By Jim Heffernan
I find that the real truth in politics is not always accessible by listening to the candidate. I believe the old cliché about “follow the money” is a good way to see who the candidate resonates with.
I also believe that following the voting record tells you a lot about an incumbent.
Oregon makes it fairly easy to follow both the money and the voting.
Oregon is strict about reporting campaign contributions. If somebody wants to make a $2 donation at the TillCoDems office, they need to identify themselves on a form to satisfy Orestar rules set by the Oregon Secretary of State.
But if you want to give to a PAC (Political Action Committee) you can blur your identity and the amount of money you give. Cyrus Javadi has collected more than one million dollars from various PAC’s. They have benign sounding names like “Restore Balance to Salem Pac”.
If you go to the Secretary of State site listed below, a search form will be brought up. https://secure.sos.state.or.us/orestar/gotoPublicTransactionSearchResults.do In the bottom part of the form, if you type in “Cyrus for Oregon” in the name block and click on “Search”, 172 donations in random order are displayed. There is a button on the screen that allows you to export the completed form to your computer in Excel spreadsheet format. Once the form is in that format, you can use the sort function of the spreadsheet to make better sense of who gave what. And you can total it.
So far, Cyrus Javadi has collected just over a million dollars. His biggest contributor is “Bring Balance to Salem Pac”. A better name for the PAC might be “Phil Knight and his rich buddies”. “Bring Balance to Salem” has contributed $418,000 to Dr. Javadi. It’s no wonder that I seem to receive a mailer each day and when I check football scores on the internet, a slick but deceptive negative ad about his opponent pops up.
Dr. Javadi’s voting record is also suspect. He trumpets what he has done, but I fail to see how he has had a single deciding vote in the last session. The Oregonian maintains a great site that tracks voting by individual legislators. https://gov.oregonlive.com/legislators/Cyrus-Javadi/page-8/
I was alarmed to see in the last sessions 281 votes, Dr. Javadi was “excused” for 62 of them (22%). 33 were just plain “Excused” and 29 were “Excused for House Business”. I have to wonder. Dr. Javadi is on three committees and David Gomberg, another coastal Oregon Representative, is on six committees. David Gomberg did not miss a single vote.
Dr. Javadi’s opponent, Andy Davis, is running against him with less than $17K. Andy Davis will be a full-time legislator because conflict of interest statutes demand he quit his job as an analyst for the state.
Let’s send a message to the big money interests that want to buy our votes and send Andy Davis to Salem.
As always, discussion is welcome at codger817@gmail.com
