As Harry Truman once said:
"Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don't ever apologize for anything."
Recently My opponent in my race for Oregon's House District 54 was able to Have a letter printed in the Bend Bulletin where he praised the student body at Central Oregon Community College for voting to increase their own tuition by requiring the college purchase its energy from Pacific Powers BlueSky Clean Energy Program. Representative Burley went on to ask any student who would be interested to contact him and help him with his Bio Fuels/Renewable Energy Bill for the 2007 Legislative session.
I responded with the following letter printed in the June 24th edition of the Bend Bulletin.
In response to my opponent's letter printed Tuesday, June 13th. I too applaud the students at COCC for choosing to purchase its energy from the BlueSky Clean Energy Program. The general public is ahead of our legislators in Salem.
It's revealing that Chuck now wants to draft a renewable energy plan after he helped kill HB3481, which would have invested millions of dollars in Oregon's emerging biofuels and alternative energy industry. HB3481 offered Oregon's farmers tax credits for Bio-Fuel production and would have made Oregon a national leader in alternative energy innovation. Burley helped kill HB 3481 because he and his party bosses insisted on including a massive tax giveaway to Oregon's worst polluters in the bill. As Representative Jackie Dingfelder stated, this polluter tax giveaway "subsidizes large industries to comply with environmental laws that have been on the books for years." Sadly, Rep. Burley's actions is what we've come to expect from our legislators. Rep. Burley insisted on killing investments in alternative energy simply to protect a massive tax giveaway to some of his largest campaign contributors.
My opponent returns to Bend from Salem and pretends to be a political moderate, when in reality he is beholden to well healed special interests and their extreme conservative agenda. The truth is he voted an unbelievable 98.2 percent of the time along partisan party lines, rather than with the independent minded constituents in this district.
Electing Democrats to the Oregon Legislature east of the Cascades is an uphill battle. Notice the 11 day spread between the printing of my opponent's letter and my response which was submitted the following day. Even more telling is the Bulletin tagged my letter with the headline "Burley's Agenda". I feel "Phil Philiben's Response" would have been appropriate. To add insult to injury they left off my contact information which was included in my opponent's letter. Picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel is fruitless, but give a guy a break!
We lost this seat in 2004 by 582 votes and it was the second most expensive race in Oregon. Now that my opponent is an incumbent his ability to raise money has increased, however we have a plan to knock on every door in the district. We believe we can win. If you want to change the Chemistry in Salem donate to my campaign today.
Thank You
Phil Philiben
Candidate for House District 54
Bend, Oregon
http://www.hd54.org
philphil@bendcable.com