I have been absent of late in writing because this article needed to be done and ready by the July 4th weekend and have a good bang for the buck, so better to be later then just throw out junk. Well here goes nothing.
The Jan. 6th Committee is giving us some distressing news, inflation is growing, the Rich are getting richer, and your paycheck looks anemic as you try to stretch it to an overloaded budget with gas prices that still haven’t topped out, vacations look out of reach and kids needing new clothes because they are growing faster than your food budget. Now the Supreme Court has damaged Roe V Wade, gun laws and EPA laws making them seem more like a Court Supreme instead. And anyone running for office, well, their platforms just don’t relate to your life and pocketbooks anymore, do they? Does this sound familiar? All of this is from feedback for this year in my community’s areas in Southern and Eastern Oregon.
I made predictions that Oregon’s CD4 and CD5 would flip to Republican’s and still stand by it. Why? Because the Democrats are not running on the above issues per say and the Republicans are using them as talking points better than their opponents. That’s 2 of 5 seats in Congress the Republicans need to flip to control the house and then we get their version of a new “Benghazi” again on whatever they have in mind for two years to cover-up Jan. 6th talks. As a political strategist, this is deadly to the Democratic cause, of which I have worked on, going on 25 years, especially in rural causes.
How did this happen? Well, I can help with that because, in my opinion, it started in my county, for Oregon. You see, we had a scandal in 2018 to end the year to cover up the end of the election year. In Oregon, we have a program that is called the Neighborhood Leadership Program that in each county that participates, the local Democratic Party sends out members, knocks on doors and to remind people to vote and provide people with information about Democratic candidates. The doorknocker then inputs what happens at each door what happens at each stop, which is kept at the local office but then also gets uploaded to the Democratic Party of Oregon as well as to the National Democratic Party, which in turns shares with local politicians that have paid to get into their system (no, nothing is done for free and the costs varies by how high of an office you seek. The higher the office, the higher the cost, so someone running for Federal Congress pays about $5000 in 2020 asking but they decided to split the fees in primary and someone who is running for a school district could pay $250) This system is called Votebuilder.
One of our neighborhood leaders, unfortunately, shared their password with a local political manager named Kathy Shaw who accessed the system with it for free. It was exposed in an Executive Committee to our Parliamentarian who was also our Vice chair who was also Chair of a Committee while our Party Chair was not present. Now we had an “investigation” by our county officials and they kind of fluffed it. What’s wrong with this? Let’s start off with that being, the Vice chair and chair of any Committee denies the Executive Committee a vote on its board when done by voted position as his was done by. What makes this worse ethically is the Vice chair as not only done this willing but as the parliamentarian, they know better. Then as Vice chair running the EC meeting instead of bringing the meeting to a slamming halt to call for the Rules Committee to start an investigation to the allegations being made about the breach of protocols and ethics, they allowed the meeting to continue with EC members questioning the person who brought the breach to their attention, which was a bigger breach of ethics which both the Vice chair and Rules Chair should have known. As someone with parliamentarian training, my next step would have been to call in an outside parliamentarian to preside over this while ordering Rules to investigate what happened. You see that is what my friends did when they asked me, as an outside investigator, to ask around and investigate to find out what really happened.
What I found out was that the person that leaked the codes was, they told me that instead of the story told that the Chair was first informed of the leak was that the person who broke protocol and passed the codes did so after talking to the Vice chair about doing it, giving them full knowledge of the breach in advance. I don’t know if this was a gaff by this person, but I clearly have it in my notes from the conversation I had with them over the phone. I don’t think they realize how much they said.
Instead what happened, we had no Rules investigation but a Central Committee grilling of The Chair, Vice Chair, the person who turned in the breech, the Breecher and Kathy Shaw and her work group. The results were that the Chair got blamed, the person who turned in the breech, which has faded into the night after being a very active member. And Kathy Shaw? Walked away without a scratch. Why is this important? Because Kathy Shaw is ex-wife of Jeff Golden and was his manager of his campaign. Did this give his campaign any edge? Who knows? Nobody looked. Everybody was so distracted by blaming the chair for what happened, nobody thought about anything else. But the important part is that this was never revealed to the DPO (Democratic Party of Oregon) to have them look at. But if a real investigation had been done with the possible issues that a secondary impartial parliamentarian would have seen, then they could have had the ability to refer it to the DPO to see if any ethical or voting issues were violated. But instead, we have a possible appearance of a scandal on a person that hasn’t been doing a bad job as Oregon State Senate, but maybe not the best? But untrained help can learn to be better.
Moving on to the elections of 2019 and I must disclose, I was running for the Chair position, and I am not disclosing this as a revenge kick but rather as an eye-opener for justice, we had an elected board member of the Rogue Valley Transit District (RVTD), Tonia Moro, running opposing me. As an elected board member, she had to register a committee called “Committee to elect Tonia Moro” with the Secretary of State of Oregon and still had it open at the time of the vote. Why is this important? This meant she was still considered a running candidate to be re-elected and could gather endorsements, fundraise as well as public speak on behalf of herself and a campaign to run. The Chairperson of the party is a member of all committees, and we cannot have a candidate on the Campaign Committee at any time as per party bylaws.
