Oregon official who oppressed Christian bakers loses election
Update: One of my readers pointed out something I completely missed when I read the story below today: The story is from 2016, describing an election then, not recently. Thus, this isn’t recent news and does not indicate anything about the present state of politics in Oregon.
Essentially this is a “Never mind.”
Very good news: The Oregon labor official who used the law to put a Christian bakery out of business because they would not bake a gay wedding cake has lost a statewide election to a Republican.
In his bid for Secretary of State, Avakian promised a push for “progressive values” like wage equality and reproductive freedoms. His conservative opponent promised to adhere to the position’s basic, more traditional roles, like auditing public records and officiating elections.
In the end, the opponent, Dennis Richardson won 48% of the popular vote, beating Avakian by nearly 100,000 votes. The victory makes Richardson the first Republican to win a statewide office in Oregon since 2002.
Maybe Oregonians are finally getting a bit sick and tired of how the left is giving their state the reputation as a failing fascist state.
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Update: One of my readers pointed out something I completely missed when I read the story below today: The story is from 2016, describing an election then, not recently. Thus, this isn’t recent news and does not indicate anything about the present state of politics in Oregon.
Essentially this is a “Never mind.”
Very good news: The Oregon labor official who used the law to put a Christian bakery out of business because they would not bake a gay wedding cake has lost a statewide election to a Republican.
In his bid for Secretary of State, Avakian promised a push for “progressive values” like wage equality and reproductive freedoms. His conservative opponent promised to adhere to the position’s basic, more traditional roles, like auditing public records and officiating elections.
In the end, the opponent, Dennis Richardson won 48% of the popular vote, beating Avakian by nearly 100,000 votes. The victory makes Richardson the first Republican to win a statewide office in Oregon since 2002.
Maybe Oregonians are finally getting a bit sick and tired of how the left is giving their state the reputation as a failing fascist state.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Or maybe enough disgusted California conservatives have finally cashed out of the Golden state and moved north, as my wife and I have been contemplating. It must be having some demographic effect.
@MDN
I wish the CA exodus was comprised of conservative types. As a Portlander, it seems to me that most of them are progressives flush with cash. Hopefully, the rest of Oregon is having better luck.
People taking their countries back!
Europe, Australia, Canada (one big election to go), USA go!
From the article: “Could it be the year of the underdog? The presidential election wasn’t the only contest to see an upset.”
CNN’s reporters may be upset, but I am not. It is reassuring that Oregonians preferred the opposition party over Brad Avakian.
@MDN wrote: “I wish the CA exodus was comprised of conservative types.”
Perhaps the California conservatives are fleeing to more conservative states. Why leave one progressive [ahem]hole just to move to another?
California’s progressives may be fleeing to other progressive states, such as Oregon and Washington, under the hypothesis that California, like the socialist countries, is not run by the right people, and maybe Oregon or Washington are.
Of course, if it is the people who make the system work properly, then the system is not a good one. Being so hard to do right makes socialism the wrong way to go. As many have noted in the previous century, socialism requires capitalism to come first, but I am sure that those who thought so failed to realize that this is because socialism requires other people’s money (OPM) in order to temporarily hide its shortfalls. Venezuela is a recent example of socialism running out of OPM (capitalists’s money).
It is difficult to know who are the right people to run socialism, because no one has found anyone who has done it right, yet. Even when socialism was first tried in America, by the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony, it failed immediately, because there was no OPM to keep them going for any length of time. The lessons of Plymouth Colony should be taught world wide. The Pilgrims discovered that when everyone would receive an equal share (sounds fair, right?) no matter how hard they worked, too many people slacked off and did not work hard enough for the coming winter. Why work hard when you can greedily get unearned free stuff that other people worked hard to make? So half the colonists died.
Come to think of it, that sounds like socialism around the world.
The next year, the Pilgrims tried free market capitalism, where everyone received only what they had earned themselves. (Doesn’t this merit economy also sound fair? It is the lesson of the fable of the Little Red Hen.) By autumn, they had such an abundance of food that they invited their indian neighbors over for a three-day feast.
Free market capitalism does not require the right people to make it work, because it is the system that works. A quarter century or so ago, the socialist Indians and the communist Chinese made a move in the direction of free market capitalism, and between those two countries a billion people rose out of poverty. If they eventually move far enough toward free market capitalism, then the rest of their populations could also rise out of poverty.
Socialism is again being tried in America, and even as we move toward it we are discovering socialist cities become toilets, their streets become open sewers, and their open spaces become dumping grounds for trash. Didn’t we fix these problems in the 19th century? Remember the Occupy tent-cities and what they left behind? So much for the progress of progressivism. We are also discovering that socialist cities are harming and destroying their people’s businesses, because socialists want to tyrannically tell entrepreneurs how to run their businesses.
With luck, Avakian’s loss is a sign that even the progressives in Oregon are realizing what the Pilgrims realized four centuries ago.
The article referenced is several years old. Dennis Richardson has since lost a battle with cancer and passed away.
jburn: Thank you. I completely missed the fact that the news story was from 2016. I have updated the post to note this fact.
Robert wrote: “Essentially this is a ‘Never mind.’”
Actually, it is even better news. It means that he lost the very next election after his dastardly deed to negate the First Amendment. Oregonians did not like the way that their fellow citizens were treated by those who think that they may tyrannically rule over them.