Fact Check: Les AuCoin’s Novick Endorsement Riddled With Crucial Factual Errors
December 14, 2007
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.
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
Entry Filed under: OR-Sen. .
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1.
torridjoe | December 15, 2007 at 2:33 pm
“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. ”
Yeah, that’s stated, all right. :rolleyes:
2.
bdunn | December 15, 2007 at 2:41 pm
AuCoin presented the Minority report option as what a leader would do in the circumstances. Except it was a Novick backer that was responsible for the failure to put forth a minority report and Merkley had no power to change that.
It was a non-binding resolution. I don’t like them and generally think they are a waste of time. The choices were 6 of one and a half dozen of the other and with those choices I think that Merkley did a good job of going outside the box to criticize the war and then vote for the part of the resolution that supports the troops.
3.
Sarah Lane | December 15, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Wow. This is the first I’ve read of Aucoin’s endorsement. You would have thought he would have stayed positive and advocated for his chosen candidate rather then go negative. Not a good move IMO.
4.
Kevin | December 16, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I agree, Sarah. However, it seems to me that negativity is a general theme of the Novick campaign as a whole and of it’s blogosphere faction in particular. So at least AuCoin is apparently in synch with them.