Oregon's GOP Senate Race Suddenly Gets Lively
Monica Wehby is a pediatric brain surgeon running for the Republican Senate nomination in Oregon. She has never sought elected office before. But she is off to a well-financed and highly touted start. The reason: She has the support of GOP political operatives in Washington as the Republican with the best chance of unseating Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley.
Jason Conger is an Oregon legislator who is also seeking to win the Republican primary on May 20. He has won two state elections, ousting an entrenched Democrat in his first race. Mr. Conger doesn't have the backing of Republican strategists in Washington and his campaign is barely heralded at all. He trails Ms. Wehby badly in fundraising.
The Washington practice of intervening in Senate and House primaries, privately or publicly, is hardly a new one. Incumbents are routinely backed by party campaign committees. But intruding in challenger contests or races for open seats is controversial, especially when Republicans in Washington insist—as they do in supporting Ms. Wehby—that a less conservative candidate is more electable.
This was famously the case in Florida in 2010. The National Republican Senatorial Committee rushed to endorse then-Gov.Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio, his conservative rival for the Senate. It backfired. Mr. Rubio soared past Mr. Crist, who quit the GOP and ran (and lost) as an independent. Mr. Rubio won the Senate seat. This year Mr. Crist is running for governor as a Democrat.
In Washington, Ms. Wehby, 51, is viewed as well positioned to compete with Mr. Merkley, despite her lack of electoral experience. Her pro-choice stance on abortion and fuzzy but sympathetic view of same-sex marriage are seen as assets for a Republican in a blue state like Oregon. And perhaps they are, though Mr. Conger doesn't think so.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee hasn't endorsed her, but it tells anyone who asks that she's the strongest GOP contender. This has boosted her fundraising. She has received numerous contributions from political-action committees, while only a single PAC, Oregon Right to Life, has donated to Mr. Conger's campaign. A social conservative, he is opposed to both abortion and same-sex marriage.
Until recently, the road to the Republican nomination looked paved for Ms. Wehby. She had been endorsed by America's most celebrated brain surgeon, Ben Carson, who is also a noted critic of the Obama administration. Lars Larson, a popular conservative radio talk-show host in Portland, noted that she has operated on baby's brains "the size of walnuts." That, he told her on the air, "means you have all the experience you need to work with Democrats in Washington."
Then, a week ago, came a poll with two big surprises. A Republican survey firm, Harper Polling, found that Mr. Merkley is more vulnerable than expected. He has a 39% favorability rating. On the generic ballot question, a Democratic candidate for the Senate was favored by just three percentage points over a Republican.
The other surprise: Mr. Conger, according to the poll, fared better against Mr. Merkley than Ms. Wehby did. He trailed the senator, 47%-40%. She was behind, 46%-34%. And that wasn't the only bad news for Ms. Wehby. The poll showed that she was less popular among Republican voters than Mr. Conger. An earlier poll conducted for the National Republican Senatorial Committee found that neither GOP candidate has strong name recognition.
Given the sad Republican record in Oregon, unseating Mr. Merkley is still a long-shot. Republicans haven't won a statewide election since 2002, when Sen. Gordon Smith won a second term. He lost to Mr. Merkley in 2008 and now heads the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington. No Republican presidential candidate has won Oregon since Ronald Reagan in 1984. No Republican governor has been elected since 1984 either.
Mr. Conger, 45, disputes the view that a conservative can't win in Oregon. He points out that no conservative has been a statewide candidate in decades. And nearly every Republican candidate has been pro-choice on abortion. Gordon Smith, though consistently pro-life, was a moderate.
Both Republican candidates have riveting personal stories. Mr. Conger describes his as "homeless to Harvard." His parents belonged to the hippie generation. When Mr. Conger was a young child, the family lived in a pick-up truck. He dropped out of school and left home at 16, worked numerous jobs, got married at 20, went to night school, then graduated from Humboldt State University in northern California in 1997. On the strength of high scores on law-school entrance exams, he got into Harvard Law. He graduated in 2000.
Ms. Wehby's medical practice "has defined her career," Jeff Mapes of the (Portland) Oregonian wrote. "Oregon has more members of Congress—seven—than it does pediatric neurosurgeons, one of medicine's most demanding fields." She was president of the Oregon Medical Association and was elected to the board of the American Medical Association in 2007. She's not entirely a political novice. She led the campaign for a tort-reform initiative in 2004. It lost narrowly. She has four children (Mr. Conger has five) and lives near her ex-husband.
She and Mr. Conger are fiercely opposed to ObamaCare, which Mr. Merkley voted for. But they disagree about their records on health care in Oregon. Mr. Conger says his opponent backed legislation proposed by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, that resembles 90% of ObamaCare. Ms. Wehby defends the Wyden legislation as "a market-based approach" and told the Oregonian she was never committed to the entire plan, especially its individual mandate and use of tax credits to get the uninsured to obtain insurance. Mr. Conger supported Cover Oregon, the state exchange for implementing ObamaCare that has failed spectacularly. He tells me he backed it as preferable to an exchange run by the Obama administration.
But it's Ms. Wehby's assistance from Washington that infuriates Mr. Conger the most. He objects to "the idea of taking a superficial look at a candidate and applying that to what they think people in Oregon believe." He rejects, for instance, the notion that Ms. Wehby is better equipped to combat the Democratic theme that Republicans are waging "a war on women."
For Mr. Conger, though, the most harmful impact of Washington-based GOP support for his opponent has been on fundraising. Ms. Wehby raked in $590,000 in the first three months of 2014. He hasn't released his fundraising figure, an indication that he has fallen further behind. Since both candidates need money for TV ads to build name recognition and woo voters, she has a clear advantage—thanks to Washington.