Basic Rights Oregon Urges "Rob Brading for House District 49"
Basic Rights Oregon is proud to support Rob Brading for House District 49. Rob Brading is taking on House Speaker Karen Minnis for the second time in two election cycles. In their last match up, he ran a bare-bones campaign against the Speaker's big money effort and nearly defeated her. This time, he has the support and resources of a broad coalition behind him. Rob has worked and lived in House District 49 for 14 years. Since 1992, he has been Executive Director at MetroEast Community Media. Rob Brading's commitment to public service is also evident in the diverse ways he has worked to improve his community. He is a past president of the Gresham Area Chamber of Commerce and served on its board for seven years. He was a member of Tri-Met's Transit for Livability Task Force, Gresham's Police Advisory Committee and the board of East County Habitat for Humanity. Currently Rob Brading serves on the Multnomah County Library Board and the board of the Oregon Public Affairs Network. Rob Brading is a fair-minded candidate who will actually fight for working families in East County and equality for all Oregonians.
Brading stands a good chance to beat Speaker Karen Minnis (polls show a dead heat), and he ran against Minnis last election cycle and only lost by about 3%. BUT this time around Speaker Karen Minnis knows that she is in trouble for representing big oil, tobacco, pharmaceuticals and other extremist special interests--instead of representing the people in her own district. So this time Minnis has raised one-million dollars to spend on the fight of her life. The Brading campaign needs people, dollars and most importantly--VOTES. Spread the word. Click here to get involved in the Brading campaign.
Help Rob Brading WIN in the last week of the election by assisting with canvassing and phone banks and other events. Click here to learn more.
Click here to visit Vote Equality for a complete online voter guide of candidates endorsed by the Basic Rights Equality PAC.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 3:34 PM.
Want to discuss? Leave a comment below.
ByWhen I called and asked Rob about his position on same-sex marriage, he could hardly figure out how to speak to it other than saying 'Karen Minnis would love to make this about same sex marriage.
When pressed, he asked: 'Do you believe you're married? Marriage is more than a piece of paper.'
He won't be someone who will risk a win of this office by supporting us, he cannot even articulate it in a personal conversation.
And no where on his site does he mention any of these words: gay, civil rights, civil unions...
Is Basic Rights Oregon listed under 'endorsements?' Nope.
Of course, we could also ask why BRO announces an endorsement after so many people already have returned their ballots - is it disorganization? Because you're pretty late in coming to decide to support the candidate running against Minnis...
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Brading is exactly right. Minnis would love to make it about gay marriage. The thing is that it isn't.
Minnis has sided with big business 99.9% of the time, rather than representing her own district. Believe me, I live here, in fact she lives right up the hill.
So rather than trying to make this into an issue of gay marriage, lets make it an issue of what is best for this state and simply get through the election. Stop playing into the politics of using the GLBT community as the scapegoat.
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Stop playing into the politics of using the GLBT community as the scapegoat.
Wow, blame the victim there huh?
It's important to me to know how a candidate I support stands on issues important to me - sorry, but my civil rights are important.
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Which is why you should not vote for Minnis. Or do you not even live in her district?
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All of us who care about fairness and equality can agree that the most important thing in this race is to get anti-equality Speaker Minnis out and pro-equality Rob Brading in.
That said, it is important for anyone who cares about this race to limit the opportunities for Karen Minnis to gay-bait Rob Brading or use GLBT people and issues as a way to attack him rather than focusing on her failures as Speaker an in representing her district. Her campaign has engaged in some viscious attacks and it is not productive to give her opportunities to turn that venom on the GLBT community.
Basic Rights Oregon goes through a rigorous endorsement process to evaluate candidates positions on a number of issues from, relationship equality, anti-discrimination, hate crimes, education and more. It is our hope that folks can trust that we do not issue endorsements in races where candidates can not articulate a pro-equality conviction on these issues. How those positions are messaged in the campaigns is largely determined by what will best help the candidate emerge a winner on election day.
As for the timing of the endorsement, it is important to know two things: We have worked to defeat the Speaker for months and have worked in a coordinated, strategic way with the Brading campaign and Future PAC since the beginning of the election cycle.
This endorsement announcment comes at the time when we believed it would have the most impact (with the least adverse affects on the Brading candidacy). Contrary to what anonymous said, only 9% of Oregonians have turned in their ballots. The rest of Oregon voters will be voting this week so in our view it is perfect timing.
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I find this conversation a little ridiculous. People, do you want Karen Minnis out? Or do you want Rob Brading to be out there waiving the rainbow flag? I want an elected official who stands up for me too, but I know two things. First, Karen Minnis sure as hell won't do that. And Second, her district, even though it's democrat is not the most pro-gay in the state. It voted overwhelmingly in favor of Measure 36 and with all the money she has all she has to do is run an anti-gay smear campaign against him and victory is hers. Any campaign manager worth their weight would try to avoid letting that happen to their candidate and BRO would be stupid to hand the election to minnis on a silver platter by forcing these issues to the forefront. It doesn't mean they aren't important.
And, if you have been paying attention you would know that Karen Minnis has already been trying to paint Brading as a gay-loving extremist who would overrule marriage and all of that crap. If Basic Rights had been out front with its endorsement of Brading from the beginning, then Minnis could have spent the whole campaign crying about how "the gays" were out to get her. Tears that would have turned into campaign gold.
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Of course we want her out - but we should also know where the candidate stands on our issues. If Brading can't articulate support for basic civil rights then that should be known.
And really, stop with the 'playing into their hands' thing. Standing up for our rights does not include going into the closet on our issues.
Martin Luther King was the shining example on that one.
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