All of _pk's Comments + Replies

Wow, davesredestricting.org is a great tool, thanks for posting that!

I'll just note that according to the link you posted, OR-6 has the highest % Hispanic representation in the state by nearly 5%.

So this is a definitional issue: is it accurate to call the most Hispanic district in the 14th most Hispanic state (per Wikipedia) "not a heavily Hispanic area or anything?"

So this is a definitional issue: is it accurate to call the most Hispanic district in the 14th most Hispanic state (per Wikipedia) "not a heavily Hispanic area or anything?"

We can answer this quantitatively.

17.4% of the citizen voting age population of OR-6 is Hispanic. Of 9 candidates who ran in OR-6, two, Salinas and Leon, are Hispanic, making Hispanics 22.2% of the candidate pool. So they were not particularly over- or under-represented in this race. It is slightly surprising that the strongest candidate in this race happened to be Hispanic, but 22.2% c... (read more)

_pk
2y23
0
0

Where to even start here? Nearly every fact in this post is wrong, the interpretation of events is backwards, and the conclusion is contrarian, wrong and frankly fairly ugly.

It's not a heavily Hispanic area or anything

OR-6 contains the most populated areas of three counties in western OR with the highest Hispanic populations (map from wikipedia). It also contains towns like Woodburn, which is 57% Hispanic or Latino.

By the way, Rep. Salinas and Rep. Leon are actually both Latina, and I believe both are the children of immigrant farm workers. That's a su... (read more)

By the way, as an aside, the final chapter here is that Protect our Future PAC went negative in May -- perhaps a direct counter to BoldPAC's spending. (Are folks here proud of that? Is misleading negative campaigning compatible with EA values?)

I wanted to see exactly how misleading these were. I found this example of an attack ad, which (after some searching) I think cites this, this, this, and this. As far as I can tell:

  • The first source says that Salinas "worked for the chemical manufacturers’ trade association for a year", in the 90s.
  • The second source sa
... (read more)

What's the proportion of Hispanic people in OR-6? Based on the county data I'd guess it's close to the national average of 18.7%. Someone should probably compute this.

_pk
2y36
0
0

Great post, and I hope folks will consider it carefully. I was thinking of writing up my thoughts on how to field better candidates, and points 1-4 cover what I would have written. (And do it really thoroughly, nice job Daniel_Eth!)

One thing about all of those points: they're not just about optics or voter preferences. They're proxies for being prepared to do the job. You don't just need to live in the district for a while before you run so you won't get called a carpetbagger, you need it to know what's going on. You need local connections to get support, ... (read more)

_pk
2y14
0
0

My friends uses similar level of sophistication for buying a used car for example.

Ouch, was I really that bad?

I’m gonna retract the parent comment and didn’t mean to raise questions about my motivations. (I think you’re suggesting I might be a McLeod-Skinner secret agent? I’m flattered, I think). For what it’s worth, I have no connection to her campaign, have never met her, and am actually not even a donor in her current race (I donated to her first campaign a few years ago).

I was simply trying to provide an alternative, since I think you all are mis-sp... (read more)

6
Charles He
2y
Nothing you wrote was bad. In fact it was fantastic. I think you could use your real name and that seems very low cost. The one issue on substance is that I wish you could have delved into more, was engaging about the long, high effort comments that was made about pandemic prevention, which isn’t the same as covid response. Especially not just saying that an incremental package from another candidate was comparable. There is such a world of difference between pandemic prevention and another covid response package—that difference reflects how you could influence the people here who are donating to the candidate in the OP to donate somewhere else. Re: too much spending. (Another reason why the money is going where it is, is that this could lift the cruel 50% work hours that a congresswoman spends just calling donors and serving the party, with that lifted, they have freedom to serve their country and their constituents). As a meta comment (a point about the process of my commenting), I guess my main issue is with the response here with the EA. By the way I’m not an EA, no one likes me so this isn’t official or anything like that.

Let me add a positive suggestion. It’s down to the last few days, but if you’re reading this and still thinking about limiting out, your dollars will be better spent in the next district over.

OR-5 is currently represented by Kurt Schrader, a centrist democrat with a long history of blocking any sort of ambitious or progressive legislation. He was one of the members behind splitting Build Back Better, and therefore killing most of the interesting stuff off (including if I’m not mistaken, a bunch of Covid response funding). But his district was just re-drawn... (read more)

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

Thanks! Constructive suggestions about good things to do seem great.

