[NYTr] In Oregon, Independent Senate Candidate Offers Voters a Choice

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP 

The Daily Astorian - Jan 3, 2008
http://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp?SectionID=23&SubSectionID=783&ArticleID=48039&TM=41070.98

excerpt from column "Of Cabbages and Kings"

by Steve Forrester

[...]

John  Frohnmayer  is  the  most  interesting politician in Oregon this 
campaign season. Running as an Independent candidate for U.S. senator, 
Frohnmayer has a simple strategy.John Frohnmayer's senate candidacy
might be a pipe dream. Or it might work.

In  a  three-way race, he reasons, a candidate will likely win with 35 
percent of the vote.

In  Mike  Riley's recent polling, Frohnmayer was the only candidate to 
gain  since  Riley's prior look at the race. The incumbent Sen. Gordon 
Smith  is  stuck  at around 39 percent, and Democratic candidates have 
similarly not moved or have declined.

Frohnmayer's  appeal is to the voter who is fed up with the Republican and 
Democratic  parties  and  the partisan bickering that defines the 
stalemate  in  Congress. The Independent candidate says he won't match 
Gordon  Smith's  huge bankroll or the campaign war chest that national 
Democrats  will  lay on Smith's eventual opponent. But Frohnmayer says he 
won't need that much, and that he'll conserve his cash for the last weeks 
of the race.

This  may  be  a pipe dream. It might work. But Frohnmayer at least is not 
a cardboard cut-out.

[...]