Article XI Section 3 of JCDP bylaws which states, and I quote the section “Additionally, except as provided in Section 4 of this Article, candidates or those considering becoming candidates may not be members of the Campaign Committee."
Now that simple excerpt is not hard to understand but when a Parliamentarian is Master of Ceremonies to open the Central Committee meeting to introduce us as well as being a member of the Rules Committee for at least 2 years, I expected that they would call a halt and ask her if she still had her committee opened and explain our bylaws to her and our CC. That didn't happen. Instead everything went straight through. Why didn’t I speak up? Three reasons.
1) As a political strategist, with all my training, and with some of the work I have been doing, I was ethically bound with my hands tied by some of my codes and how I interpreted them.
2) after investigating what happened the year before, that also tied my hands a bit.
3) Manors. It would have looked like sour grapes if I tried to show how they had been in the wrong. Plus, I would have been taking a long shot on if I would have been even believed.
After this, things really went downhill of which I revealed in earlier articles but here are some cliff notes Ethics Complaint Vs Tonia Moro and then we had the one I really started the complaints against Ethic complaint vs Sara Spansail (mind you these were filed at the same time and to help with legalities Bylaws of the Jackson County Democratic Party of Oregon). But the reason I am talking about this is because this one person is now a rising darling for the Democratic Party of Oregon named Nathan Soltz was the Parliamentarian, I have been talking about and in my opinion, who has helped to allow our own Party to fail so badly that we most likely didn’t redistrict so we split up CD2, the 7th largest congressional district in America, that could have changed the chances of how we send people to congress.
As a strategist, CD2 has always been and is still winnable for Democrats, just not with climate first issues. I knew this. The people I worked with knew this. Many of the people that were building up in the JCDP caucuses were heading that way. But today almost all of them are gone from the JCDP. Tonia and her Vice chair, Sara, who helped put her in charge, were climate first and now their membership is at the lowest in ages. Losses in general election are as expected, just as bad as they were 20 years ago. Acting like Republicans has cost Jackson County, in my opinion, just that chance, to finally break up CD2 and finally get a better hold to change, not just where Jackson County landed, but where Bend would have landed, to Democrat in the next 10 years but that has been set back by at least 10 years now and we have most likely lost CD4 and CD5 as well now as well to the Republicans for 2-6 years.
But the reason I am writing this because after trying to bring through the Rules Committee at JCDP of how they are in violation and watching them circle the wagons to protect their Admin instead, then watching, after sharing all my documentation with the head of the DPO do nothing, then I recently tried to contact the Rules and Ethics leadership of the DPO twice with no success. Maybe by doing this public outing of their golden child can bring about a reaction? The other charges the party did sure didn’t because having several elected officials run their Campaign Committees is violations of their own internet posted bylaws. Would the Secretary of State of Oregon find this as election law violation as well? Maybe I should forward this to her as well?
But really, how can the people of Jackson County follow Democrats that act like this or believe in the party as a whole for the state of Oregon, when the DPO will not act? This is just one reason why, in my opinion, the Democrats fail so often in stronger Republican areas in the general elections. They have no harmony with their community, no real connections, therefore they can’t sell their “product”, their song, as I tell trainees who want to run because running for office is like singing, if your song is out of tune with the people, then they will not buy or vote for you. If you're not representing the community’s true needs, then they will not stand behind you. Screw the party’s desires when they are a losing cause unless they are a morale and ethical issue. It’s like pushing living wages over a climate issue first, Duh. Maybe it’s education over health first. “Work smarter, not harder and win by being the smarter bear in the room”, as my father always said. Now if state Democrats are doing the same lazy politics in other Republican strongholds, than is it any wonder that we have so little help in these areas?
How do we fix something like what happened to me? Usually it’s by the channels I took by going through the Rules Committee and so on but now? It’s really by restacking the deck against these people by adding more votes than they have by making my voice louder than theirs, by adding yours too it. Then by making your voice heard is by rejoining society, rejoining the party, and giving us something to talk about, I am adding back the variety we need as a party so we can start to bring the party and community back in harmony with each other. Then the Democratic Party can start “playing a tune” of policies that match what the community wants and needs, instead of placing its desires first. Making a more winning combination for both the community and later the state as we grow.
As a political strategist, I can’t form an opinion on what to advise someone until I can hear enough voices from the community to form that opinion, and it is constantly being updated as any political stance should be. Life changes, so should our policies, so should our politics. When we grow stagnant in policy, we lose popularity. As my father always used to say, “grow up or grow old”, applies very well with politics and my old man never thought I listened to him just as many think politicians and the government are not listening to them. That has to change, and I mean by yesterday.
The Democratic Party is not an employer of the people per say but the servant of their wishes and needs by needing to start following their needs of the communities they are trying to serve. It will be the only way to get more leaders elected in Republican districts. When we listen to the people and follow through, then the party succeeds. So go to your mirror and ask yourself, “Am I tired of my life? Am I tired of the way things are? Am I willing to try to bring change so my kids can live better than I do??” Then get off your ass and do something about, even if only joining one of my bitch groups so I can hear what I need to help others lead better when they run. TTFN