GOP retreat.
The new message: Cool it on calling Jeff Golden a racist!
The GOP attack backfired on the GOP and its candidate, Randy Sparacino. It looked like what it was: Dishonest Fox News-style fake outrage.
It only took four days for the GOP to realize that Republican candidate Randy Sparacino was the main victim of the party's opposition-research attack on state Senator Jeff Golden. The local party sent out an announcement telling GOP activists to abandon this line of attack. It was helping Golden.
Oregon's Republican leaders tasked with electing Republicans to the Oregon state senate had piled onto the Fox News "exposé." They decried Golden's supposed "open racism and hate." They called it "vile," "unacceptable," and "outrageous." The attack made Golden look good. Worse, it made Sparacino look bad.
It was off-brand for Sparacino. He is trying to look like a reasonable, moderate nice guy. The attack on Golden exposed the very point that Sparacino is disguising. He is a loyal and compliant Republican, running a Republican campaign, funded by Republicans PACS that are perfectly happy to get down and dirty and say anything to elect members of their team.
The attack backfired instantly because it was so off-brand an accusation about Golden. Golden a racist? For gosh sakes, he spent a summer as a 20-year-old, weeding watermelons in the heat and humidity of Georgia on behalf of a civil rights project to help Black sharecroppers. He used the spelled out word in the context of opponents to his work calling him a "N-----lover."
The GOP attempted damage control. Here is their statement, exactly as written:
Jackson County Republican Party Statement:
It has been brought to my attention that a current Oregon State Senator (JG) has written a book about his life, using some unsavory words and comments. With many encouraging a statement denouncing these words and anyone who would use them. The JCRP whole-heartedly agrees, these words and sayings are unbecoming and we denounce any person in public and private office who would use them today. Having said that, we believe making a broad public statement about something said a long time ago would give unnecessary (although, bad) attention to our opponent, to his irrelevant distant past and detract attention from his poor and failed policies and representative voting record. In true Reagan politics, our focus can not be broken, our opponent will not get any free publicity from us but rather our attention will go to the answers and solutions to the current issues and concerns of our time.
Sparacino has a dilemma. As with earlier pronouncements by the local GOP, where they adopted the full-Trump message and declared the 2020 election fraudulent and Biden illegitimate, Sparacino has two bad choices. One is open disagreement. But the attacks on Golden came from the Senate Republican Leader Tim Knopf and the State GOP. They have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaign. Disagreeing with them is a bad choice. The other bad choice is to give silent consent to the attack, and continue to have the Sparacino brand associated with the least savory behaviors of Republicans in a state senate district with a Democratic majority. Trump continues to shape the GOP message by dominating the news insisting that he won the 2020 election. Meanwhile, Republican state legislators, when they get a majority, advocate for total bans on abortion from the moment of fertilization. And now he gets muddied up from this attack on Golden.
For now, Sparacino is staying silent, apparently fully aboard the Republican Trump train. It means he continues to get all that Republican money and the support of the Trump voters in his party. But he gets the baggage, too.
Moral courage is sorely lacking in most of today's Republicans.