then, Salem Reporter did win Clarkson’s order to disclose information about Bellshaw’s administrative leave. And now the city is under direction to produce some records about its terminated investigation of Bellshaw.

This all takes time and it’s a big lift for a small news team.

Now, we encounter a new obstacle.

In the face of continuing questions from Salem Reporter, the city’s strategic initiatives manager provided some answers in a statement. Courtney Knox Busch said there was no allegation of criminal conduct, that finding an investigator had failed, and that the law wouldn’t allow the city to release records.

Salem Reporter asked for documents that backed up these claims. We also invited city officials to talk to us about narrowing the scale while getting relevant documents. No city official took us up on that offer.

Instead, the city said it would cost Salem Reporter an estimated $4,225.90 to get those records. And there is no assurance the city would disclose whatever it found.

‘Negatively impact’ the city

The law allows government to waive fees in the public interest, but city officials say more harm than good comes from providing records at no cost.

 “The time, expense and interference with the business of the city to compile and provide the records is substantial and outweighs the benefit to the public,” the city explained. Taking time to pull together the records would “negatively impact the city staff’s ability to meet the needs of other customers.”

The city broke down the costs, showing it would take about 44 hours of staff time to find the records. The city estimated its IT crew would need seven hours – nearly an entire work day – to find records. It estimated its police staff would need the equivalent of two work days. Even the city recorder’s office would have to put in five hours.

That seems remarkable given that Busch’s statement was all of four paragraphs. If she didn’t have documents readily at hand on which to base her statement, what did she rely on?

A $155 million budget

But the bill, perhaps unintentionally, revealed that far more people in City Hall have been involved in the Bellshaw matter than has been disclosed. The city said people in five departments would need to round up records. Until then, the city has been insisting city records about the Bellshaw matter were all in the hands of city attorneys and privileged.

The burden of the $4,000 on the city needs to be put in context. The city is running on a $155 million general fund budget ­– $5 million more than last year. The city employees who would work on this request already get paid by the city. And the budget is robust enough that the city plans to spend $250,000 on something called “organizational enhancement.”

Why not enhance public trust in City Hall and give up the documents without such a fuss?

Here’s the bottom line.

The city has fought release of records at every step of the way. The city has implied that it is prohibited from releasing records and that’s proven not true. At one time, the city slowed its handling of a request by claiming it didn’t understand what we wanted when we asked for copies of city emails. We’re still waiting for those.

Now, the city is taking a new tactic to keep us out of its business – the public’s business.

City officials want to load us up with fees, probably betting that a small news operation can’t afford the tab and we’ll give up.

The city is only half right.

Not giving up

As a local news outfit, we can’t afford to write a $4,000 check to the city of Salem.

But we’re not giving up. That’s because of you.

In recent weeks, we have heard from many of you that you want more transparency from the city. We don’t engage in these fights because we have little else to do. We pursue the facts because that’s what you count on us to do.

So, now we need your help.

We’re asking you to donate to cover that $4,000 city fee. Nothing would speak louder to the city manager, the city councilors and the new mayor about what the community expects from those at Salem City Hall.

We need you to become a citizen watchdog to help pry open those city files.

Our pledge is that every dollar will be used for public records costs.

To help, you can use our online donation tool – DONATE LINK – to add to our Disclosure Fund. If you want your donation to be anonymous or you have questions, send me a personal note at [email protected] If you prefer a check, mail: Salem Reporter, 72585 Middle Fork Lane, Bates OR 97817.

Just 40 giving $100 gets us there.

We’ll keep you posted on how the effort is going and whether we’ll hit the goal. I am betting we will. Who wants to be first?

Les Zaitz is editor and CEO of Salem Reporter. Reach him by email at [email protected]

Democrats hold U.S. Senate. My liberal joy increases.

A few days ago I wrote about how after feeling good on Tuesday's election night, Democrat me was feeling even better Thursday night. Now here I am on Saturday night, two days further along in the post-election period, and I'm feeling tremendous.

I'll let some Twitter screenshots tell the tale, with the aid of some words from me.

This is huge, Democrats having at least 50 seats in the Senate, the number they have now. The win by Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada was expected, but by now means certain. It came down to mail ballots in Clark County, Nevada's largest county being the home of Las Vegas. 

Big thanks to everyone in Nevada who made the win possible, which notably includes the Culinary Union which helped to increase the turnout of Democratic voters and put a lot of work into "curing" thousand of ballots that had fixable problems, like illegible signatures.

As Toobin said, with the Senate in Democratic control for the next two years, Biden will be able to get many more federal judges confirmed. If Republicans had taken control, that number would have been zero.

