Skip to main content- Fight! Fight! Fight! Portland State University lobbyist Jesse Cornett, who narrowly lost an East Portland Senate race to Rod Monroe in 2006, says he’s all but decided to move into House District 48 to challenge fellow Democrat Mike Schaufler, a four-term incumbent who has strong ties to building trades. A co-founder of the political blog Blue Oregon and longtime Oregon Bus Project member, Cornett is considering the unusual step because he thinks Schaufler is not progressive enough. “I think the environmental community deserves somebody better than Mike Schaufler,” Cornett says. Schaufler says Cornett’s carpetbagging from his current Irvington home to East Portland would be futile. “It would be a waste of resources,” Schaufler says.
- Fallout continues from a controversial Tigard police sting operation that led to 24 arrests when cops went online offering sex for marijuana (see “To Catch a Stoner,” WW, Aug. 5, 2009). Police shut down the operation in May on advice from the Washington County District Attorney’s Office, but the DA’s office continues to prosecute some of the men arrested. On Aug. 24, a jury convicted a 26-year-old North Portland man of possession of ecstasy after officer Thomas Hahn Jr. posted an ad on Craigslist he was “a horny little thing...looking for some green or X for my kitty.” The man drove to Tigard April 24 with weed, ecstasy and a pack of condoms, and was arrested for prostitution and drug dealing. He has not yet been sentenced.
- With friends like these: U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden has labored long and hard on the Healthy Americans Act, a healthcare reform bill that many progressives and President Barack Obama say misses the mark. Wyden critics have accused him of being too close to the insurance industry and not pushing for a public option in the plan he co-sponsored with Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah). At a Utah fundraiser Friday for Bennett, according to the blog ThinkProgress.org, Republican political operative Karl Rove endorsed the Wyden-Bennett bill. A Wyden spokesman says Rove is defending Bennett, up for re-election in 2010, from right-wing attacks. Image courtesy of Kat Miller
- Movin’ on: Stacey Dycus, who shepherded state Treasurer Ben Westlund’s transformation from Republican to Independent to Democrat and ran campaigns for State. Sen. Rick Metsger (D-Welches), is leaving her post as Westlund’s chief of staff. “I just wasn’t having enough fun,” says Dycus, who will leave at year’s end. Ben Unger, who ran Attorney General John Kroger’s campaign and stayed on as one of Kroger’s top assistants, is leaving Kroger’s office in October to oversee 2010 campaigns for the Oregon Senate Democrats.
- Friends of Lents, the group that formed in the spring to oppose the construction of a Triple-A baseball stadium in Lents Park, is refocusing its neighborhood activism in outer Southeast Portland. In anticipation of the Sept. 12 opening of TriMet’s new MAX line—the Green Line that will run from Gateway Transit Center to Clackamas Town Center, crossing through Lents—the group is teaming with the Lents Neighborhood Association to spruce up the Southeast Foster Road area on Sept. 5 at 10 am. “Anything that keeps Lents looking good is worth doing,” says Judy Welch, a longtime Lents neighborhood activist.
WWeek 2015