Changing of the Guards

Ah, 'tis the silly season. Today, various candidates and their mouthpieces stopped by my house to offer themselves as my salvation in Salem. My current state representative - Greg Macpherson - has chosen to run for Attorney General and is taking himself out of the race for his seat in the Oregon House - House District 38. Amongst my visitors today was a representative for Linda Brown, running as a Democrat, for the Legislature in House District 38. Her opponent in the Democratic primary is Chris Garrett. I'm not a shrinking violet as you might guess and I'm pretty focused on giving legislative candidates my opinions on what should and should not be done in Salem. Candidates and their spokespeople are always pretty surprised when I come down so hard on Macpherson and am emphatic that I will *not* support a candidate who maligns public employees or PERS. I have a very short fuse these days and all someone has to do is to suggest that public employees might be getting "too much" of something for me to drop that candidate *off* my radar. I don't know who I'll support yet in the HD 38 race, but both candidates in the democratic primary know my opinions about public employees and PERS. Let's see who is the first to make it clear that public employees don't deserve to be demonized and that PERS isn't some gigantic slush fund that can be used to save the public from its own perfidy. I'm glad to be getting a new representative in Salem. I just hope whoever it is will be better than the current one.