And this tweet shows the importance of the Georgia runoff between Warnock and Walker on December 6. Sure, now the runoff election won't determine control of the Senate, but an extra seat means that the Judiciary Committee no longer would have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, so judge nominations could move forward without time-consuming votes by the full Senate.

OK, this wasn't a tweet, but a New York Times headline. My wife and I watch the 11 pm news on Portland's KGW every night, so we've followed the drama of the battle between Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, and Joe Kent, a Republican backed by Donald Trump in Washington's 3rd Congressional District that includes Vancouver. 

Kent beat a moderate Republican in the primary, which opened the door to Perez winning a seat that had been in Republican hands for quite a few years. Kind of a microcosm of the whole election: Trump-backed MAGA Republicans winning in a primary, then losing in the midterm election because voters saw them as too extreme and focused on Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Lastly, I'm enjoying the prospect of Kari Lake losing to Katie Hobbs in the Arizona Governor race. Today Lake didn't make up much ground to Hobbs after another large release of votes from Maricopa County, the Phoenix area. If that trend continues for another day or two, Hobbs will become the next Governor and Lake will fade into irrelevancy, hopefully, since she's a super-irritating Trump wanna-be, albeit with much better speaking skills given her lengthy career as a TV news anchor.

Democrats doing great post-election in Oregon and nationally

I was feeling good last Tuesday on election night when it was clear that the widely predicted Republican Red Wave was going to be much closer to a Red Ripple. 

Now, two days later, with more election results in, I'm feeling even better!

Which means that Republicans are feeling worse. My compassionate Buddha-nature is sorry for that, but not so sorry to prevent Democrat me from listing in this blog post some reasons why my political mood is so positive.

(1) Most importantly, Tina Kotek has been declared the winner of Oregon's Governor race over Christine Drazan. This was my #1 nightmare pre-election, having to spend four years watching a Republican governor undo Kate Brown's accomplishments -- notably her executive actions on fighting climate change. Nice to see this headline in tonight's online New York Times.

(2) Almost as importantly for me, it's looking increasingly unlikely that my #2 nightmare will come to pass, Democrats losing control of the U.S. Senate. If that happened exactly zero of Biden's judicial appointments would be confirmed by a Republican majority.

But election updates in Arizona and Nevada today have things looking good for two Democrat senators seeking another term, Mark Kelly and Catherine Cortez Masto. A couple of recent tweets tell the tale. Nate Cohn is the New York Times polling/political analyst.

(3) Democrat Andrea Salinas still has a 50-48 lead over Republican Mike Erickson in the 6th Congressional District race, same as on election night. Hard to see how Erickson can win. I'm happy that after so many years of having to put up with Kurt Schrader as my congressman, now I'll be represented by a genuine progressive Democrat.

(4) All four statewide ballot measures are passing in Oregon. On election night Measure 111, which puts a right to health care access in the Oregon constitution, was failing. Now it's passing with 51%. Measure 114, the firearm regulation measure, is passing by the same margin, 51%.

No big shock, 56% of voters are approving of Measure 112, which gets slavery out of the Oregon constitution. Only surprise is that 44% were OK with slavery being there. And it's great that Measure 113 is passing with 68% yes, as it penalizes state lawmakers who walk out of a legislative session for ten days or more by preventing them from running for office in the next election. 

(5) I wish Raphael Warnock had won outright over Herschel Walker in their Georgia Senate race. Still, it was great to see Warnock coming out on top in the election, even if he didn't surpass 50%, which is required under state law to be elected. I've heard this is a holdover from the Not-So-Good Old Days, as it was intended to prevent Blacks from being elected in a multi-person race.

Hopefully Warnock will kick Walker's butt in the December 6 runoff election, since Walker strikes me as the least qualified person to run for the Senate I've ever come across. If he hadn't been a star football player, there's no way Walker ever would have gotten the Republican nomination. 

Lastly, I love this quote from tonight's New York Times story mentioned above. It wasn't an accident that almost everything went right for Democrats in Senate races. Voters preferred Democrats because my party is on the side of ordinary people. Republicans cater to extremists these days, as exemplified by the grip Donald Trump has on the GOP.

“For Democrats to be in this position right now, every single thing had to go right for them on election night,” said Jessica Taylor, a Senate analyst at The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter. “And every single thing went right for them on election night.”

She added, referring to Arizona and Nevada, “I do think they’ll win both races.”

Election looking good for Democrats in Oregon and nation

There's still a lot more votes to be counted in the midterm election, but right now, as a Democrat, I'm feeling good about how my party has fared.

For sure this hasn't been a Red Wave election, as so many pundits predicted. At best, we're talking a Red Ripple. And when all is said and done, even that might be an overstatement. 

