Mapes’ Manufactured Narative in the OR Senate Race

On Saturday, Oregonian columnist Jeff Mapes, commented on Chris Cillizza’s latest Senate rankings on his blog. Mapes asserts that sliding from 6 to 7 in Cillizza’s rankings is an up tick for Gordon Smith’s stock. However, Mapes narrative is manufactured.

Mapes remarks:

So on to this month’s results in Oregon…where Republican incumbent Gordon Smith apparently is looking a wee bit more re-electable. His seat has slipped from the sixth most endangered to seventh. As Cillizza explained:

National Democrats are convinced that Sen. Gordon Smith is headed for defeat next November. Last month they released a poll conducted for the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] that showed 30 percent of the sample planned to vote to reelect Smith while 41 percent either were open to considering someone else (25 percent) or were set on voting to “replace” Smith (16 percent). The problem for Democrats at the moment is that their preferred candidate — state House Speaker Jeff Merkley — hasn’t wowed just yet. Merkley’s $294,000 raised in the third quarter was only OK, and he continues to be dogged by liberal activist Steve Novick’s primary challenge. We expect Merkley to win the primary relatively easily, but Novick can make trouble for Merkley on the left. This race could well move up The Line in the coming months, but we just don’t see it yet.

Unfortunately for Sen. Smith, that analysis is faulty. This month’s new polling released by the DSCC showing only 30% of respondents saying that they would vote to re-elect Smith. Furthermore, concerns about the Democratic field have not changed. The threat that a messy primary derails Merkley is no more probable this month than any other month where Novick has taken pot shots at Merkley. Merkley’s fundraising numbers have not been reported this month and were trending upward as the last quarter ended, suggesting that a full quarter’s fundraising would be more impressive. Other than the fundraising Gordon Smith is no safer than last month.

Then why change the ranking? Cillizza says:

6. Minnesota: The more we talk to strategists on both sides of the aisle, the more convinced we are that we’ve been underestimating Sen. Norm Coleman’s vulnerability.

The rankings are comparative, rather than a direct judgment on Smith’s re-election prospects. The viability of Democrats in Minnesota is inconsequential to the Oregon Senate race. Both Democratic candidates in Minnesota are heavy hitters with fundraising and would not likely draw funds earmarked by the DSCC for Oregon. So does Cillizza’s ranking represent any true change to Smiths’ stock? No

Then why report on it? Maybe because American media would much rather report on the horse race than substantive policy issues. Jeff Merkley’s policy platform went up on his website, yet no reporting was done on that. Merkley came out against Gordon Smith’s vote on the Peru Free Trade Act, yet Mapes didn’t cover that. Instead, Mapes would prefer to participate in echo chamber politics reporting on what a columnist writes, claiming it represents a change of stock for Gordon Smith.

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Tags: GordonSmith, OR-Sen, the Fix, Jeff Mapes, Jeff Merkley