The Secretary of State Race As Seen Through A Blue Oregon Blog Post

Capitol Currents:

Kate Brown's re-election campaign is starting to pay attention to Bob Wolfe. Who's Bob Wolfe? He's running for Oregon Secretary of State as the nominee of the Progressive Party. He's also been active in the effort to legalize marijuana in Oregon, and has been in a dispute with Brown over whether or not his initiative was properly disqualified for the ballot earlier this year. (A separate marijuana legalization measure did qualify.) Earlier in the year, Brown's office had fined Wolfe a record $65,000 for allegedly paying signature gatherers based on the number of names they collected, a big no-no under Oregon elections law. Wolfe disputes the finding.So when Wolfe entered the race for Secretary of State, many viewed it as a thinly veiled attempt to "engage in a personal vendetta" against Kate Brown. At least, that's how former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury describes it in a lengthy entry at the left-leaning website Blue Oregon. Bradbury--a Democrat, like Brown--spends a few sentences dismissing the efforts of Republican challenger Knute Buehler, who's running an aggressive statewide campaign. But it's unlikely many Blue Oregon regulars would consider casting a vote for Buehler. Instead, Bradbury saves most of his wrath for Bob Wolfe, whom he calls "out for revenge" against Brown. While Wolfe has raised only a token amount in his run for office, he got a boost this week with a high profile endorsement by Ralph Nader, who also recorded a radio ad on behalf of Wolfe. Clearly, Brown's campaign is worried that Wolfe will draw some liberal voters away from the incumbent. If Wolfe gets even one or two percentage points on Election Day, that could swing the final outcome in Buehler's favor.And Republicans know this. Conservative talk show host Bill Post weighed in on the comments following Bradbury's blog entry, saying that he's found Wolfe "to be an honorable man" and that "if you are a progressive, you have a great candidate in Robert Wolfe!"  Of course, Post doesn't really want a marijuana activist to become Oregon Secretary of State. His praise is a calculated effort to sway as many Brown supporters as possible to vote for Wolfe. Whether that effort bears any fruit is a different matter, but it's also worth noting that several prominent marijuana legalization supporters also weighed in in the Blue Oregon comment section, blasting Bradbury and Brown. Pot activists proved to be a formidable force in the Democratic primary for Attorney General earlier this year, rallying around eventual winner Ellen Rosenblum with both moral and financial support. So far, Wolfe has not enjoyed that same level of support in his race for Secretary of State. Unlike Rosenblum, he's a definite long shot and would have little say over marijuana policy were he to be elected to that office. It's also worth noting that there are two additional candidates on the ballot besides Brown, Buehler and Wolfe: the Green Party's Seth Woolley and Libertarian candidate Bruce Knight.

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