On Tuesday I was on a conference call with Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, who is running in Oregon to replace Republican incumbent Gordon Smith. Merkley's opponent for the nomination is Steve Novick. My understanding is that both of the Democrats are fairly progressive and that the primary between them has been peaceful so far, with many supporters of each candidate also having nice things to say about the other.
I asked Merkley some tough questions in the conference call, and he answered them fairly well. I wanted to ask questions which would elicit new information that people couldn't just find out by looking at his website, his past voting record, or news articles. If there's anyone I was disappointed in during the call, it was my fellow bloggers. I think only one other guy had prepared any questions for Merkley, and I would've come up with more questions if I had known there'd be so few others. C'mon, guys, the progressive movement is counting on you to help us figure these candidates out!
Near the beginning of the call, Merkley told us about his record as Speaker of the Oregon House. It looks like he's done a really impressive job. In the 2006 elections, Democrats took control of the chamber with a 31-29 majority. Despite having such a slender majority, Democrats managed to pass all 12 items of their Roadmap for Oregon's Future, probably the most ambitious of which is making sure that all the children in the state have health insurance of one kind or another. Good work!
