Transgender person elected mayor of Oregon town

[Dominus Atheos]

Local news

This election marked the first African-American President. The first time in 40 years an Oregon Senate candidate beat an incumbent Senator. And in tiny Silverton, Oregon, residents have elected the man who's believed to be the first ever openly transgender mayor in the United States.

Stu Rasmussen served two terms as the Mayor of Silverton in the 1990s. But he hadn't admitted to being transgender. He's not the same man now that he was then. Today he wears a skirt and high heels. He has breast implants, and long red hair. He looks like a woman - but he's not.

"I identify mostly as a heterosexual male," Rasmussen said. "But I just like to look like a female."

Rasmussen is a man. He even has a girlfriend. He says he's always been transgender, but he only "came out" a few years ago.

"Some guys' mid-life crisis is motorcycles or sports cars or climbing mountains or trophy wives or whatever." Rasmussen said his mid-life crisis was quite different. "I always wanted cleavage, so I went out and acquired some."

With the way he looks, he wasn't sure how his run for Mayor would go.

"The first 30 seconds they think, am I in a freak show? Is there a camera behind me? What's going on here?" Rasmussen told NewsChannel 8. "And then we get down to discussing whatever the issue is - city business or business or whatever - and they figure out this guy's different, but he knows what he's talking about."

It's Rasmussen's knowledge of the issues, and of the town, that won over so many voters. As one voter said, "Stu's very devoted to this town."

Rasmussen won by a hefty margin - 13 points. It really wasn't close.

"He wants to maintain the integrity of Silverton," voter Gail Frassenei said. And she said she isn't sure Rasmussen would be elected anywhere else. "I think it's amazing a small town like this can be so open-minded, to elect someone that's made a life change."

"I'm prejudiced, but I think this is just about the coolest town on Earth," Rasmussen said, just before he broke down, a tear gently running through his eyeliner, and onto his cheek. He can't wait to take office in January. He said he's finally confident enough to be himself, as he runs his hometown, wearing his signature heels.

[Coyote]

So he's not "transgendered", he's "merely" a transvestite, since he identifies as a heterosexual male who enjoys having a female appearance & public persona... Transgendered would imply going for the surgery, psychological identification as the other gender, etc... if I understand it correctly, right?

[Alyrium Denryle]

So he's not "transgendered", he's "merely" a transvestite, since he identifies as a heterosexual male who enjoys having a female appearance & public persona... Transgendered would imply going for the surgery, psychological identification as the other gender, etc... if I understand it correctly, right?

This one is certainly a gray area in our usual classification... normally transvestites dont go as far as this guy has...

[JCady]

So he's not "transgendered", he's "merely" a transvestite, since he identifies as a heterosexual male who enjoys having a female appearance & public persona... Transgendered would imply going for the surgery, psychological identification as the other gender, etc... if I understand it correctly, right?

Nope, you've got the terminology mixed up. Transexual refers specifically to a person whose gender identity is the "opposite" of their physical sex; transgender is a broad umbrella term for people who are outside the traditional gender binary. The terms are therefore similar but not actually congruent; a transexual person is not necessarily transgender, because he or she can be within the traditional gender binary. A transvestite is a person who wears the clothing of the opposite gender, i.e. a cross-dresser, a subset of transgender.

Mr. Rasmussen is transgender but not transexual, although most people would not call him a transvestite since he's gone a lot further than just cross-dressing.

[The Romulan Republic]

Well, if he's the best man for the job, congratulations to his townsfolk for having the sense to vote for him instead of the "normal guy".

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'd actually call him a transvestite still myself, since I generally (I mean, I'm an engineer, we like things to be precise) split the term "transgendered" into transvestites, gender queers, and transsexuals. Transvestites usually being men who fetishize appearing as a female and are frequently actually straight; genderqueers are usually the extremely flamboyant femmy gay males who adopt a sort of feminine-leaning androgyny into their appearance. Transsexuals have an actual physiological medical condition...

..The reason for grouping the three together is mostly because the modes of discrimination against all three are identical and because, for instance, it's hard to tell them apart, particularly when transwomen don't have the money for hormones or reconstructive surgeries. If you tried to exclude one group from the umbrella, that exclusion could be used to justify discrimination against the others, in short, so the umbrella term "transgender" is usually used in a collective effort to guarantee collective rights.

[General Zod]

That's kind of impressive, really. I grew up near Silverton and from what I remember of it it seemed a pretty conservative area.

