OFF ALERT 03/09/06
Primary Race Info.
OFF tees available again.



The filing deadline for candidates has now passed and the primary show will soon  begin in ernest.

If you're interested in getting some early information on who is running across the state, you can use this link to see the declared candidates. <http://tinyurl.com/7udux>

We expect to be sending out candidate surveys as soon as the Secretary of State makes the candidate listings official, which will likely be early next week.

Although there are several races that might prove very interesting, one of the most important developments is a race for Portland City Council. In this race, current council member Erik Sten is facing anti-gun zealot Senator Ginny Burdick.

Burdick is NOT facing reelection this year for her Senate seat, so she does not risk losing the seat if her bid for City Council fails.  However, if she should win, she would no longer be in the Oregon legislature making regular, if bumbling, attempts to attack gun rights state wide.

The amount of damage she can do in the City Council is currently limited by Oregon's preemption law, so while we are not interested in seeing Portland residents saddled with her extremism, having her out of the State house would be a great step forward for gun rights.

Burdick  started her career in politics as an appointee of disgraced child molester Neil Goldschmidt and is still considered a Goldschmidt "loyalist" by some. <http://tinyurl.com/qpkr6>

Anti-gun Senator Charlie Ringo has decided not to run again and Republicans are targeting Senator Rick Metzger who also has a less than stellar record on gun rights.

In the Governor's race, none of the Democrats has a pro-gun record or ideology.  Of the major Republican candidates, Kevin Mannix was the architect of the 1999 anti gun-show bill.

When he ran for Governor last time he actually claimed to have opposed this bill, which he WROTE, LOBBIED FOR, and CARRIED ON THE HOUSE FLOOR. But the facts remain, he worked overtime to pass this attack on gun rights.  His bill failed but was later turned into Ballot Measure 5 in 2000, by Ginny Burdick.  That passed and gun shows have suffered ever since.

Ron Saxton has ties to Goldschmidt and has refused to give us any details on his position on gun rights.

That leaves Jason Atkinson.  Atkinson did take time to meet with a representative of OFF last week. While OFF does not endorse candidates, it should be noted that Atkinson has a solid pro-gun record.

For a commentary on this, check out the podcast on our website. It's the first link on our Commentary page <http://oregonfirearms.org/commentary/offcommentary.html>

The audio is in MP3 format.

Please let us know your thoughts on this feature and share any suggestions you have.

Finally, as you may know if you've been with us for a while, it's been some time since we've had OFF tee shirts available.  But we have received many requests to offer them again. Without a doubt the most common request was for long sleeved black tee's, and that's what we now have.

You can see and order them here <http://oregonfirearms.org/store/Blackteeshirts.html> .   These are really good looking shirts, they're 100% cotton and as we say on the website, the photos really don't do them justice.  We also have a new patch available on the same page.  OFF pays the shipping for tee's and patches, and your purchase is a great way to support our efforts and look good doing it.

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