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Whittenburg's flake out, Bordonaro's fake out, Saltzman's spoiler and Sizemore's spinners. BY BOB YOUNG
byoung@wweek.com One person not thrilled that Christian conservative Bill Witt filed to run against gay GOP state Rep. Chuck Carpenter is Molly Bordonaro, the GOP front-runner in the 1st Congressional District primary. Witt's plunge puts Bordonaro in a bind. If she backs Carpenter, a social liberal, she'll alienate the conservative GOP activists who tend to dominate primary elections. If she supports Witt, she risks looking too conservative for the district's moderate voters in the November general election. Bordonaro's solution? "I'm staying neutral," she says. If we put a gun to her head? "No one is putting a gun to my head," she says. A waffle iron? "I'm staying neutral," Bordonaro insists, although prominent Republicans like Gordon Smith have gotten off the fence--and are backing Carpenter. One of the losers--besides Carpenter--in last week's
filing frenzy was Dan Saltzman. It looked as if the former Multnomah County commissioner would face Tanya Collier in a winner-take-all May election for retiring City Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury's seat. The contest would have pitted Saltzman, the westside candidate, against Collier, an eastsider. But at the last minute, popular Southwest neighborhood activist Martie Sucec jumped into the race. Talk about a spoiler. Sucec's candidacy all but ensures that the race will go to a November run-off because none of the three candidates will capture more than 50 percent of the vote. And Sucec is likely to cut into Saltzman's westside base of support, leaving him behind Collier when votes are counted and a new round of money-grubbing starts May 19. "For personal strategic reasons, I wish it was a two-person race so I could win in May," Saltzman concedes. Team Sizemore is taking the field, but it's likely you won't recognize the players. The presumptive GOP nominee for governor has hired a press secretary, policy director and campaign manager--sort of. Bill Sizemore reports that 23-year-old Kathryn Schiele will serve as his spin doctor. He lured Schiele north after Bruce James, a U.S. Senate candidate she was working for in Nevada, folded his campaign. One veteran GOP flak calls Schiele very "green." Cathryn Epley, a former teacher who worked for former House Majority Leader Ray Baum and now edits the new conservative magazine Brainstorm, will help Sizemore write white papers. Finally, Sizemore has offered the campaign manager's job to Virginia consultant Tom Bunnel, but at press time Bunnel had not yet accepted the offer. |
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