[Adrian Laguna]

An Oregon town, that is not at all surprising.

split the term "transgendered" into transvestites, gender queers, and transsexuals. Transvestites usually being men who fetishize appearing as a female and are frequently actually straight; genderqueers are usually the extremely flamboyant femmy gay males who adopt a sort of feminine-leaning androgyny into their appearance. Transsexuals have an actual physiological medical condition...

..The reason for grouping the three together is mostly because the modes of discrimination against all three are identical and because, for instance, it's hard to tell them apart, particularly when transwomen don't have the money for hormones or reconstructive surgeries. If you tried to exclude one group from the umbrella, that exclusion could be used to justify discrimination against the others, in short, so the umbrella term "transgender" is usually used in a collective effort to guarantee collective rights.

Overlap does exist though, particularly among younger people. Many on of the genderqueer "extremely flamboyant femmy gay males" are also transmen, and there are transwomen who identify as genderqueer, sometimes to the point of occasionally randomly deciding to be a man for the day, which I guess would make them female crossdressers. Some people also defy classification, what do you call a woman who likes to pretend to be a drag queen, with all that implies? Transvestite twice over?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Overlap does exist though, particularly among younger people. Many on of the genderqueer "extremely flamboyant femmy gay males" are also transmen, and there are transwomen who identify as genderqueer, sometimes to the point of occasionally randomly deciding to be a man for the day, which I guess would make them female crossdressers. Some people also defy classification, what do you call a woman who likes to pretend to be a drag queen, with all that implies? Transvestite twice over?

More or less. It's a complex issue of sifting through the different causes of gender variant behaviour, though really being transsexual at least is solidly defined by a biological brain variance which usually manifests in very particular impulses and because of the fluidity of the umbrella definition it's hard to, say, tell genderqueer people at most stages apart from transwomen until we've fully transitioned.... ...In short I question if those definitions are really necessary, i.e., that it may actually be possible to define everyone under the umbrella label in three broad categories based on behaviour.

Self-identification, after all, is a somewhat specious issue.

[Uraniun235]

An Oregon town, that is not at all surprising.

Careful. Portland may be a highly liberal city (they in fact just elected an openly gay man to be mayor) and the Willamette Valley may be liberal in general, but there are still many rural farming communities - even in the valley - with a conservative bent.

[Adrian Laguna]

I question if those definitions are really necessary, i.e., that it may actually be possible to define everyone under the umbrella label in three broad categories based on behaviour.

Self-identification, after all, is a somewhat specious issue.

You just said that you like things to be precise, what sort of categories would you prefer to divide the transgender umbrella into?

An Oregon town, that is not at all surprising.

Careful. Portland may be a highly liberal city (they in fact just elected an openly gay man to be mayor) and the Willamette Valley may be liberal in general, but there are still many rural farming communities - even in the valley - with a conservative bent.

I know, but most of the other liberal areas in the country are metropolises or megalopolises which I honestly would not see electing a trangender person to anything higher than alderman. To get a major, it would need to be a small town, then it would need to be a liberal small town. Oregon has those.

[Cecelia5578]

Genderqueer has almost always been used (in my experience) with FTMs, butch women, etc (i.e. those who typically were assigned the female gender at birth).

I say its about time change came to fucking podunk areas of Oregon.

[Cecelia5578]

To get a major, it would need to be a small town, then it would need to be a liberal small town. Oregon has those.

I lived the first 25 years of my life in Oregon, and I never viewed Silverton as liberal.

Eugene, Corvallis-very liberal (though Corvallis obviously less so than Eugene).

Springfield, Albany-conservative

Salem-sorta a mixed bag, for some reason I always associate the Salem area with Protestant fundies.

Woodburn-has a traditional Old Believer presence, nowadays heavily Hispanic. Not exactly liberal.

Newberg-home of George Fox U. Not quite the UofO there...

[Losonti Tokash]

I would have expected it to be Ashland, really. Place must have the highest hippies ratio in the world.

[Ohma]

An Oregon town, that is not at all surprising.

Careful. Portland may be a highly liberal city (they in fact just elected an openly gay man to be mayor) and the Willamette Valley may be liberal in general, but there are still many rural farming communities - even in the valley - with a conservative bent.

The valley isn't even all that liberal really. We get a reputation for it mostly because we're liberal by the standards of the rest of the US. I mean yeah, Eugene has a sizable hippie/anarchist/radical environmentalist population for a city its size in the US, but the population of rich "moderate liberals" living in gated communities on the hills around here outweighs that population, and the standard cascades conservative pop even more so.

