On Aug. 4, the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon protected two proto-fascist gangs as they marched around town, some in full body armor, in a planned disturbance disguised as a free speech rally.
Members of Patriot Prayer and its violent, punch-happy bodyguards, the Proud Boys, laughed and cheered behind barricades as cops fired dangerous rubber bullets and other nonlethal weapons at their opposition: a mix of local anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrators. Cops nearly killed one of those these counterprotesters when an impact grenade penetrated a man’s helmet and embedded itself into his skull.
Mayor Ted Wheeler told reporters Monday that police found a group of Patriot Prayer members on Aug. 4 with guns on a rooftop before the demonstrations that day — and didn’t say a word.
Instead, police acted as their personal guard and kept silent about the guns for two months, when Wheeler found out about them.
While Walden’s district in Oregon is pretty Red, the last couple elections have seen it trending a bit more Blue (the last election saw the Democrat gain +11.4). With no entrenched incumbent on the ballot in 2020 when turnout is bound to be sky-high, it’s hard to say what might happen there.
That statement was made to protect himself from a mean tweet. Imagine if he had said:
“I can no longer serve, if it will require me to sell a conspiracy theory to gaslight my constituents, in order to protect this president.”
Couple of nasty tweets and the internet trumpers would be afire, and might start sending Q folks to his neighborhood for some good old time harassment (and pizza shop patrolling.)
They just knew if they kept saying it loud enough, and often enough, they could find a way to financially benefit from public service before anyone caught on.
Low and behold, Steve Bannon called them the ‘Swamp’, lied to 77,000 people, and found one more way, and hopefully the last, for these crooks and liars to steal from the public.
For the GOP representatives it is a true non-win situation. Oppose Trump and get defeated in the primary. Support Trump and get defeated in the general election. Don’t run and you can retire undefeated.
I follow Oregon politics as closely as anyone, and I have to say, Mr. Walden is probably right. Our state has the same rural/urban divide as many other states, and Walden’s district is nearly completely rural.
I had a chance to meet with and supported his opponent in 2018. She was a strong candidate with roots in central Oregon farming/ranching communities, but even in 2018 she was running an uphill race. The Independent likely took more votes from Walden than from her.
Whoever runs for this seat, the Republican will have an advantage.
I think this issue for Walden is that it’s time to cash in.
Walden is my rep. His district is gerrymandered and represents the entire area east of the Cascades, blood red. I fully expect someone of his nature or worse to be elected as his replacement.
I am in a heavily gerrimandered district in Indiana - where they diluted the blue dot college town - and surrounded it with blood red areas. The once “bloody eighth” district - broken apart and now just ‘blood red’ - with a surrounded, and frustrated, blue dot.
I’m not sure how it is gerrymandered. How would you draw the districts in Oregon? More or less makes sense to dump the whole eastern 2/3 into one district.
But he would have won pretty easily. Only reason the district is trending slightly less red is because the only parts of the district that are growing are Bend and Medford. The rest of the vast rural areas are shrinking in population.
My guess is that he got tired of pretending that he actually lives in The Dalles (or wherever he pretends to live now) and got tired of spending all his free time driving around to town halls in bumfuck nowhere to listen to tea party rancher types go on diatribes about the government.
