Jamie McLeod-Skinner

It’s a matter of trust.

We’ve been flooded with TV ads and mailers showing Kurt Schrader as a folksy old Oregon farmer and Veterinarian, when the record show he hasn’t actively done either profession in over a decade. He keeps the farm as his voting address (his son runs the farm) and lives with his wife in maryland.

We are not voting for a farmer or a Vet, so why do these petty falsehoods matter?

Because it is about trust.

In the recent KTVZ debate, Kurt Schrader made a comment that shocked me. Jamie McLeod-Skinner challenged him on several votes he has made that weakened the very things he claims support in his campaign literature. Schrader’s explanation:

“You vote for and against things in committee, it’s the last vote that counts.”

Wait. What?

Anyone who has ever served in (or even run for) a legislative body knows that committees you get determines your power to get your priorities done. Committees decide what policy gets to the floor to be voted on by the whole legislative body. Legislators fight, connive and horse trade to get on the most powerful committees.

So Schader’s vote in the Energy and Commerce committee to restrict Medicare’s ability to negotiate prescription prices prevented the House from passing a bill to do that. Touting a subsequent bill to cap insulin copays is NOT the same thing. Drug companies can still change what they want. We may pay less as a copay, but the remaining price is passed on through rising insurance premiums or government spending. The ONLY way U.S. prescription pricing will go down to what the rest of the world pays, is if we remove the prohibition from Medicare, the drug companies’ largest US customer.

Either we are to believe that a seasoned veteran congressman doesn’t know his job, or he is not telling us the truth.

I am an officer of the Democratic party, and I expect I will vote for whichever candidate comes out of the primary. But I am ashamed of the campaign that a member of my party is running.

Fortunately, we have a choice. I have known Jamie Mcleod-Skinner since we ran on a ballot together in her groundbreaking 2018 run for Congress. That brave campaign won her allies all over the state. Between elections, out of the spotlight, Jamie has been working with rural communities on the critical issues we face – water, wildfire mitigation and recovery, health care, and homelessness.

It’s who we are when no one is looking that shows what our values are. When the spotlight is on, Kurt takes credit for the things that he votes against when no one is looking. When the media is gone, and there is no personal gain, Jamie is still doing the hard work of building a better community.

I have come to believe that politics makes you a better person, or a worse one, and it depends mostly on who you choose for your allies. I am honored to have run for office, because Jamie is one of the people who has made me a better person.

I trust her, and I wholeheartedly endorse Jamie McLeod Skinner for Congress.