Republican Governor wannabe's Debate. Snoozer!

Tonight, I mustered up and watched the three Republican candidates who want to be governor. One behaved and talked like a polished smooth talking politician. One was moderated in speech and inexperienced. Another, sorry to say, seemed very hard core and sincere, but I couldn't understand much of what he was saying due to an extremely heavy Asian accent.

The debate was boring to the core. No fireworks. Short on substance. Lots of generalities. Snoozer!

All three, especially the accented one, expressed respect for the taxpayer. This is something I'd like to see out of Democrats. It was refreshing.

The one thing all three agreed upon that will rile up the inevitable opposition: PERS reform. All three said PERS is sinking the ship of state and must be changed.

Only Dudley, I believe it was, said this can be done with all parties at the table, not as if the public employees/retirees are the enemy, and responsible for sucking the life blood right out of Oregon. Pretty much that's what the other two made PERS out to be, a vampire, especially the one I can't understand well. Sorry, names escape me. I know Dudley's name because he towered over the two, looking twice their height. He's the ex Blazer center. Everybody knows Dudley.

I'm not much of a Blazer fan. I was once. That was when Clyde the Glide with his spectacular grace and gentleness, was my hero. Before that, way way before that, when I was young, Bill Walton, the outspoken environmentalist and liberal, whom my father hated, was the Blazers center when Portland won the title.

I was riding through a neighborhood in Portland right after they won. I'd been up in Washington visiting my brother who was in college. The streets of Portland erupted around the car I was riding home in, with a family from Corvallis.

People poured champagne over the car's windshield, or they shook bottles of beer before popping the tops and spraying the foam out over one another. There was dancing in the streets and our car could not move an inch. It was beautiful!

And Bill Walton led the team. My father didn't know if he should really celebrate the Blazers winning the NBA title. He hated Walton but so much wanted to be happy the Blazers won the title. But how do you do that when the team is led to victory by some liberal loud mouth, as my father called Walton.

Chris Dudley? Some people called him "the dud" as a center for the Blazers. My father was one of them. An opinion on everyone, he had. He said Dudley looked asleep all the time when he was playing. My father didn't like sports much and I think he resented athletes their huge salaries. Rightfully so.

He might have been right about Dudley looking sleepy. He looked half asleep tonight in the debate. Never seen a less lively group of three. Like I said before, twas a snoozer.

The Democrats debate next week I think. I think it's Kitzhaber and oh I forget the other guy. I met these two young guys when I hung out along the river with the river cats and lived in a seedy dumpy converted hotel. I met lots of people along the river in Corvallis back then. These two swore they had sold coke to Governor Kitzhaber when they lived in Salem and dealt. I didn't believe them. They described being in his office and handing over coke to some gay aide of the then governor's. I still didn't believe them and I told them so. I told them if it were true, why not go to the press? They said they would not be believed.

Later on, when I became homeless, mental health put me up in the motel along the river for a couple of nights. I went outside my room, and there was the younger guy of the two, squatted along the wall, strung out. He told me his wife or girlfriend had come over from Albany with their child and they got a room and that the van I asked him about, with WA plates was a WA drug dealer who brought them down some real hot shit heroin they were all doing. I said "With a child in there?" I told the police, because of the child, but I don't think they believed me.

And later on in the years after that, I saw the younger guys photo staring back at me from the paper. I am pretty sure it was him, at least, not completely sure. He was murdered out near Summit or Blodgett, lured out there by some guy over a drug deal that went bad, and murdered.

I think the guy who did it tried to mutilate or burn his body. I can't remember exactly the details, just remembered seeing his baby face in the paper as the murder victim and remembering, if it was the same guy, how he and his friend came to my converted hotel room apartment that first time I met them along the river, and how he carefully and gently picked up the feral river cat I had up there, following her surgery, and held her against his chest to calm her. I told him then, "You're so good with animals. You could get out of this life you're in, and become a vet." He could of. But he's dead now.

Do I believe those two really sold coke to the governor or the governor's aide? No. I don't. No proof, other than stories from a couple guys trying to impress me with powerful private knowledge of shady dealings with the rich or famous, and that's what they came up with. I was impressed by the younger one. I was impressed with his kind heart and wished very much he could get away from the drugs before they killed him.