Oregon Senate Candidate, Climate Change, and the Easter Bunny

This is good. Williamette Week, the very respected alternative weekly newspaper in Portland, invited in all the Republican Senatorial candidates (to run against Jeff Merkley this fall) for a Q&A.

One of the candidates, Mark Callahan, scolded reporter Nigel Jaquiss (a Pullitzer Prize winnner) for writing "blah blah blah" in his notes when a different candidate was speaking, calling it "disrespectful."

Things advanced quickly from there. Asked if climate change is a myth or reality, Callahan answered "It's a myth." Jacquiss then asked him were he stood on the Easter Bunny.

Bing bang boom, and shortly after Williamette Week's Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman ordered Callahan to leave.

Fireworks here:


Callahan doesn't have a prayer of winning anyway -- here are his positions on the issues, which might get you elected in Alabama but certainly not in Oregon -- and no one is going to beat Merkley anyway.

(I heard Merkley speak at a climate change conference in Portland last fall, and was very impressed with the depth of his understanding on all of it. In fact, I've never heard a politician or official speak with as much knowledge on the subject, anywhere.)