Jack,

If you would have endorsed Dudley he might of pulled it out. You cannot complain about Kitz now because you could have stopped him!

Really - don't knock on Jack.

Jack was clear about not wanting either - just like Steve Duin is clear in his column about the same.

The tall guy lost because Democrats voted. Democrats voted because the alternative bothered them. Yes, it was close. No, folks don't have a mandate. But this was decided by your neighbors and not by Jack Bog.

Multnomah County voters are idiots. Dudley was ahead until the votes were tallied here. The most important role of our next governor is to break the backs of our parasitic public employee unions. Kitz would never do that; he's in their back pocket. Oregon seems to want to follow in California's footsteps. Are we expecting a different result?

Outside of Multnomah and Lane Counties, Dudley kicked Dr. Rerun's butt. But in this state, that's not enough. He needed to sell some "green, sustainable" horse chestnuts to the college kids, and he had too much integrity to lie to them about that. So he lost.

Or, you might consider that there are hazards in nominating a candidate with no political experience, no discernable voting record, a history of using every available loophole to dodge paying taxes, and a clear hostility to taking part in a policy discussions that might move beyond the range of scripted talking points.

State Republicans are looking at this backward: When you nominate a candidate as unqualified and ill-prepared as Chris Dudley -- and you lose by less than a percentage point -- you should take that as a sign that there is an audience waiting to embrace you.

Roger is right.

And another thing, I hope Greg Kord and
Wes Wagner are proud of themselves, as their combined candidacies may have been the most important factor in allowing Kitz to win. Congratulations dumbasses!

You might have considered that there are far worse potential hazards in electing a candidate with horrible political experience.
Kitzhaber won because he is a Democrat.

I wonder if a pony with a D branded on it could win.

Kizhaber is the opposite of a reformer.
He represents all of the oppostion and obstruction against a Chris Christie or any other genuine reformer.

Not many PDXers are Dudley dreamy-eyed but the ones who are, comment here.

As if to ... what? Undo what's done? Get Kitz kids to recognize the error of our ways? It's just as well, the 2-perspective contrast provides recognition going both ways.

Yet I fail to fathom the Dudley drooling now, so much more pronounced than came after defeats of Mannix, Tiernan (or whoever), Sizemore -- all quixotic stalking horses at Mahonia Hall. Meaning: the GOP of Oregon never actually truly expects nor intends to get one among themselves elected Governor, not since the dwindling and desperate whole gang of them have congregated over the top in fascist Supremacist lulu-land, corroded by too many years of Lars Lars LIARS LIARS, totally out of touch with and beyond redemption of real Republican 'governor' sensibility -- Morse, (even Neuberger), McCall, Hatfield, Packwood, Roberts, (forget Atiyeh though he's the nicest man you'd like to meet).

I mean, Dudley is no different from Sizemore or Mannix and everyone knew from the get-go that they (all) were merely 'token' candidacies. Except the Dudster had Citizens (!) United behind him ... and about 5 million illicit (perhaps foreign-sourced) dollars of ad 'support' by Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove, (take your pick, it turns out the two are one). But, hey, they can TV-makeup lipstick on a bore but he's still a bore.

I mean, when scraping around the bottom of the barrel and coming up with Sizemore, Mannix, Dudley, (the list is longer), fill-in mannequins who are net losses and negative imagery for the Party, maybe next time do no 'R' candidate. Just leave the line blank without an 'R' candidate on the ballot. Leave it to a Tea-bagger or Libertarian or Independent or Green Party or gasp! a write-in dark horse candidate to challenge the Dem; (that'd be Kitz again in 2014, eh?)

Leaving a Republican out of the gubernatorial contest is one way of keeping the Democrat out of Mahonia Hall. Really, any other kind of candidate would win except one from the fascist Supremacist group of Republicans these days.

I just am astonished that so many could think Dudley was anywhere near credible.

- -

One October day LIARS hosted some sort of Candidate Forum, at which only 'R' candidates showed up, and I do believer every one of them lost.

I liked how Dudley wasn't a career politician. Sure, he lacked true political experience but he definitely knew his stuff. It wasn't like he was going to jump in blindly; you need to know certain things when running for any kind of office.

That being said, I'm definitely not "Dudley dreamy-eyed," but I appreciated being able to vote for someone who hasn't been living and breathing politics for the majority of his / her adult life. And I didn't feel like I wanted to appoint Kitz again; he had his time and served his two terms. I didn't feel like he contributed much while in office.

It was brilliant and very "deep" to juxtapose the Orbison dirge and the classic Kurt Vonnegut exclamation ("and so it goes") of Hellerian absurdity. Poetic actually.