A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
ADVERTISEMENTS
TIGARD - The following is a transcript of a campaign speech given by Matt Wingard, candidate for the open Oregon House District 26 seat, recorded the afternoon of Feb. 12 at the Hi Hat restaurant in Tigard during the monthly meeting of 27 members of the King City/Tigard Women’s Republican Club.
House District 26 is Wilsonville and Sherwood and Bull Mountain, not all of Bull Mountain but a lot of Bull Mountain, and rural Washington County all the way out to Gaston, and it even includes Hagg Lake. It’s a Bradbury special (referring to Secretary of State Bill Bradbury) I like to call it. It was drawn to include as many Republicans as possible into one district so they (the Democrats) would have an easier time of winning all the other House district seats in Washington County. They did that in 2000 and it worked like a charm. They have since won every single House seat other than House District 26. So we will be looking at another redistricting in 2010, and we’ll have to see what they do with it there when they do the whole process again.
Why am I running? Because the Oregon Republican Party desperately needs new blood and new leadership. The Party needs people who believe in conservative principles, and can articulate them and defend them.
Leaders who can connect with suburban voters, who want to keep their taxes low, but fear a world without the safety of government intervention.
I’m running because I believe in the Republican Party’s principles, individual responsibility, limited government, constitutional democracy, property rights and the free market.
We have so few strong advocates for these principles in Oregon.
The campaign has kept me very busy. Last month I got my first taste of what it’s like to have your past dredged up and turned into negative stories about you with details and headlines that are misleading and false.
Not fun.
It if wasn’t before it is certainly is crystal clear to me now why so many good people have no interest in running for office while allowing your record to be distorted and your integrity attacked for a job that pays less than $20,000 a year, and requires that you take six months off of your real job, and head to Salem every day only to be assaulted daily by lobbyist and legislatures who simply want to make the government of Oregon bigger.
It sounds insane.
This last month I would be hard pressed to disagree with you. But I have been running campaigns for the last eight years, and I have been involved in the last four legislative sessions. And, unfortunately, I think there is a lack of skilled people in our Party who are willing to step into the arena and challenge the certified smart people and the elected and appointed elites who are running Oregon.
I’ve shown time and again that I am not afraid to stand up to these people and challenge the conventional wisdom in this state. Make no mistake, I intend to win this race.
Oregon is drowning in bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy in our school systems, bureaucracy in our land use policies, bureaucracy in our transportation systems, and even bureaucracy in how we make decisions. We are awash in task forces, committees, sub-committees, bureaus, agencies, departments and commissions. Meanwhile, Oregon ranks 38 out of 50 in lowest per capita income while our public employees enjoy the most lucrative benefits packages in the country.
Our public schools are falling in national rankings even while we give school district’s funding increases of 20 percent from the state. We now spend more than $10,000 per student on average in Oregon in total taxpayer funds. But district schools are still not held accountable for results.
For the last 28 years we have been living off of the road capacity our parent and grandparents built for us from the 1950s to the 1980s. Everyday 151 new people move into our state, and the congestion on our roads and highways increases.
Over the next 20 years over a million additional people will arrive.
Meanwhile, the legislature gave away 200 million dollars in lottery funds to help pay for a light rail extension to Milwaukee.
The total cost, of this light rail extension, will reportedly be at least 1.4 billion dollars.
How much highway and bridge expansion $1.4 billion would have built and will not. Good paying jobs, good schools, highways that move at 55 miles per hour at all times, that’s what the vast majority of Oregonians want.
Because I talk openly about these issues, and I am not afraid of challenging the status quo, dozens of community leaders in House District 26 continue to strongly back my campaign for the legislature.
Politics is a rough business. Threatening the status quo is dangerous. I do not expect this to be the last attack against me. They are very serious, especially the teacher’s union, the Oregon Education Association, are very serious to make sure that someone like me, is not elected to the state legislature. Because I scare people at the OEA and the Democratic establishment.
Why? Why do I scare them?
It’s because I stood up to Eric Sten and the city of Portland when they tried to take control of our electricity by condemning Portland General Electric. We won that battle. I would like to
say I have a 1 and 0 record against Eric Sten and I’m never going to challenge him again because I would like to keep my winning record.
Because I have organized poor, minority parents in north Portland to go down to Salem, and face to face, demand from Democrats on the House Education Committee school choice for their children, even though they are forced to attend low performing schools.
Now they didn’t like that and they tried to kill the bill and force the whole to vote on it and they did vote on a party line vote. But at least they had to vote on it and they had to try to explain to these parents why they were telling them no. And believe me the explanations were not accepted.
That battle continues and these parents need a champion in Salem.
When I win this race, the 80 charter schools in Oregon and the 10,000 students who attend them will have a strong defender in Salem. A leader who will stand up to the teacher’s union when they attempt to shut these schools down and by the way, they come to each session with a bill to end and gut the charter school movement.
The voters in my district who deal with some of the worst traffic jams in Oregon – any of you who live anywhere near Sherwood or try to get from Sherwood know what I am talking about –
desperately want someone who is willing to go to Salem and demand the transportation funding be spent, of all things, on roads and bridges.
Winning this race will not be easy, but I think I have proven that I am tenacious, and more importantly I honestly believe in the things that I say.
1 | 2 Next Page >>
Find a paper
Enter a street name
or a 5 digit zip code
Browse archive
The Regal Courier
News feed
Facebook
Digg
Del.icio.us
Newsvine
Stumbleupon
Reddit
