Hot for mayor

Winners

1. Oregon’s famed “MySpace Mayor,” Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, has vindicated Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message. There’s something about MySpace that simply compels people to photograph themselves in their skivvies and post the results online. And Kontur-Gronquist, whose bra-baring profile already cost her a job as mayor in Arlington, is now suing her Eastern Oregon home over the February recall that ousted her by three votes. (Just as newsworthily, she’ll be at Candidates Gone Wild on April 28.)

2. Has Gov. Ted Kulongoski read John Donne recently? We ask because the 17th-century poet penned the lines “For whom the bell tolls” and “No man is an island.” And last week, road toll advocates got a surprise boost when Kulongoski went out on a political island by including rush-hour tolls as a possible priority for 2009. The charge for our smarty-pants connections to dead writers? As always, free.

3. Chelsea Clinton made hundreds of gay men in Portland very happy last weekend when she popped by the Red Dress party (see “Reduce, Recycle, Red Dress,” WW, April 9, 2008) in between Oregon campaign events for her mom. Go to WWire to learn who was “cooler than the red dress.”

4. ATV enthusiasts must have breathed a sigh of relief Saturday when a Damascus snowmobiler was rescued from inside the crater of Mount St. Helens. The snowmobiler’s fall from a cornice above the crater proved ATV riders have no corner on poor judgment.

LOSERS

1. Smart kids, rejoice. Sadly, new figures show that Oregon’s public-school dropout rate rose last year to 19 percent. This means a better student-teacher ratio for the kids who stick it out, and more quality time with Donne and McLuhan for the gifted set.

2. The nonprofit Friends of the Columbia Gorge lost a battle to keep suburbia off the riverbanks when the Columbia River Gorge Commission voted to allow a new resort subdivision in the national scenic area (see “Boom with a View,” WW, Feb. 6, 2008). On the bright side: The river’s few surviving salmon can enjoy a rejuvenating seaweed wrap and mud masque.

3. Small-town public officials across the state, many of them volunteers, have resigned—or threatened to resign—before the April 15 filing deadline for their “statements of economic interest,” a new state ethics requirement. While the bill that created the requirement is flawed, the officials’ contention that there’s no corruption in small towns is—how do they say it on the east side of the Cascades?—horseshit.