The Oregon governor’s race this year may hinge on two factors. One is the record of incumbent Democrat Tina Kotek and Republican Christine Drazan’s critique of it and issues on the ground. The other is the Trump administration. Here, let’s look at the first of those, the ideas and topics more specific to the candidates and Oregon. (The Trump factor will come later.) A good shorthand comparison of…
“You are being watched.” That was the opening line for a TV series a few years back called Person of Interest, billed then as a sci-fi show, though it barely was at the time, and really isn’t at all now. The key component was a computer system capable of tracking movements and activities of just about everyone, able to predict if they might do something nefarious. It was brought to mind by the…
It’s like our elected representatives are in Oz. They can’t understand, as Dorothy didn’t, that someone is behind the curtain. Idaho legislators had a weird meeting this last week to wring their hands and assuage their constituents that they were actually doing something about a health care problem in Idaho. They had accomplished driving doctors out of the state and kicking kids off health…
In May, state Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, area lost her bid for reelection to the legislature, the first such incumbent loss since 2018. Multiple reasons contributed to Sollman’s loss to union-backed challenger Myrna Muñoz, but a pivotal and new factor was data centers. Those massive buildings, consuming vast amounts of electricity and water and producing compute, serving as the physical…
Read the fine print and pay attention to the stuff they tell you at the end of the pitch. Idaho has been chosen as one of five states (the others are Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Louisiana) under consideration to host one of three national Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. Landing one of those, the pitch went, would mean jobs, business opportunities – money! “Campus” was nice verbiage: It…
Idaho’s Attorney General told us on March 31 that he and 23 other GOP state attorneys general were going to school the US Supreme Court on the issue of birthright citizenship. Even before the thirteen colonies gave birth to the United States, we have regarded all children born on American soil to be citizens, except for those of diplomats. That principle was written into the Constitution of the…
Oregonians have a front-row seat to watch, though not vote in, an obscure congressional race that could say much about the reshaping of partisan politics in this state and beyond. I’m not talking about Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, now held by Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, which saw the state’s closest congressional elections for the past two election cycles and may again this year,…
Anyone wondering what to make of the shakeup in Idaho’s race for the U.S. Senate might be well advised to look across the state line at the election returns arriving there on Tuesday night (and beyond). That is the night of the Washington state primary election, and the results from congressional district 5 – which borders all of northern Idaho on the west – will be well worth absorbing for people…