Thanks to a Salem Reporter story by Joe Siess, "Newly formed PAC jumps into Salem council race as election winds down," I learned about the latest dirty trick that conservatives desperate to regain control of the Salem City Council are playing on voters.
In almost every local election cycle something like this occurs. The basic reason is that while liberals value playing fair (naturally with some exceptions), conservatives value doing whatever it takes to win.
Here's how the Salem Reporter story starts out.
Dru Draper says his days-old political action committee has jumped into Salem’s contested council race to make it more fair.
But the candidate supposedly benefitting from the late spending smells a political trick.
And so do others watching the three-way race for a seat on the Salem City Council representing northeast Salem.
The candidates include Deanna Garcia, Mai Vang and Logan Lor, and voters in Ward 6 will decide who will represent them come Election Day – Tuesday, May 20.
Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess told Salem Reporter that so far 10.5% of ballots in Ward 6, or 1,241 out of 11,846 ballots, have been turned in. He said voter turnout is typically between 20-25% and that 30-40% of ballots come in on the final couple of days before the election.
Voters received the two-sided flyer in their mailboxes last week urging their support for Lor.
The flyer was distributed by a political action committee called Citizens for a Better Salem.
State government records in the ORESTAR system show that the Citizens for a Better Salem PAC was formed on May 8, 2025. This political action committee shows a grand total of zero contributions, zero revenues, and zero expenses.
Yet it was able to send out a mailing supporting Logan Lor to residents of Ward 6, images of which were included in the Salem Reporter story.
Given that Draper is a Republican political strategist and former spokesman for the Republican caucus in the Oregon Senate, it seems clear that his newly formed PAC has only one purpose: to split the votes of Ward 6 residents between the two candidates who lean liberal, Logan Lor and Mai Vang (Vang is endorsed by Progressive Salem) to increase the chance that the more conservative candidate, Deanna Garcia, will come out on top.
Because this is a special election to fill the Ward 6 City Council vacancy created when Julie Hoy was elected Mayor, the candidate with the most votes wins outright, while generally it takes winning 50% of the votes plus 1 to win in May without going to a November election runoff between the top two candidates.
I take this last minute dirty trick by Dru Draper and his Citizens for a Better Salem PAC to be a sign that Mai Vang is running a strong campaign that has struck fear into the Chamber of Commerce and other conservative supporters of Deanna Garcia who desperately want to shrink the majority of progressives on the City Council to a slim 5-4.
Hopefully Mai Vang will still win. If Garcia does, and it's by a slim margin, we'll never know the role these last minute mailings had on the race. Dirty tricks shouldn't pay off with a victory, but sometimes sleazy tactics pay off in elections.
or after elections
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1924251034282565708
Posted by: sant64 | May 18, 2025 at 05:53 PM