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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.