PENDLETON—In a highly unusual move, Sen. Gordon Smith skipped the Pendleton Round-Up’s Westward Ho! Parade this morning.
Why? Who knows.
But late Wednesday, Smith’s re-election campaign was still recovering from WW’s cover story providing evidence Smith employs undocumented workers at his Weston food-packing plant, Smith Frozen Foods. That same day, the Republican senator’s campaign team issued a, wait for it—memo.
Today I asked the two-term senator to provide evidence WW’s story is “false,” as he says, and to point out specific instances of any inaccuracies it may contain by delivering my own memo to the senator’s Pendleton home, another brick Colonial, on Skyline Drive.
The gate to Smith’s driveway was unlocked and open, and it looked to me as if the workers at his estate were either setting up for a party or breaking one down; there were hay bales and stacks of round tables on the lawn.
A woman who appeared to be a housekeeper answered the door and took the memo from me. (I didn’t get a photo of that, however, because I was too distracted by the life-size oil painting of Sen. Smith in a grayish suit and yellow tie hanging on the wall in the foyer.)
Footnote: There were plenty of other political candidates—those without immigration problems—who were willing to take advantage of the parade’s spotlight today. (That list includes state Sen. Kate Brown, who’s running to be Oregon’s secretary of state; Republican opponent Rick Dancer; John Kroger, who’s running to be Oregon’s Attorney General; and state Sen. Ben Westlund, a Democrat for state treasurer. That list does not include Gov. Ted Kulongoski or Smith’s Democratic challenger state House Speaker Jeff Merkley.)
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