Here in Oregon, Democrat Tina Kotek is leading Republican Christine Drazan 46-45 in the Governor race, with unaffiliated Betsy Johnson at a mere 9%. Too close for comfort, but I suspect Kotek will come out on top when all the ballots are counted.

In the new 6th Congressional District that includes Salem, I'm thrilled to see Andrea Salinas (D) leading Mike Erickson (R) 50-48. In the 5th Congressional District, Lori Chavez-Deremer (R) is ahead of Jamie McLeod-Skinner (D) 53-47. That's disappointing, but not all that surprising given the makeup of the district.

Deb Patterson (D) has a comfortable lead over Raquel Moore-Green (R) in the state Senate 10 race, 54-46, which is nice to see. Ditto with Tom Andersen (D) up by 55-45 over TJ Sullivan (R) in the state House 19 race.

Nationally, the New York Times is estimating a best guess that the Senate will end up 50-50, as it is now, with VP Kamala Harris providing a tiebreaker vote. At the moment the Times has a 75% chance that Republicans will take control of the House, but only with a 210-225 margin -- again, by no means a Red Wave.

Wonderful to see that John Fetterman (D) appears to have won a Senate seat in Pennsylvania. It's looking like the Georgia Senate race between Warnock (D) and Walker (R) will go to a runoff election in December, since neither candidate appears likely to get 50% of the vote. Hard to believe that this many Georgians would vote for Walker, who is horribly unqualified to be a senator.

Regarding Oregon's ballot measures, I'm surprised in a good way that Measure 114, the gun control measure, is narrowly ahead 51-49. I'm also happy that the measure to penalize lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences is well ahead, 68-32.

The Ward 4 Salem City Council race has Deanna Gwyn leading Dynee Medlock 51-48. And the City of Salem $300 million Community Improvement Bond has passed 65-35.

Everyone will be unhappy with tomorrow's election

If you're anxious about the midterm election tomorrow, join the club. A really big club. Because everyone is going to be unhappy with how it turns out.

Well, other than the people who don't care at all about elections and politics. They will be completely happy with the election, because it'll be over and they don't have to put with those annoying campaign ads on TV and lawn signs around the neighborhood.

But the rest of us, no matter our political persuasion, are going to find much to be unhappy about once the election results are known. (No matter what Trump says, it'll take several days, if not weeks, for some key races to be determined; always has been that way; it's a feature, not a bug, of elections.)

Now, the positive flip side is that because politics is a zero-sum game -- for every loser there's a winner, unless a candidate is unopposed -- everybody also will be happy with tomorrow's election, since it's a certainty that Democrats and Republicans will have some big successes and also some big failures.

So the advice I've giving myself, which I'm sharing with you, is to look on the bright side in tomorrow's results as much as we look upon the dark side. I say this because it's easy to focus on one horrendous election result that bums us out to such a degree, everything else that happened seems insignificant. 

For liberals like me, Trump being elected president in 2016 was that bummer of a thing. Like so many other Democrats, I had a lot of trouble sleeping on election night after it was clear that Trump had won and Clinton had lost.

The next morning, the waking nightmare resumed. Yet it didn't take all that long before depression turned to anger, a more fruitful emotion. And four years later, us Democrats were thrilled on election night 2020 when Biden won and Trump lost, casting Trump's fans into depression. 

Back when I worked in the field of health planning and medical ethics, I became acquainted with research about people's expectations if a dire health problem befell them.

For example, most people would say that if they became a quadriplegic, losing the use of their arms and legs, life wouldn't be worth living. However, when quadriplegics were asked if life was worth living, the majority said "Yes."

A lesson I draw from this is that while it's natural to imagine how you're going to feel if, say, Christine Drazan or Tina Kotek is elected governor of Oregon tomorrow, or if the U.S. Senate either remains in Democratic control or Republicans take over, be prepared to be surprised about how you actually do feel once the whole gamut of election results is known.

Sure, maybe you'll feel even worse than you expected. But my bet is that after a fairly brief period of strong disappointment, you'll realize that both your own personal life and the political life of the entire country isn't as affected by the outcome of certain election results as you thought it would be.

We humans are resilient creatures. We can absorb bad news, have it rattle around in our psyche for a while in a disturbing fashion, then find ways to make the best of the situation. At least, that's my hope for everybody tomorrow.

When my favored football team loses in a disappointing way -- last Friday's Oregon State vs. Washington game comes to mind -- I try to remember that for every sad fan of the losing team, there's a happy fan of the winning team.

The trick for political junkies like me is understanding that after every major election, I'm going to be both a sad fan and a happy fan, since some of my favored candidates and ballot measures are going to win, and some are going to lose.

So soon I'll be looking on the bright side. And also on the dark side. Such is life. And politics.