The Oregon Republican Partys statement for the state voters pamphlet will not appear in the guide mailed to voters because it arrived 29 seconds past deadline, according to the office of Secretary of State Bev Clarno.
“Anyone wishing to submit information to the Voters Pamphlet has several weeks to do so and we recommend avoiding waiting until the last minute for this reason,” Laura Fosmire, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bev Clarno, said in a statement.
Oregon state GOP Communications Director Kevin Hoar insists that the Republicans filed the statement at 4:49 p.m. on Aug. 25, before the deadline, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The Republicans filed a lawsuit in Marion County demanding the the statement be included before the voters guide goes to print later this month, Hoar said.
“We cant quite explain the interpretation and decision here,” Hoar said.
State Republican Chairman Bill Currier said the move to bar the statement “reeks of partisan discrimination.”
“If a bureaucrat in some decision-making role simply didnt like what our statement said, this doesnt give them the right to silence us,” Currier said.
Secretary of State Clarno is the only Republican holding a statewide office in Oregon. She served as House speaker in Oregon before she was appointed as the secretary of state by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to serve the rest of the term after Secretary of State Dennis Richardson died in 2019.
The statement submitted by the Republican Party was headlined “Had enough? Vote Republican!” It attacked Democratic leadership in Oregon on isRead More From Source
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