Imagine- can a guy 4'9" tall with a hook for a left arm take out Sen. Gordon Smith R-OR?

[stevedeshazer]

Meet Steve Novick.



<snip>

Raised in Cottage Grove, Novick was precocious enough to enter the University of Oregon at 14 and Harvard Law School at 18. After graduation, he worked at big law firms in San Francisco and New York before going on at age 24 to the U.S. Justice Department. There, he was lead counsel in the Love Canal lawsuit, winning $129 million for the federal government.

<snip>

Novick's brains aren't the only thing that makes an impression on those who meet him for the first time. There's also the fact that he has a hook for a left arm (he was born without it) and is short—4 feet 9 inches, thanks to the fact that he was also born without fibulas in both legs.

So, will he run? Novick says he'll spend the next month or three talking to potential supporters and other possible candidates before making a final decision. But he does add that "someone needs to take the fight to Gordon Smith. And a fighter needs a hard left hook."

http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3312/8503/

Count me in as a believer. I love a smart underdog.

[anitar1]

1. Wishing him lots of luck. sounds a lot smarter than Gordy.

I will be happy to see the last of Gordy.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Same here! n/t

PB

[0rganism]

3. kudos to him for jumping in the race early, but I doubt he's going the distance

...at least not without a more comprehensive gameplan.

First, he's gotta raise a few million bucks. That means NOT alienating every industrialist in the state so he'll be able to run a well-funded campaign. There was a letter in this week's WW from someone who said essentially that a moderate-alienating progressive is not going to beat Sen. Smith, and unfortunately I think the writer's correct on this point.

Second, he's gotta be able to enumerate Gordo's many flaws -- check, Novick's clearly able to do that much, but he has to get the word out. People need to know why Gordo deserves replacement more than re-election, that's where the ads come in. See #1.

Third, he's gotta be able to tell the people of Oregon a story we want to hear. It'll probably be 90% fiction, but that doesn't matter so much. I know Gordo can do this, but Mr. Novick has to be able to do it just as well. Gordo already has his narrative entrenched, and it has considerable sympathy from Oregonians; Novick has to plant the seeds.

I think he knows this. That's why he's pushing for someone else to get in the race so he can do what he usually does best, by backing them up.

[GOB_312]

4. what's it going to to take....

I know i'm new here, but I feel like the work needs to start happening to get mr. "i'm at the end of my rope" officially off. what's it going to take? do we rally around novick now, anybody got any ideas on how to raise the dough? we are the bluest of the blue states.... no reason this R needs to be representing us anymore.

[0rganism]

5. a lot of hard work and more than a bit of luck

:hi: Welcome to DU, GOB_312

Raising the dough is not impossible in general, I'm just not sure Novick can pull it off. He might not be the kind of guy that the DSCC and rich Oregonian Dems like to support. Oregon isn't the "true-blue paradise" a lot of us would like it to be. In Rep. Blumenauer's district, one really can run as a 100% progressive, just like Rep. Walden can run as 100% fascist on the east side. Other Democratic reps win by moderating their Democratic positions with a strong concern for local issues; Rep. DeFazio is nothing less than a genius miracle worker from beyond the 5th dimension when it comes to this stuff. But once the race gets decided statewide, it becomes a lot more of a coalition-building game.

Gordo won last time because he built a coalition of the usual solid republican voters plus some gay rights organizations (whom he cleverly fooled into thinking he's pro-gay). He was able to erode opposition intensity from the Democratic base by taking moderate positions on hate crimes legislation and throwing in a few pro-environmental procedural votes when it didn't matter. For all the grouchiness I have toward Sen. Smith, I will admit he plays this game quite well: he maintains support from the base by doing their bidding an overwhelming majority of the time, and stakes out Democrat-friendly positions on a few select issues to build a float for his election-time parade of moderation. Textbook stuff, really. This time around, it looks like he's aiming to syphon support from the peace movement, biotech (viz stem cell research support), maybe playing up some artificial distance between himself and the unpopular bush administration, and sympathy votes for his dead son.

In the end, that may be his downfall. I'm not sure the anti-war vote is his to have at all -- it's going to be a lot harder to establish credibility as a war skeptic this late in the game. The best he may be able to manage is a sort of spaced-out ambiguity, and that won't win votes if the opponent is crystal clear on ending the Iraqupation. There's good reason he's marked as vulnerable in 2008.

That doesn't mean it will be an easy victory, tho. It will be a game for the middle, and I expect the Democratic challenger to do a lot of 2nd-round calculating to find the right balance of energetic activist support and soft-money charms. Alienating the big spenders right out of the gate will be a sure way to lose big in a race where the out-of-state ad money is going to flow into Oregon like sewage into the Columbia. I think waiting for a viable candidate to emerge from the primary is a bad idea, we need some 3rd-party to start running thinly-veiled attack ads right away, to get Smith in a spending mood well before the general election. The sooner he uses up that warchest and has to start digging into the republican coffers, the better for all of us.