Jackson County GOP: Conspiracy theories, extremism, and election denial.
We needed leadership.
Randy Sparacino, candidate for Oregon State Senate, is Missing in Action.
The Jackson County Republican Party laid down its marker this summer. It passed a resolution echoing Trump and "in solidarity with the Texas GOP convention" stating vigorous denial of the 2020 election.
"We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected."
This resolution created an opportunity and a problem for local Republican candidates. The opportunity was for candidates to distinguish themselves from the conspiracy theorists, election denialists, and extremists who justify overthrowing American elections. It would be an opportunity for candidates to acknowledge that voting by mail works. It is the procedure that has been in place for two decades in Oregon, and under which every Oregon Republican officeholder holds office. It would create the opportunity to look reasonable to the broad electorate of non-affiliated persuadable voters. It would be an opportunity to defend the democratic process and the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power. It would be an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and courage, by doing the core job of political leaders of telling the truth to their constituents about their government. There is a lot of upside.
The downside is that some portion of Republican voters just don't want to hear it. They want their Republican candidates to echo Donald Trump, even if what he argues is self-serving, undemocratic, dangerous, and contradicted by audits, recounts, and investigations by people in his own administration.
Randy Sparacino is a special disappointment and danger. There are other Republican officeholders in Southern Oregon who also are hiding out and refusing to push back against their party leaders. Sparacino is in a high-profile race getting Republican support from around the state and nation. Sparacino is receiving an avalanche of contributions from the Republican establishment figures, from Republican heavyweight donors, and from local and national PACs. If Republican money translates into Republican votes, he has an excellent chance of winning election. Sparacino could be a high profile leader demonstrating that Republicans--real Republicans--aren't conspiracy nuts, and that they support the democratic process.
Sparacino's behavior is a red flag. Trump argued that state legislatures are free to--and should--override the popular presidential vote in their states and award the electoral votes to the Republican on their own authority. Because Oregon votes by mail, Oregon legislators have a ready-made justification within GOP circles for saying they doubt, and therefore are free to overturn, the election result. There is a growing national GOP movement to place election deniers into positions where they can overrule an election--county clerks, secretaries of state, governors, and state legislators. Elected Republicans will get enormous pressure to stay loyal to their party and throw electoral votes to the Republican, whatever the actual vote. Legislators in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania experienced it. Governors and secretaries of state in Arizona and Georgia did as well. If he becomes a state senator, Sparacino will face that pressure.
Why would I suspect he would bow to that pressure? Because he is bowing to it right now. Surely Sparacino knows full well that his local party leaders went wacko. But he stays silent. If he doesn't show courage and integrity now, why should we expect it later if he is in the state senate? Today he is reluctant to disappoint some local Central Committee people who got carried away. In the Oregon senate he might get a call from Donald Trump telling him he needs to come through for the team.
Sparacino is the most prominent Republican candidate in Southern Oregon. His silence and fence-straddling lets his party's resolution be the announced position of local Republicans. There could be an alternative message, but that would require Sparacino to show the courage and character we expect in a leader.
He is lying low.
Dead on. Not paying attention to repub agendas and behaviors in the last decade has cost dems to the point they may never regain at least parity in local/state politics. Repubs have re-fashioned their councils, boards, legislatures and gerrymandered districts to be structurally designed to their benefit for generations to come. No broom could sweep these crazies out long enough to set about the mind-numbing tasks of undoing the damage they've done to theoretically 'fair' processes.