In the state of Oregon, the secretary of state is charged with auditing public accounts, managing elections, and administering public records. It’s a glorified administrative role, which for whatever reason is an elected office in the Pacific Northwestern state.
Like in a race for county coroner, one might expect the candidates for Oregon secretary of state to focus on matters of basic competence: e.g. who’s better at basic arithmetic. But that’s not the choice that Brad Avakian, the Democratic candidate for the role this year, made. Take a look at these two television ads that Avakian used to promote his candidacy:
Throughout the campaign, and in the ads above, Avakian highlighted Richardson’s anti-abortion stance while highlighting his own environmentalism and pro-choice bona fides. Richardson, meanwhile, while undeniably a social conservative, ran as basically a numbers guy.
Avakian’s tack was the equivalent of a CPA applying for a job at H&R Block by stressing that he’s pro-choice—nice to know, but utterly irrelevant. And, it failed: In an overwhelmingly Democratic state, Avakian managed to lose to Republican Dennis Richardson. Indeed, Richardson’s victory was the first time a Republican had won a statewide office in Oregon for fourteen years. (Hillary Clinton carried the state by ten percentage points, by the way.)
Avakian’s defeat is synecdoche for everything the Democrats did wrong this year. He ran, basically, the Lena Dunham race: Stress social issues (truly irrelevant in a race like Oregon secretary of state) and ignore what mattered to voters. Dennis Richardson stressed that he would be a competent auditor; Avakian noted that the Sierra Club liked him. Donald Trump said he would bring jobs back to the industrial Midwest; Hillary Clinton focused on the fact that Trump was rude about a Miss Universe candidate two decades ago. In both cases, we see how that worked out for the Democrats.
