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| Richard P. Burke | Lars D.H. Hedbor |
H/T Scott Lieberman in correspondence with LP leadership, and followup correspondence with myself:
Eric Apalategui at the Portland Tribune:
Rifts in Oregon’s Libertarian Party politics are splashing into the race for a seat on the Tualatin Valley Water District Board of Commissioners.
Aloha resident Lars D.H. Hedbor, who is newly elected as chairman of one Libertarian Party of Oregon, is taking on one of his predecessors in the same job, water board incumbent Richard P. Burke, who is active in another group that claims it’s the Libertarian Party of Oregon.
“This is the first race on any level where one Libertarian is trying to unseat an incumbent Libertarian,” said Burke, known in political circles for running for governor on the Libertarian ticket in 1998 (getting 2 percent of the vote) and the following year joining a relatively small pool of elected Libertarians when he won his TVWD seat.
Scott Lieberman also sent me scans of mailers the Hedbor campaigns has sent the general voting public, including negative ads against incumbent Burke:
Lieberman points out that a Democrat also serving on the same board is running unopposed, so Hedbor chose to run against Burke rather than against the Democrat.
In IPR email list discussions, Jill Pyeatt writes:
“If anyone has time to post this, you might wish to link to this article.”
UPDATES from reader comments:
1) Wes Wagner pointed out that the anti-Burke postcards were paid for and sent by Jeff Weston.
2) A reader requested to have the images rotated so the text is normally oriented. I can substitute the images if someone can do that.
I don’t blame you for laughing, Jill. It looked pretty suspicious to me too. I poked around to see if I could find a name attached to it. To be honest, I expected to find the name of one of Mr, Burke’s political allies. I am pleased to have apparently been wrong.
Okay, I stand corrected. Sorry for laughing.
The newspaper apparently started in February and is a work in progress. Perhaps it just never occurs to the publisher to update the volume and number, which really don’t mean much online. Here’s his website – http://reidiford.blogspot.com/ If you google Reid Iford libertarian he appears to not be a fan of libertarians generally…..
“shaking my head”
I don’t know what Smh means.
Smh
Seriously… call them. I’m sure you’ll know if they are lying or not. I’m pretty sure they’re not libertarians. They are not associated with the Reeves group.
Sure, Richard. And the Reeves group is the proper Libertarian group in Oregon. Got it.
😉
I’m telling you… I don’t have anything to do with it. Really. If you don’t believe me, contact them.
Too funny! So, you’re making a whole new news source, starting now, and pretending that it’s an actual endorsement! Hilarious! Too funny! This makes my day!!!
😀 You really can’t make this stuff up.
They say they’ve been watching me in office, and presumably others in their respective offices too, but I have no idea who these people are. May be they attended the candidate forum yesterday held by the Washington County Public Affairs forum where Lars didn’t show up despite their outreach efforts. The Cedar Mill neighborhood also publishes a newsletter that mentioned the campaign, but only referred readers to newspaper links.
Volume 1 issue 1 ? Really Burke? Pathetic.
Here is an endorsement article in a local paper that Libertarians don’t get too often:
http://www.tigardtownhall.tigardnow.com/
smh
All,
We will see how this smear campaign works, and I think it is fair to call it such. Indeed, it might work – Wagner, Hedbor, and their friends are apparently spending over $10,000 to unseat an incumbent Libertarian public office holder (me) in a seat with a constituency of over 250,000. That’s a lot of money for a race like this and is probably unprecedented for a TVWD race.
In contrast, I am spending virtually nothing. I’ve actually filed a certificate which exempts me from ORESTAR reporting because I do not spend or raise more than $3,500 during the 2015 calendar year. I don’t have extra money for a campaign, so I am going to have to rely on the Voter Pamphlet statement and hope for positive press coverage.
The Wagner/Hedbor campaign could also backfire on them. Their mailings are pretty over the top for a campaign like this, especially Wagner’s. I think he comes off as shrill and crazy. I think others may wonder whether he should be taking meds. I’m not going to discuss Mr. Wagner’s claims except to say that I dispute virtually everything he said.
The other claims made in their pieces, relating to TVWD’s water rates, residential water costs, and what drives them, are misleading at best and totally counter-factual at worst, exposing an ignorance about how finances work at TVWD. But that kind of advertising constitutes run of the mill Republican and Democrat-style campaigning and is par for the course.
