OR Leg HD-06: Moran v Esquivel

Well, this is the seat I ran for and I am underwhelmed, thus far. I guess this is the difference between being IN and watching from the side in Oregon politics - I was told the voters aren't really paying attention until Labor Day, so efforts prior are mostly wasted...that didn't stop me from registering a domain name in July of 2003, getting content up on a website by August, including a first serious campaign blog post here (though I actually had the blog going 3 days earlier, with decent content posting regularly).

But as we glide towards the final 90 days before election day '06, Mike Moran has yet to put up a website ("...by September"), nor have I seen a single lawn sign. I have seen his bumperstickers. Very basic.

Esquivel's website, unchanged in appearance since last time, has expanded to note accolades and accomplishments from his first term (one of the reason imcumbents are tough to run against - they can point to things they've done, not just talk about things they'd like to do). His platform page is still shorter in content than many of my single issue blog posts (11 one line bullet points with two grafs of framing language). Esquivel also cleverly changed his Real Estate businesses signs to be nearly the same color as his campaign colors and to use only the surname, even though the signage is for his wife's property sales efforts... nice way to drive visibility and not technically be campaigning year round every year.

The most substantive issue I can see addressing in the race will be the bond funding for Medford Schools, but that issue's outcome won't be known until the race is over and it will like serve to polarize the respective bases and won't do much to move the middle. Moran's law & order background, something that should help a Dem in a GOP-heavy district, is not being leveraged in any visible way, yet, and the bottom line is we are only about 60 days from having ballots arrive - I don't like the "endless campaign" we see in Presidential efforts, starting in August the year before, creating voter fatigue by March, and relentlessly plodding on for 8 more months after that... but THREE months, for the whole race, including the background stuff like a website for the folks who ARE interested early and Google for more info? For Moran, the best you are gonna get is an email contact via the Oregon Dems website and a mention on ActBlue, though with zero activity.

We gotta get moving on this one folks.
[UPDATE] As of now, I have an ActBlue page and Mike is one of the candidates on it... go chip in!