News Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley will meet reporters at 7:15 in downtown Lake Oswego, where he will issue a statement. Dudley has led his opponent, Democrat John Kitzhaber nearly since results began being released at 8 pm last night but the large number of Democratic ballots remaining to be counted in Multnomah County make a Kitzhaber victory virtually certain. The Oregonian and ...   More

News A lot of factors contributed to Democrat John Kitzhaber's winning an historic third term as Oregon's governor yesterday: a huge last-minute get-out-the-vote effort in Multnomah County; Republican Chris Dudley's relative inexperience; and Oregonians' reluctance to surf the national Republican wave, among others. But it's worth pointing out that the Constitution Party's Greg Kord got nearly 20,000 ...   More

News For much of the gubernatorial campaign, Republican Chris Dudley enjoyed a massive fundraising lead over Democrat John Kitzhaber. Dudley tapped connections from his 16-year NBA career, large out-of-state donors as well as wealthy Oregonians and their companies in impressive fashion for a first-time candidate. One local forest products company, Stimson Lumber, gave the rookie candidate $510,000. ...   More

News Veteran political consultant Patricia McCaig served as Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber's campaign manager in the months leading up to last Tuesday's election victory for the Democratic candidate. Today's filings with the state show McCaig got a $42,000 "win bonus" for guiding the campaign to victory. Paying campaign staffers for victory is not unheard of around the country—New York City Mayor ...   More

News Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber has a lot of work to do between now and when he takes office Jan. 10, 2011. Kitzhaber must prepare a budget and hire staff . And he must prepare to follow through with one of his campaign pledges: to ask state agency heads, commission chairpersons and some program directors to submit their resignations. Kitzhaber has said he will radically change the way Oregon's government ...   More

News Perhaps the most important personnel decision Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber will make between now and inauguration day in January is whom to pick as chief of staff. The man who served that key role for most of Kitzhaber's previous two terms as governor, from 1995 to 2003, was Bill Wyatt—now the director of the Port of Portland, a job too good to leave. Kitzhaber has said he'll bring in new ...   More

News Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber went on the offensive today, addressing head-on questions about whether he will devote sufficient attention to the economy and private-sector job growth. After Kitzhaber's post-election press conference last week, media coverage of his remarks focused on his interest in protecting the environment, even though Kitzhaber specifically stated jobs would be his top priority ...   More

News There are at least a couple of interesting lessons in Tom Hughes' narrow victory over Bob Stacey in the Metro Council president's race. That victory, finally decided on Nov. 11, ended up with a difference of less than one percentage point—about 1,000 votes out of nearly 400,000 counted. As noted earlier, the unusually high number of write-in votes far exceeded Hughes' margin of victory. Here ...   More

News New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had a bit role in the recently concluded governor's race in Oregon. GOP candidate Chris Dudley brought in the New Jersey Republican's spokeswoman to work for him. Democratic candidate John Kitzhaber surprised us in his WW endorsement interview when he praised Christie for identifying some of the embedded costs in state government. And Christie flew to Oregon in ...   More

News While many of us worried on Thanksgiving only about eating and drinking too much, a cadre of highly-paid Oregon state employees probably had a lot more on their minds yesterday. That's because when Gov.-elect John Kitzhaber returns next week to the work of preparing for his third term as governor, he'll be delivering some unpleasant news. Back in September, Kitzhaber convened reporters for the ...   More