Big Tobacco’s Nuclear Option October 7, 2007

Apparently, Philip Morris thinks Measure 50 is like a smoker’s own personal Hiroshima.  That’s the take-away feeling one gets after a glance at a direct mail piece that made its way to Boundary HQ this past week.  It’s a picture of a huge bomb–probably hydrogen or nuclear in form (the Boundary knows little about warfare)–labeled “$8.45 per carton tax” falling on a small man with a tiny head.

Mark Nelson and his ilk really want to hit smokers over the head with this argument.  Oh, sure, the reverse side of the flier has the usual greatest hits of tobacco lobby talking points such as ‘targeting smokers’–who, by the way, take up a huge share of the public health system, with estimated costs of $11 per pack in treatments for adverse tobacco-caused conditions.   But comparing a cigarette task to nuclear holocaust, or really a bomb of any sort, is a gross exaggeration of the extreme variety of which only Big Tobacco is capable.

Take a look for yourself:

Voting Yes on Measure 50 affirms life, not death, by providing health care insurance to Oregon’s 115,000 uninsured children.  If you’re tired of Big Tobacco’s sickening symbolism, contribute to the Healthy Kids campaign here.

But seriously, folks: The Straw Poll Results October 7, 2007

Just so no one’s confused, here are the official DPO Summit straw poll results, fresh from the Associated Press:

President

Barack Obama 49

John Edwards 47

Hillary Clinton 36

Bill Richardson 12

Dennis Kucinich 10

U.S. Senate

Jeff Merkley 103

Steve Novick 50

Attorney General

Greg Macpherson 76

John Kroger 73

Secretary of State

Kate Brown 89

Brad Avakian 49

Vicki Walker 20

The AP reported:

Though it is a small sample size, straw polls like the one at Sunriver can be a telling test of a candidate’s strength among the party’s base, those who will volunteer to knock on doors, work the phones and donate money.

In other contested Democratic matchups, House Speaker Jeff Merkley, D-Portland, easily beat Portland lawyer and activist Steve Novick, with 103 votes to Novick’s 50. Both are seeking the Democratic nomination to run against U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Pendleton.

DSCC Fixes Straw Poll for Merkley, Who Wins in Landslide October 7, 2007

After results of the straw poll conducted at the Oregon Democrats’ Summit in Sunriver today showed Jeff Merkley with almost double the votes of his opponent, Novick supporters and non-affiliated voters generally called ‘cahoots’ between the Merkley campaign and those evil D.C. insiders, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Apparently, the DSCC has flown in tens of Washington politicos posing as Merkley supporters in an effort to swing the early indicator towards Merkley, who is supposedly the favored candidate of beltway boys. Steve Novick detected this on his way down to the Summit, telling the Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes that:

“I think that Oregon Democrats are going to hear that Washington insiders are trying to fix this race for Jeff Merkley and they’ll get mad and they’ll vote for me,” said Novick while on his way to this weekend’s Democratic conference in Sunriver.

Those Oregon Democrats either didn’t read the newspaper and thus failed to catch on to the rigging plot, or they were bound and gagged during the poll by DSCC ninjas while insider-sponsored doppelgangers voted for Jeff Merkley instead.

The voter fraud paid off, as Merkley outdid Novick by a margin of 103 to 50 in the poll originally designed only for Oregon Democrats. In a feat that would make the Daley family blush, the straw poll vote was clearly stacked.

The above could be one way to explain Jeff Merkley’s victory in the straw poll today. But the reality is that of the Oregon Democrats attending the party’s summit–which is a very good sample of the larger category of Oregon Democrats–Jeff Merkley received 2 votes for every Novick vote. If that doesn’t demonstrate early support from Oregon Democrats, who will choose their nominee in May, then I don’t know what does.

A good number of Oregon Democrats support Jeff Merkley for U.S. Senate. And if today’s straw poll is any indication (which of course it is), that number is bigger than the number of Oregon Democrats that support Steve Novick.