Big backer of latest anti-Merkley ads: Charter school supporter.

A new game in town

It's October so the Koch Brothers' ads in Oregon have disappeared, while Monica Wehby's have continued -- this despite her limitations of cash on hand.  Oh, and a new spate of ads have appeared in Oregon, from a group called Opportunity Alliance PAC, attacking Senator Jeff Merkley.

It turns out, Opportunity Alliance PAC is just one donor: Lake Oswego resident John Bryan, a former executive of a company associated with Koch Industries and a huge supporter of charter schools, specifically public funding of privatized schools.  Suddenly those ads referencing funding of teachers and schools makes sense, doesn't it?

Three ways to laugh

First, Bryan's 2012-2014 monetary support for Democratic politicians (Cory Booker and Marcus Brandon) who are in favor of public funding of privatized charter schools, is higher ($3,000 total) than his support for the Republican Party of Oregon ($1,500).  It appears even Republicans don't trust their own state party group to do right by them.

Second, Bryan's / Opportunity Alliance PAC's message runs contrary to Monica Wehby's, in that while both want to repeal the ACA, OAPAC explicitly wanted that money to be used to expand education spending (implicitly an expansion of government spending on private charter schools) without any mention of saving that money, whereas Wehby is all over the map on what to do with the money (save it, use it for education, or use it to expand healthcare coverage, but differently than the ACA).  In essence, neither Bryan nor Wehby are fiscal conservatives, despite the GOP stating that they are the responsible party and would slash discretionary spending.

Third, Bryan's biggest donations were to Club for Growth, which holds an anti-gay policy and supports like-minded anti-gay candidates, while Monica Wehby has recently useds ads to tout her support of gay marriage.

Wehby's still going to lose

It doesn't matter what Republicans do, because Monica Wehby is a really bad candidate.  Her campaign did a major flip-flop and now proposes four debates just a couple of days after canceling the big one that would have been seen by a majority of Oregonians.

Her latest ad saying that Merkley paid women staffers less, was shown to be a lie.  Her campaign is desperate but doesn't have any idea which direction to go, it appears, so they've decided to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.

Despite all the ads aired the last two months by the Koch brothers, she has never closed the gap with Merkley.  Come November 4, the gap will still be the same double-digit range and Wehby will still not be caught in front of a video camera.