Aiding My Neighbor, Jeff Merkley, in Taking Senor Smith DOWN

After having the chance to speak with Jeff Merkley on Saturday, I wrote a piece about the conversation and posted it.  I really hoped that it would give him a much-deserved boost in Oregon's fight to see Republican Gordon Smith (who has voted lock-step with Bush 95% of the time) ousted.

Then my husband called me, this morning, on his way to work, to report that the local station, KPOJ AM 620, the one that broadcasts Air America programs, was discussing Gordon Smith's company for having been busted for hiring illegal immigrants. 

For the last thirty years.  (Maybe more?)

You can read about it, here, in the Willamette Week (a Portland trade). (The first in the two-part series is here.)

A quote from the piece (taken from one of the company's former employees, now speaking out against Senator Smith and Smith Frozen Foods):

“What they’re doing is an injustice,” Salgado says in Spanish of Smith Frozen Foods. “Undocumented workers have always helped [Smith]. In reality, they helped grow the plant. And right now they’re still bringing the senator riches.”

This quote is one of my favorites ever, because Lars is a local Rush-Limbaugh/Bill-O'Rielly-esque horror, and I enjoy seeing him squirm:

“I think this means trouble for Gordon Smith,” says KXL’s conservative talk-show host Lars Larson, who’s usually in Republicans’ corner but is a critic of Smith on this issue. “If it turns out he has employed people illegally when he has claimed he has not, that’s a problem.”

p.s. Betcha didn't know this, 'cause I didn't, either, but Gordon Smith?  Is the twelfth-richest Senator.  Jeff Merkley?  Is my neighbor.  In a total working-class neighborhood.  (Gordon's Maryland residence is, evidently, valued at somewhere in the realm of $3.5 million.)  Who do you suppose better understands the plight of the regular, 3bed/2ba set?

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Comments

[LizP]

Don't forget the environmental issues with Smith's family company too. He claimed that the company had resolved the waste water dumping problem yet it was in the news last week again.

Don't politicians have to divest themselves of investments/companies that would cause a conflict of interest???

[Lawyer Mama]

It's a bitch when they get caught with their pants down, isn't it? Hah!