Win or lose, I will have this consolation: The $10,000 they spend against me will be $10,000 they won’t be able to spend on something else. The people who are really pissed off about Wagner’s campaign is my wife and step-daughter.
I will have served for 16 years and, if I lose, I know that I will have succeeded in abolishing properly taxes for TVWD, stopped every attempt to use eminent domain in order to acquire property, will have spearheaded the first municipal government implementation of a medicinal marijuana employee policy in the United States (Maine may copy it), and will have helped to put us on a course that will allow our region to achieve water independence from the Portland Water Bureau. So, what the hell. I’ve had a pretty good run.
Based on what I have heard from reporters and others who have looked at Lars Hedbor’s ORESTAR reports, NOBODY believes that Mr. Wagner’s efforts are not coordinated with Mr. Hedbor’s or, for that matter, those of Mr. Weston. Here is the ORESTAR page:
https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/cneSearch.do?cneSearchButtonName=search&cneSearchFilerCommitteeId=17343
On top of the ORESTAR website, they both used a mailing house with the same postage permit number. PERMIT # 11. Not too bright. I suppose there is time to fix that for the next mailing, but don’t waste your time – the cat is out of the bag.
From what I understood from their statements, Mr. Wagner, Mr. Hedbor, and their friends wanted to work toward the election of MORE libertarian candidates. If that is their goal, I find it odd that they would choose to run against me instead of Democrat Jim Doane, who is running for another at-large seat unopposed. We could have had two Libertarians on the board, as we did when I got the board to fill a vacancy with Libertarian Steve Pearson in 2005-2007.
I suppose this could be revenge for the letter I sent to registered Libertarians against Kyle Markley in his race for the Oregon legislature. There are some noticeable differences between the two situations, though:
1. I am an actual office holder running as an incumbent, whereas Kyle was not an incumbent and had no realistic chance to win.
2. In my letter, I said only good things about Kyle Markley. I even complimented the quality of his race. All I said was that he was not nominated in accordance with bylaws approved by members in properly noticed conventions. I didn’t even blame him for that. In contrast, the mailings against me are extremely vile and personal.
3. My letter didn’t cost more than a few hundred dollars. I didn’t launch a $10,000 smear campaign.
4. It’s true that Kyle wasn’t around on 3/31/11 when Wagner’s group purportedly adopted new bylaws. But Kyle knows what happened, acknowledges that the Wagner group violated the member-approved bylaws, and supports their actions anyway. I thought, if Markley doesn’t have respect for the voluntarily adopted rules adopted by LPO members at properly noticed conventions, how could he be expected to abide by the U.S. and Oregon constitutions as would be required by his oath of office?
5. I supported Dan Mason in that race, but that had little to do with Kyle or their party affiliations. I have known Dan for five years before he was ever active in politics. My wife and I are friends with Dan and his wife, Jackie. We see each other socially and daily at the apartment complex where I live. Dan is probably a 70/70 libertarian philosophically, and he seemed serious about abiding by the US and Oregon constitutions. I also know that had he been elected, Libertarians would have his ear. Had I seen evidence that Kyle would support our constitutions and had Kyle appeared at our nominating convention (it would have been good politics – Kyle is not involved in the pending litigation), I probably would have taken a different course. I probably would have at least remained neutral.
Richard P. Burke
Thanks, LibertyDave!
To rotate a pdf opened in a browser depends on which browser your using.
In Internet Explorer to rotate clockwise press Shift+Ctrl+Plus, to rotate counter clockwise press Shift+Ctrl+Minus
In Firefox there is a toolbar at the top with the symbol >> on the right side, click on the >> symbol then a menu will drop down with the options to rotate clockwise and counter clockwise.
I didn’t see that anywhere on the cards. I just said the Hedbor campaign. How much time exactly do you think I can take on this? We posted 17 new articles yesterday, 13 of them by myself, and this is just a hobby; I have an actual paying job elsewhere and a bunch of other things I have to do all through the day.
Dunno. How would I rotate them? If you know how, you can downoad them, rotate them, and send me a copy. I can read them fine as is.
It is a matter of public record that the anti-Burke postcards were paid for and sent by Jeff Weston. I know Burke has so many enemies in thos state it is hard to keep track of all of them …
Can the PDFs be rotated so that they are readable?