News Digest:
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 10:25 AM PDT
GOOD AFTERNOON
OREGON
Union funds dominate Ore. initiative
campaigns
SALEM (AP) — The state’s largest teachers union, the Oregon Education Association, has given an additional $1 million to a coalition fighting seven ballot measures authored by prolific initiative sponsor Bill Sizemore and Salem attorney Kevin Mannix. The coalition reported the money late Monday. The union and its parent organization now have given more than $6 million, pushing total money for and against the seven Tuesday ballot measures close to $14 million. Most of the money has gone toward TV advertisements. Funding for the five Sizemore measures and the two by Mannix has come mostly from Loren Parks, a millionaire who owns a medical equipment company in Aloha.
Oregon ballot returns off 2004 pace
SALEM (AP) — Thousands of mail ballots poured into local election offices Tuesday as Oregon voters choose in the state’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, a presidential contest and a string of other races and measures in the last week of campaigning.
So far, the pace of ballot returns is running slower than it was at this time during the 2004 presidential election. But state election officials said they still think Oregon will record a high turnout by the time next Tuesday’s voting deadline arrives.
That’s based mainly on record voter registration for this year’s election — a total of 2.17 million — led mainly by a surge in Democratic signups.
Environmental group calls logging plan a clear cut
KLAMATH FALLS, (AP) — The Forest Service calls Low Meadow a restoration project. The Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center says it’s a clear cut. Either way, trees, some four feet in diameter, are coming down as part of a 3.5 million board foot cut in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
The cut is in an inventoried roadless area, a key watershed for salmon, said George Sexton of Ashland-based environmental group KSWC. ‘‘So it’s always disappointing to us when the Forest Service says, ’We’re going to clear cut it.’’’
