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[OR-01] Congressional candidate will stay with GOP
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| Contributor | TX DEM |
| Last Edited | TX DEM Jul 31, 2008 10:43am |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Thursday, July 31, 2008 04:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The landslide winner of the Republican primary in Oregon's 1st Congressional District, who said he might jump to Oregon's Independent Party, has decided to stick with the GOP. Not everybody is thrilled.
Joel Haugen, a Scappoose business owner, said fellow Republicans have turned against him because he supports Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Haugen told the McMinnville News-Register he had been talking to Independent Party officials. But he told the paper on Friday that he won't make the switch.
If he had it would have left the Republicans without a candidate to oppose Democratic incumbent David Wu in November.
Haugen defeated social conservative Claude Chappell in the May primary, taking more than 70 percent of the vote. Haugen said it was around that time that he told party officials of his plans to endorse Obama.
In June, he contacted key Republicans in each of the 1st District's four counties, Clatsop, Columbia, Washington and Yamhill, offering to facilitate a bipartisan discussion about energy policy. He said he saw it as an issue reaching across party lines.
Haugen got no positive responses, and got a decidedly negative one from Yamhill County. Neal Lockhart, a local party activist who serves as the county's Republican Central Committee spokesman, told Haugen that no true Republican would think of helping him.
He went on to tell Haugen, who provided a copy of the exchange to the News-Register: "You are not a real Republican, you are a shill... You are exactly what I have warned everyone about. Please do us a favor, quit the party."
Contacted Wednesday for a response, Lockhart said the local central committee had drafted a statement about Haugen that it planned to make public in the fall. But for now, he said, "The official line from Yamhill County Republicans is, we have no comment." |
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