Fact Check: Les AuCoin’s Novick Endorsement Riddled With Crucial Factual Errors

Recently, former Congresman Les AuCoin endorsed Steve Novick in the Senate race.  Unfortunately, his endorsement of Steve Novick was as solid on the facts as Swiss cheese.  The errors are not small typos, but rather play a central role in AuCoin’s support for Novick. AuCoin goes down the HR2 rabbit hole:

Or, better, as House Minority Leader, Jeff could have out-maneuvered Republicans by engineering a Democratic Minority Report supporting the troops without glorifying Bush. Minority Reports are voted on before the bills to which they are attached; thus, it would have separated the issues, allowed Democrats to support the troops, and then oppose Bush on the war. It didn’t happen. This reveals a key difference between the Democratic candidates as we look for someone to effectively fight the neo-conservative putsch that threatens us.

Over at Preemptive Karma, Kevin writes a great post taking AuCoin to school for the factual errors:

Jeff Merkley wasn’t House Minority Leader in 2003. That job belonged to Deborah Kafoury. Furthermore, a Democratic Minority Report on the issue would have been sent out from the House Rules Committee and the Minority Leader didn’t serve on that committee that year. Maybe she could have pushed it through one of the members, but that’s a question for her, not Jeff Merkley.

Ironically, Kafoury has endorsed Novick. Will AuCoin be sitting Kafoury down at the next Novick holiday gathering and dressing her down for her lack of leadership on HR2? Not likely.

Personally, I don’t care about non-binding resolutions. I do, however, care about hypocrisy and this endorsement has more than its fair share of that. The main stated reason that AuCoin endorsed Novick over Merkley is that Deborah Kafoury, a Novick endorser, refused to, as Minority leader, get a minority report from her caucus on HR2.  Does that sound like a good reason to oppose Merkley to you? So are AuCoin and Novick going to ask Kafoury to take back her endorsement?  Did Kafoury cave to the GOP by not issuing a minority report? Or is it just not meaningful enough for Novick and AuCoin to stick to their principles here, unless they can use it as another shameless excuse to try to smear Merkley?

Finally, if AuCoin is so wrong about his chief issue in the race, can anyone trust his endorsement?

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Tags: OR-Sen, 2008 Senate Democratic Primary, Les AuCoin, Steve Novick, Jeff Merkley, Endorsements, HR-2