“They can only “win” by cheating …,” Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears. October 7, 2022 in g’da said Your Daily Chaos, Morning Digest: Elections ~ Here’s something you don’t see often—or ever: Republican Mike Erickson released an internal poll showing him leading his Democratic opponent, Andrea Salinas, the very same day that he filed a lawsuit demanding Salinas take down an attack ad by citing a law that he recently threatened to use to overturn the election should he lose. To pick apart this strange turn of events, we’ll start with Erickson’s survey from Cygnal, which shows him beating Salinas 44-39 in Oregon’s brand new 6th District, a seat Joe Biden would have taken 55-42. The last polls we saw out of this district, which is based
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“They can only “win” by cheating …,” Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears.
October 7, 2022 in g’da said
Your Daily Chaos, Morning Digest: Elections ~ Here’s something you don’t see often—or ever: Republican Mike Erickson released an internal poll showing him leading his Democratic opponent, Andrea Salinas, the very same day that he filed a lawsuit demanding Salinas take down an attack ad by citing a law that he recently threatened to use to overturn the election should he lose.
To pick apart this strange turn of events, we’ll start with Erickson’s survey from Cygnal, which shows him beating Salinas 44-39 in Oregon’s brand new 6th District, a seat Joe Biden would have taken 55-42. The last polls we saw out of this district, which is based in the Salem area and Portland’s southwestern suburbs, were both from mid-August: The GOP firm Clout Research gave Erickson an even larger 43-34 advantage, while a GBAO internal for Salinas had her up 48-45.
Despite these optimistic numbers for Republicans, however, both the Congressional Leadership Fund and the NRCC have so far avoided spending here, even though their opponents at the DCCC and House Majority PAC have together dropped over $1.4 million. Given the district’s lean, it’s exceedingly unlikely that the GOP’s two biggest House groups have steered clear of this race because they feel supremely confident, especially since a conservative organization called Take Back Oregon PAC just launched a $300,000 TV buy this week.
Salinas’ side has run several commercials focusing both on allegations that Erickson paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion in 2000—years before Herschel Walker did the same—as well as stories around his 2016 arrest. The latter is the focus of his new lawsuit and a cease and desist notice he recently sent to Salinas. In that letter, Erickson threatened to invoke a state law that the Oregon Capitol Chronicle writes “prohibits knowingly making false statements about a candidate, political committee or ballot measure.”
Reporter Julia Shumway explains, “If a judge determines that a candidate made a false statement that cost their opponent an election, the law states that the candidate will be removed as a nominee or elected official.” But she adds, “Over several decades, Oregon courts have interpreted that law to exclude opinions or statements that could reasonably be interpreted as true.” It’s also not clear whether this law has ever been successfully employed to reverse the results of an election, and Erickson’s attorney, Jill Gibson, cited no such examples in her letter.
In his newly filed lawsuit, Erickson didn’t actually present any demands regarding overturning the upcoming election but instead asked a state court to order Salinas to stop airing the ads in question and “to retract the false statements by airing correction advertisements with the same frequency and broadcast location as the false advertisements.” He is also seeking $800,000 in monetary damages, which he claims would cover the cost of “commercials to correct the false statements.”
The complaint insists that Salinas’ ads are “false” because Erickson “has never been charged with illegal possession of drug.” To that end, Gibson’s letter cited a recent story from The Oregonian in which Hood River County District Attorney Carrie Rasmussen said that the court documents that those allegations came from were incorrect.
Instead, Erickson’s attorney from that case, Tara Lawrence, insisted that she’d made a “mistake” by filing a plea agreement stating that the Rasmussen’s office had “agreed to dismiss felony possession of controlled substance upon tender of guilty plea.” An attorney for Salinas, however, cited that very statement in support of the ad’s truthfulness in a letter and argued that “a charge is a charge, whether or not the DA files it.”
Before Erickson filed his lawsuit, Salinas’ campaign shrugged off his threats, saying in a statement, “Mike Erickson’s threats to overturn the election if he doesn’t win should raise major concerns for Oregonians who cherish democracy.”