I think Carrick is getting a lot of support from a combination of making crucial issues like pandemic preparedness priorities, and also benefiting from reputation networks here (so people are justifiably confident that he isn't going to be in it for himself or giving out political favours, which is just a super-important dimension). It's certainly plausible that McLeod-Skinner's campaign is a great opportunity to help out with, but my personal impression is that you haven't (yet) made a co... (read more)

-5
Charles He
2y
_pk
2y36
0
0

Thanks. I agree - you can debate who would be most effective on pandemic prevention! But it is debatable and I’d love for everyone here to factor that into their back of envelope effectiveness calculations.

But I also want to convince you all that your focus is way too narrow. This is not an election for pandemic czar, it’s an open seat several decades in the making and the representation for >650k Oregonians. So it rankles to see the race turned into an experiment to see if huge amounts of money can buy it for somebody who seems disinterested in most issues facing the district.

Thanks for the replies. This is exactly what I meant: Flynn likely wouldn’t be within striking distance without the firehose of ads provided by SBF’s super pacs. A really large % of the spending in the race is being provided by a single individual.

_pk
2y89
0
0

Oregonian here, born and raised. I don’t live in OR-6 but can see it from my home. I’m by no means a member of EA but I’m aware of it and until now had a generally favorable impression of you all.

I hope that rather than donating, folks in this thread will think about what they’re doing and whether it’s a good idea. The most obvious effect of this effort has been to 5-10x the total spending in this race. It’s pretty easy to read it as an experiment to see if CEA can buy seats in congress. Thats not innovative, it’s one of the oldest impulses in politics: we... (read more)

9
_pk
2y
Let me add a positive suggestion. It’s down to the last few days, but if you’re reading this and still thinking about limiting out, your dollars will be better spent in the next district over. OR-5 is currently represented by Kurt Schrader, a centrist democrat with a long history of blocking any sort of ambitious or progressive legislation. He was one of the members behind splitting Build Back Better, and therefore killing most of the interesting stuff off (including if I’m not mistaken, a bunch of Covid response funding). But his district was just re-drawn and about half the voters have changed. He has a strong primary challenger in Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a lawyer with city management experience who is running to his left (you can’t really run to Schrader’s right as a democrat). McLeod-Skinner seems cool, and in her previous run came closer to getting elected in a safe R district than seemed possible, basically through heroic networking and ground game. Here is American politics right now: good ideas are not scarce, the votes to enact them are. Replacing Schrader is a slam dunk, and it’s a cheaper race. It’s a better use of your dollar. Here’s a link: https://jamiefororegon.com/

If you think pandemic response is the key issue, Dr. Harder is a highly experienced doctor who used to run the Oregon Medical Board. Medical and policy experience: maybe you still think your guy will be better, but by how much?

The FDA has hundreds of highly -experienced doctors and still had such a disastrous response to the pandemic they probably caused millions of extra deaths. They completely blocked challenge trials and delayed vaccine deployment by six months. What matters is not whether the people in government are doctors, it's the policies on ho... (read more)

0
Mathieu Putz
2y
Hey, interesting to hear your reaction, thanks. I can't respond to all of it now, but do want to point out one thing. I think this isn't accurate. Donations from individuals are capped at $5,800, so whatever money Carrick is getting is not one giant gift from Sam Bankman-Fried, but rather many small ones from individual Americans. Some of them may work for organizations that get a lot of funding from big EA donors, but it's still their own salary which they are free to spend however they like. As an aside, probably in most cases the funding of these orgs will currently still come from OpenPhil (who give away Dustin Moskovitz's and Cari Tuna's wealth), rather than FTX Future Fund (who give away SBF's wealth among others). I think it's important that for the most part, this is money that not-crazy-rich Americans could have spent on themselves, but chose to donate to this campaign instead.
Mau
2y79
0
0

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! Without commenting on the candidacy or election overall, a response (lightly edited for clarity) to your point about pandemics:

You emphasize pandemic expertise, but pandemic prevention priorities are arguably more relevant to who will make a difference. It might not take much expertise to think that now is a bad time for Congress to slash pandemic prevention funding, which happened despite some lobbying against it. And for harder decisions, a non-expert member of Congress can hire or consult with expert advisors, as is co... (read more)

Thanks for posting, I think this is a more than fair and very thoughtful challenge.