Jeff Merkley will be the new Senator from Oregon.
Oregon has a little over 80% of the vote counted. It's a mail-in vote. About 90% of the vote left to be counted, over 200,000 votes, is from the counties in which Portland and Eugene (University of Oregon) are located. Merkley has been winning about 67% of the vote in the Portland area and over 58% in the Eugene area. Sarah Lane has details about this in her Rec Listed diary:
OR-Sen: Merkley Campaign Feeling Good!
Well, she must be feeling good right now, because Merkely just took a lead that he will not be relinquishing.
Merkley 47%
691,501
Smith 47%
691,119
Update I: Jeff Merkley wins Senate seat
More, after the fold.
It's a lead for Jeff Merkley!!
Update I: Oregon Live declares Merkley the winner!! Here:
Jeff Merkley wins Senate seat
Here are the latest numbers:
Merkley 47%
691,501
Smith 47%
691,119
Live Oregon Election Results.
It's only going to get better for Jeff Merkley! The votes from Portland and Eugene will keep coming in and swamp Smith. It's over for Gordon Smith!
For those of you who don't know much about Senator-Elect Merkley, here's something from a diary I wrote earlier this year:
Jeff has a compelling life story.
"I've lived," he says, "a pretty unconventional life."
I'll just briefly review a few interesting aspects of his life and then bring you the news.
He comes from the working class. I like that.
Life started humbly enough for Merkley. The son of a millwright, Merkley grew up in a working-class neighborhood in outer Southeast Portland.
Money was neither plentiful nor terribly important to the gangly kid who relied on brains and tenacity to get what he needed and go where he pleased.
The Oregonian, May 1, 2008, Merkley's past far from 'establishment'
Not many Senate candidates have done this:
In his mid-20s, Jeff Merkley hopped a bus with a friend in Los Angeles and headed south for what would become a hairy, life-changing journey through revolution-torn Central America.
The 1980 trip, which included a tense ride with a group of armed Nicaraguan soldiers, reached its climax in Guatemala City.
"I stumbled across a person who had just been assassinated," Merkley recalls. "I mean, literally, I was the first person after the man was shot down on the street. . . . I rushed up because I thought he had been hit by a car. His whole torso had been blown away."
The Oregonian, May 1, 2008, Merkley's past far from 'establishment'
Jeff has worked in the Pentagon and for Congres as a national security analyst, and he led Habitat for Humanity in Portland for several years. Most recently, he's been Speaker of the Oregon State House.
Jeff worked hard, earned scholarships and became the first in his family to go to college. He went on to serve as a national security analyst, first for the Pentagon and then for Congress.
After returning to Oregon with his wife Mary, Jeff led Habitat for Humanity and worked with low-income families to rebuild neighborhoods and purchase their first home.
snip
As the first Democratic speaker in sixteen years, Merkley brought Democrats, Republicans and citizens together to make real progress addressing Oregon’s challenges.
The Oregonian called Jeff’s session as Speaker, "Oregon's most productive in a generation."
Jeff Merkley: Democrat for Oregon
Jeff talking to locals in Ashland Oregon:
Merkley Progressive Roundup: Let's elect a BETTER Democrat for Oregon.
Like Barack Obama, Jeff opposed the invasion of Iraq:
Opposed the War from the Start
Jeff Merkley opposed George Bush's Iraq policy from the beginning. He called for bold diplomatic efforts before pursuing military strategy. Two days after the war began in 2003, Jeff Merkley gave a speech in the Oregon House critical of Bush’s strategy:
"Colleagues, I have not been and am not today persuaded that Iraq was a significant threat to the United States or that the war we fight today is the best strategy to fight terrorism or the wisest application of our superpower resources."
Ending the Iraq War
Supports fair trade and opposes NAFTA style trade agreements:
NAFTA-based Free Trade Agreements
Jeff opposes the Peru Free Trade Agreement, and other trade agreements that use NAFTA as a model.
Imagine for a moment just what would happen if any state in this country suddenly threw out all labor standards – the minimum wage, the right to organize workers, the 40-hour work week. And imagine what would happen if the EPA allowed them to ignore all environmental laws – if they could dump waste anywhere they wanted, if they could pollute the air with greenhouse gasses at unchecked levels. Every factory owner in the country would move their operations there, leaving workers in the rest of the states without a good paying job and without a way to provide for their families. In our global economy, moving jobs off shore is just as easy as moving them to another state. We can’t let that happen.
Reforming Our Trade Agreements
And a strong suporter of unions and the EFCA:
Employee Free Choice
The Employee Free Choice Act would give workers a real choice on a level playing field when deciding whether to form a union. And it will ensure that unions can compete by imposing tougher penalties on those who break our existing labor laws. Jeff worked to do it for public employees at the state level this year in the Oregon legislature, and helped pass a resolution urging Congress to take up the issue. But starting in January 2009, Jeff will work personally to pass it in the U.S. Senate.
Creating Quality Jobs
Obama did an ad for Merkley in the last weeks of the race:
A Better Democrat is going to replace Gordon Smith in the Senate!