Pelosi bites the dust. Democrats lose the house.

[rockouthippie]

Kitzhaber won by < 6000 votes. In a state as blue as Oregon, that's practically voter mutiny. I think Kitz had some good ads. "If Dudley gets elected, your kids won't have any schools!".

Oregon is projected to run a 3 billion dollar deficit. The last time Kitzhaber was the governor, he grew Oregon government 67%. He likes to spend a little more than he likes to tax.

He has some severe skeletons in his closet. One is Measure 11, which was meant to put violent criminals behind bars. It establishes a 72 month mandatory minimum sentence for some categories of crime. It doubled Oregons prison system. It has been applied cavalierly by prosecutors and courts. A lot of people have gotten the 7 year sentence in cases where an average person would think that 7 years is completely ridiculous. I know an innocent guy that took a plea bargain because the prosecutor was going to prosecute under Measure 11. The incident was self defense. He did a year in the county slammer just because he was afraid of what would happen in court if he were found guilty. He just didn't think any risk of 7 years was worth it. Every Measure 11 inmate costs the state more than $200K. These inmates are about 40% of the Oregon prison population. I know about a few cases where people got Measure 11 sentences. I don't know of any where a reasonable person would have thought the sentence was fair.

The Oregon Supreme Court has said "(Measure 11) is so disproportionate to the offense committed that it shocks the moral sense of reasonable people." It's remained now for 16 years.

Another Kitz skeleton is his mishandling of PERS, the state employee retirement fund. This mess nearly bankrupted the state and continues to be a fiscal nightmare.

Even the mighty Kitzcommie can't run a 3 billion dollar a year deficit for very long. If you bought the rhetoric that Dudley was gonna kill schools, you didn't recognize the inevitability of austerity.

If there were a magazine called Tax and Spend Liberal, Kitz would be the centerfold.