Dudley's Going Wobbly

Seriously, he's off his game.

First of all, the Right-Skewing Rasmussen came out with this poll on Monday showing Kitzhaber with a small but significant lead. I attribute this to Dudley's meager and barely adequate performance during the one and only televised debate on KGW. But Nate Silver who, this week, flipped the predicted outcome of the race from Dudley to Kitzhaber as the likely winner showed Dudley already beginning to make his descent down and Kitzhaber shifting up even before the debate on September 27th. In order to overcome the Blue Tide of Oregon Democrats' GOTV efforts, Dudley needs to be up in the polls by a good 5 points or it's a lock for Kitzhaber. That's the reality that the Dudley campaign is grappling with.

So, here Dudley is at the Freethrow Line again and what does his campaign do? Dredge up that wicked little "investigative journalism" piece on KGW's "The Square" explaining away what we all heard him say about Oregon's minimum wage, dismissing it as just an editing job. In fact, he uses the KGW reporter's own words in his brand new ad "Don't". Let's be clear. This is why letting an inaccurate piece of journalism float out there, largely unaddressed and uncorrected, is such a bad thing. Leaving aside for the moment, the appearance that KGW is just a media flack for a candidate, the "Don't" ad claims that "Kitzhaber highly edited Dudley's words" and cites the Oregonian on Oct. 11th.












Really?

The Oregonian piece quoted in the "Don't" ad pictured ACTUALLY reads thus:

"The fact is, the Kitzhaber ad does take some highly edited snippets from a rambling answer that Dudley gave to a questioner about the minimum wage back on Sept. 9 - and that Democrats have used against him ever since." Watching Dudley's ad, you'd get the feeling that Kitzhaber sat in a dark, smoke-filled room somewhere and edited the piece himself. Laughably, Dudley's campaign cherry-picked what they wanted from the article and left behind the nuggets that buttress THE FACTS. Mapes goes on to repeat what anyone with a brain and basic comprehension skills already knew:

"But the Kitzhaber campaign could point to parts of Dudley's answer that buttress their ad. The commercial quotes Dudley as saying that "having the highest minimum wage in the country negatively impacts the state." You can see from the transcript (or the Youtube video of his statement) that it is reasonable to think Dudley was agreeing with a questioner who expressed unhappiness about the minimum wage."

...it is reasonable to think because Dudley's mouth moved and his words said he was agreeing with a questioner who expressed unhappiness about the minimum wage.

Enough with this foolishness. First of all, whoever is responsible for the original KGW piece needs to, at long last, make a correction on this story! Stop painting the sentient, intelligent voters as unable to understand what we heard. The reporter in the story, or WHOEVER is responsible at KGW, edited the original video in a fashion to "prove" that the Kitzhaber people edited the video, and then gave a platform for Dudley to respond to it. It's disgusting, appalling journalism. And NOW, Dudley himself is using a snippet in his ad to attack his opponent. KGW should be concerned that it looks like someone there is in the tank for Dudley and I just don't think that's a good policy for a TV station broadcasting over the public airways.

But of course, the desperate Dudley camp is pulling out it's "big guns" now that HE is down in the polls. And KGW gave them a nice sound byte to do so.

KGW - FIX THIS NOW!

Next on the blog, yeah that claim that Kitzhaber wants to tax the homeless is a load of garbage too.

The irresponsible journalism of KGW

One of the stickiest issues so far in the Oregon Governor's race has been this video taped comment made by Chris Dudley:

"it doesn't make sense that our waitresses are getting tips plus the highest minimum wage in the country."

Last night on Live @ 7 on KGW, Anne Yeager took a scatter shot approach to discrediting the people who are RIGHTFULLY appalled by the quote, implying that Dudley was somehow taken out of context due to the editing of the video. In an appalling piece of slipshod "investigative reporting" Yeager's piece ALSO edited the video to leave out the question that Dudley was answering in agreement. And THEN, she sticks a microphone in his face and gives him a platform to backtrack the comment. There's no doubt that this quote has been reflecting badly on Dudley and that he would take it back if he could. He has been careful about the whole matter up til the September 9th venue where he said the quote. Jeff Mapes seemed to get it when he addressed the matter of Dudley's stance on the tip credit back in July and that Dudley didn't want to go on record about it at all:

"At any rate, it's clear that Dudley - who didn't rule out taking up the tip credit issue if he is elected governor - is a favorite of the Oregon Restaurant Association." (who incidently, as of this morning, have given $90K to Dudley's campaign).

I became aware of the quote from Blue Oregon on September 21st, before it was edited into the "short" version. The Democratic Party posted the full, unedited version on You Tube on September 20th. Judging by the comments on the Blue Oregon page then, we were outraged then because, oh I dunno... we understand English and nuance and context. Elements that apparently Anne Yeager does not understand.

To be sure, there has been a backlash against Yeager already this morning. My husband and I, being vocal pains in the ass, challenged her investigative methods on Twitter. We mentioned the fact that she left out the $90K donation by the Restaurant Association. She kept trying to put the focus on Dudley's idea of a training wage. And then she admitted that she didn't understand the "lingo" of "tip credit".

Did she even watch the video herself? Dudley pretty much breaks it down for her. But in case she or anyone else is still unclear about what "tip credit" means, here is a nice explanation and breakdown of how it works in North Carolina.

Note that tipped employees make $5.12 LESS an hour than non-tipped employees. Furthermore, it amounts to less payroll tax, Social Security, and unemployment insurance being paid.

At 00:43 into the "long" unedited version of the video, Dudley says "I agree" to the question being asked about employees making too much money and then uses a third party's story to corroborate his point. Is this not AGREEMENT? Dudley COULD have used the opportunity to praise people who wait tables for a living for the relatively low wage they make. No. Instead, he commiserated with the whiny, cheapskate restaurant owner who was complaining about how much money his waitresses cost him. He has NEVER addressed tip credit and Yeager failed to ask that when she had the chance.

So here it is. The full, unedited video of Dudley agreeing that minimum wage (which he incorrectly claims is the highest in the country) PLUS tips is too much money.



And yes, he does offer up a training wage as a "first" step: "that’s one area I would like to tackle first is to at least get a training wage going" The follow up question to that matter should be: "what's to stop restaurant owners from overly relying on young wait staff making training wage and putting older, experienced workers out of work?" Think you can handle that, Anne Yeager?

The really inexcusable part of Yeager's report is that Kitzhaber is tacitly being blamed for the video. It didn't require investigative journalism to unearth the source of the video... the unedited video has been posted from the start, by the DPO and, in turn, by Blue Oregon.

And finally, please note: As of today, Chris Dudley has still not stated where he stands on "tip credit". This question must be explicitly asked on Thursday's debate on KGW.

I am constantly amazed at how woefully inept the media has been on the Oregon Governor's race. This comes from having to do research myself that I often post here. But this incident fails every journalistic standard of fairness. I wish the media would put as much effort in finding out the identity of the tracker who disrupted the Urban League forum as they did in giving Dudley his opportunity to backtrack off this quote.

Anyone know who that guy is?