Imaginary Money Beach
The Challengers were directly asking voters: how do we make the beach worth coming back to? And the entire political establishment dismissed that question as not mattering.
$20 Million to Lose: Where Oregon Democrats' Campaign Money Actually Goes
What if instead of sending $14.6 million to Virginia and DC, Oregon Democrats recruited one or two students from every high school in the state, paid them $25 an hour for a six-month campaign cycle, and deployed them in their own communities?
Oz Sighting #5: The $3,000 Paragraph (The Scarecrow’s Logic)
It costs $3,000 to appear in the Oregon Voters' Pamphlet.
I couldn't afford it. Seven people wanted to help me get there. Every single one of them was already stretched.
That's not a fundraising failure. That's the system working exactly as designed.
Who Pays When Wall Street Miscalculates? Not Wall Street.
Oz Sighting #4: The Union That Stopped Listening
I believe in unions. I still do.
But belief isn't the same as silent support.
This is Oz Sighting #4 — what happens when any system stops listening to the people it's supposed to serve.
Oz Sighting #3: The Caucus That Wasn’t There
An Oz Sighting: Senator Reynolds and the Bill That Got the Wrong Villain
"Marijuana" is not a neutral term. It was introduced deliberately in the 1930s by Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, specifically to create a racial association — to link cannabis to Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians and manufacture public fear. Young Oregonians know this. Anyone who has spent real time in the regulated cannabis industry knows this. When an elected official uses that word in 2026 to frame a policy intervention, it tells you something about which conversation they think they're having.
It's not the conversation Oregon's cannabis industry needs to be having right now.
The Yellow Brick Bureaucrat: When Government Loses Its Way
Good governance requires a brain, a heart, and courage.
This Is a Series. You Are Part of It.
I'm going to be writing about Oz Sightings regularly — moments where Scarecrow, Tin Man, or Cowardly Lion politics shows up in real systems, real decisions, real lives.
But I don't want to be the only one naming them.
