Boston Globe profiles Rep. Sara Gelser (D-Corvallis)

Our very own Rep. Sara Gelser was featured on the front page of yesterday's Boston Globe - in their coverage of the Oregon primary. (Here's an image of that front page.)

Here's the story from the Boston Globe:

SALEM, Ore. - Sara Gelser, a 34-year-old state lawmaker, has the profile of a model Barack Obama backer: a young, self-described "progressive" Democrat who represents a district encompassing the city of Corvallis, a college town, and its working-class enclaves. Her description of how she unifies her disparate constituency - and how to reconcile her state's rural eastern and high-tech western halves - could have come from the Obama campaign's unity-themed talking points.

"The farmers and ranchers in the east are as important as the high-tech centers in the west," she said, adding that the rough-hewn Easterners and affluent, white-collar Westerners are interdependent and crucial to Oregon's future. "There's more that unites us than divides us."

Gelser, however, is working hard to help Hillary Clinton succeed in tomorrow's primary, despite long odds and very little time. Obama, expected to win Oregon handily, is poised to declare that the Beaver State has helped him clinch the majority of pledged delegates, and that the Democratic nomination is his outright.

As the largest and most competitive of those states yet to vote in the 2008 presidential primaries, however, Oregon is Clinton's only chance to change that scenario. But analysts say the contest could be an important barometer on the latest issue in the political slam dance between Obama and Clinton: the conflict between blue-collar and white-collar Democrats.

Like Gelser, Democrats here have long struggled to bridge the division between voters in its upscale, urban, and progressive western half with the more rural, sparsely-populated east, where most residents still earn their living from the land.

[Editor's note: Nevermind the idiotic notion that our Western half is entirely upscale and urban, and no one in the Western half makes their living from the land.]

Discuss.