STATE
MyEagleNews.com
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
A7
Recall petition against Gov. Brown comes up short
By Claire Withycombe
Oregon Capital Bureau
Supporters of a petition
to recall Gov. Kate Brown
came up short of the signa-
tures needed for a ballot chal-
lenge, Oregon Republican
Party Chair Bill Currier said
Monday.
Currier
made
the
announcement midday on the
Lars Larson Show, a conser-
vative talk show. Supporters
needed at least 280,050 valid
signatures by 5 p.m. Oct. 14
to put a recall on the ballot.
One effort, filed by Cur-
rier, fell short by about 8
percent, or about 22,400
signatures.
A separate effort, known
as “Flush Down Kate
Brown,” received 100,000
signatures by people who
were not on the GOP’s sig-
nature list, Larson said on the
show. Larson said that effort
also was not as successful as
the party’s.
Michael Cross, the lead
sponsor of the “Flush Down
Kate Brown” petition, deliv-
ered nine boxes of petitions to
the Secretary of State’s office
around 2 p.m. on Monday,
according to the Secretary
of
State’s
office.
Wo r k -
ers counted
all 23,926
signature
sheets. But
Gov. Kate
since each
Brown
sheet
can
only have,
at most, 10 signatures each,
after counting the sheets
it was clear there weren’t
enough signatures for that
effort to qualify for the ballot.
Currier told Larson that
there was “absolutely” sup-
port for another recall effort.
“This fight is not over,”
Currier said.
Currier said that between
the two efforts, enough valid
signatures were collected.
“Another way to put this,
is, there were enough signa-
tures collected … they just
can’t be combined,” he said.
Currier also said that the
petition received quite a few
invalid signatures that he said
could be easily corrected if
petitioners file again. Many
invalid signatures were “sim-
ply illegible,” Currier said.
He said over the weekend,
they had been able to iden-
tify about 100,000 invalid
Oregon Capital Bureau/Claire Withycombe
Carol Williams, petition coordinator for the Oregon
Republican Party, indicates a box where signatures in
support of a petition to recall Gov. Kate Brown are housed.
More signatures are in the safe behind her.
signatures by registered vot-
ers whose signatures could
be converted into valid
signatures.
“We have an address and
a name, and with a little bit
of research, we can tie that to
a specific person and make
that valid,” Currier said.
“And there were other folks
who didn’t put the correct
information down, they put
the wrong address, and so we
can tie them back to a correct
address.”
Currier did not return
requests seeking further
comment Monday.
Brown, a Democrat, was
first appointed governor in
2015 after John Kitzhaber
resigned after an influ-
ence-peddling scandal. She
was elected to fill Kitzhaber’s
unexpired term in 2016 and
reelected in 2018.
In the election last year,
Brown received 50.05% of
the vote, or 934,498 votes,
according to Secretary of
State data. Her main oppo-
nent, Republican Knute Bue-
hler, received 814,988 votes.
Currier said the public and
the party’s volunteers were
committed to the cause of
removing Brown.
The GOP petition said
Brown has “overturned the
will of the voters” by allow-
ing undocumented immi-
grants to get driver’s licenses,
“failed to protect Oregon’s
foster children” and “failed
to address” the state’s public
pension debt, among other
grievances.
“The volunteers are, for
the most part, so committed
to seeing Brown removed
that we can carry this for-
ward,” Currier said on the
show, “but we do have to
work out details like tim-
ing, when we begin round
two, setting up the infrastruc-
ture for all of that to happen.
So this fight is definitely not
over.”
Brown’s supporters say
she has fulfilled her cam-
paign promises.
“Gov. Brown ran a cam-
paign promising to move
Oregon forward by invest-
ing in our schools, creat-
ing paid family and medi-
cal leave, and protecting the
environment,” said Thomas
Wheatley, political adviser to
Brown, in a written statement
Monday. “That’s exactly
what she did this year.”
Wheatley contended that
“recalls should be used only
when an elected official has
committed a crime, not when
someone disagrees with the
policies of the governor or
another elected official.”
“The extremists push-
ing reckless recalls want to
overturn the will of the vot-
ers who elected Democrats
by wide margins,” Wheat-
ley said. “In rejecting this
recall, the public has sent a
clear message: Oregonians
don’t want to waste their tax
dollars on a reckless recall
against Democratic lawmak-
ers who are moving our state
forward.”
Currier said that the num-
ber of signatures they gath-
ered in three months was
“historic.” Experts had
observed that getting enough
signatures within 90 days
with an all-volunteer cam-
paign would be a steep climb.
“I think people need to
understand that we had 90
days to collect twice as
many signatures as a normal
petition, which gets a whole
year to do that,” Currier said.
“So this is historic.”
OLCC kicks off six-month ban on flavored vape products
Ban takes effect Oct. 15, as OHA and
OLCC to create work group to investigate
cause of vape-related outbreak
By Sam Stites
Oregon Capital Bureau
Oregon’s Liquor Control
Commission and the Oregon
Health Authority on Friday,
Oct. 11, rolled out a ban on
the sale of all flavored canna-
bis and nicotine vaping prod-
ucts in response to a grow-
ing number of cases of acute
respiratory illness and death
linked to vaping
OLCC board members
unanimously approved tem-
porary rules proposed by
the Health Authority after a
Portland meeting. The board
was responding to Gov. Kate
Brown’s Oct. 4 order plac-
ing a temporary ban on the
products.
OLCC’s ban takes effect
Oct. 15. The ban is expected
to affect approximately 4,000
retailers statewide.
“We’re dealing with a
national epidemic with a
growing number of cases,”
said Jeff Rhodes, the gover-
nor’s senior policy adviser
to OLCC. “The latest num-
bers are 1,299 cases and
26 deaths, two of which
occurred in Oregon.”
In Oregon, an outbreak of
Oregon Capital Bureau/Sam Stites
OLCC Director Steve Marks addresses the media following
the OLCC board’s unanimous approval of implementing a
six-month ban on sales of all flavored vaping products as
directed by Gov. Kate Brown’s executive order.
nine cases of acute respira-
tory illness caused the Health
Authority and Brown to issue
warnings in late September
for Oregonians to stop vap-
ing. Brown asked the Health
Authority to propose options
up to and including a tempo-
rary ban which she issued a
week earlier.
According to OLCC offi-
cials, the agency will call
manufacturers and retailers
across the state this weekend
to inform them of the new
rules and distributing signs
notifying consumers of the
ban.
The ban does not include
tobacco-flavored
tobacco
or nicotine products. It also
doesn’t include marijua-
na-flavored marijuana and
THC products on the market.
OLCC Marijuana Techni-
cal Unit Manager TJ Sheehy
said that 10 percent of all
marijuana vape products
would be affected by the ban.
A process to handle excep-
tions could be in place by
Nov. 15 at which time man-
ufacturers can apply to have
products sourced from natu-
ral botanicals exempted from
the ban.
“It’s important to note that
most of these cases report-
ing vaping of THC products,
some of them using exclu-
sively THC products, but
also some using exclusively
nicotine products,” said Dr.
Dean Sidelinger, state health
officer. “In working with the
CDC, we still don’t have a
definitive cause of this injury,
or what ingredient or ingredi-
ents are causing it.”
The OLCC and the Health
Authority will create a work
group in the next six months
to examine the source of
these illnesses.
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