Chris Dudley, Candidate

Except for his two NBA records for consecutive missed free throws, Chris Dudley’s basketball career was remarkably unremarkable in that he utterly failed to distinguish himself as an exceptional player. He sure as hell didn’t lead the Portland Trailblazers to a comeback championship season. That begs the question, if he can’t lead a basketball team to a comeback, how does he expect to lead the State of Oregon to a comeback? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is the more difficult task.

Nor am I inspired by Chris’ campaign rhetoric, which consists of nothing more than the same old nonsense Republicans (Democrats have their own brand of nonsense) recycle through every election. Cutting spending will not create jobs, and cutting taxes will not create jobs, so where are all those jobs he promises coming from? Does he not understand that cutting taxes and cutting spending will further deepen Oregon’s recession? Does he not understand that the national economy has a profound effect on Oregon’s economy, and that George W. Bush was driving that particular bus when Oregon’s economy tanked? Does he even suspect that a national economic crisis must be addressed at the national level, and that anything he proposes to do at the state level is only political posturing?

Nothing I saw in the campaign propaganda available on his Web site convinces me that he even has a clue about how to fix what ails Oregon. Sure, he gets a few of the most minor things right, but he gets almost all of the major things wrong. Newsflash, Chris! Doubling down on the very policies that got us into these economic and environmental crises is not going to get us out of them. Your new ideas need to be new, not recycled Republican bullshit that’s been around since at least the ’60s.

What I find most offensive, though, are Chris’ egregious distortions and outright lies regarding former Governor John Kitzhaber’s record. The verifiable truth of the matter is that Oregon’s economy was among the fastest growing in the entire country under Kitzhaber’s leadership, and it only turned south after Bush took office.

Without apologies to Chris or anyone else, I simply don’t find in Chris Dudley a candidate I can support; too little experience, too many uncertainties, and too much bullshit.

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