There's a reason assholes like Bill Sizemore can put stupid bullshit on the ballot (like the recent "Kids should only be taught in uh-murican!" measure) each election, and that's because Portland really is the only solidly liberal area in Oregon. Thankfully Portland is usually enough to put important stuff through or stop bullshit...but not always, hence our gay marriage ban. (also, I remember hearing a fleeting mention that that had been overturned a while back, but I can't for the life of me find anything about that online)

[The Yosemite Bear]

I saw the title and wanted so badly to joke about Marina's plans for global conquest.

however I'm somewhat supprised, the Oregon I knew from the 70s and 80s was almost as Redneck as Humbolt or Taft/Bakersfield.

[Coyote]

The economy and political failure of 'good ol'-boy white family values' conservatives has encouraged people to look at actual policies and competence for a change. I heard even a black feller got elected.

[Broomstick]

I'm going to break a little with Marina here (and what they hell, it's only my opinion) and say this person is transgender, but not transsexual. I mean, breast implants ARE a little beyond cross-dressing, they aren't something you can take off when you go to bed at night.

Regardless, I'd think to think we're moving towards a world where people are judged by their interiors rather than their exteriors.

[Dominus Atheos]

There's been a few posts over at fivethirtyeight.com that I like looking at because it provides a great explanation of oregon politics. I wasn't planning to post it on this site because I figured most of you (Uraniun, Ohma, and hawkwings being the only notable exceptions) don't care about oregon politics. But after reading this thread, apparently there are quite a few people who are. ( )

Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?

Democrats like to pretend that Oregon, like Wisconsin, isn't really a swing state because they've usually managed to win it in the end. But a swing state it is -- Al Gore won there by less than 7,000 votes, and John Kerry improved on those numbers, but not by much. And yet Oregon also has a reputation for being extremely progressive: people think of its assisted suicide law or its decriminalization of marijuana, or the bohemian atmosphere of Portland, and naturally enough come to that conclusion. How to reconcile these two things?

There are two ways to be a swing state. One is to have a lot of moderates. That doesn't really describe Oregon; a moderate state like Ohio would never pass an assisted suicide law. The other way is to have both a lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals, who happen to roughly balance one another out. Oregon is one such state.

Exit polls from 2004 contain a basic question about the ideology (conservative/liberal/moderate) of each voter. We can apply a Likert scale to these responses, assigning 10 points to every liberal, 5 to every moderate, and 0 to every conservative. We will call this result a Liberalness Score. The average voter in Oregon has a Liberalness Score of 4.65, which ties it with Minnesota as the 13th most liberal state in the country. (Massachusetts is the most liberal state at 5.65, and Utah the most conservative at 3.30. Note that only a handful of states have a rating above 5 -- that is, have more self-identified liberals than conservatives.)

But here's where it gets interesting. The average Kerry voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 6.20 -- just slightly left of center. However, in Oregon, the average Kerry voter was a 7.17. This, as it happens, is the highest score in the country; the Kerry voters in Oregon were more liberal than the ones in Vermont (7.11) or even the District of Columbia (6.97).

Meanwhile, the average Bush voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 2.58 -- pretty darn conservative. But in Oregon, the average Bush voter was a 2.01 -- very conservative. And guess what? That is the lowest Liberalness Score for Bush voters anywhere in the country. The Bush voters in Oregon were as conservative as the ones in Tennessee (2.02) or Utah (2.15).

So the liberals in Oregon are as liberal as any in the country, whereas the conservatives are as conservative as any in the country. This is how you wind up with the weird political soup wherein Oregon has decriminalized marijuana but has also passed a gay marriage ban, or how it allows assisted suicide but also has one of the nation's lowest effective tax rates.

A graph of the Liberalness Scores of Bush and Kerry voters in each state is below.



As you can see, there's really not all that much relationship between the Liberalness Scores of Bush voters and Kerry voters in a given state. But there are three basic regional clusters:

1. In the South, where Republicans are very conservative and Democrats are moderate;
2. In New England, where Republicans are moderate and Democrats are liberal;
3. Finally, some western states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado, where the Democrats are liberal but the Republicans are still quite conservative.

There aren't really any states where both Democrats and Republicans are moderate, although Rhode Island almost meets that description. Part of the reason is that the moderate wing of the Republican party is on life support everywhere outside of New England, and even that suffered a big symbolic blow when Linc Chafee was voted out of office in 2006.

But getting back to Oregon, this is a relevant factor in light of the state's closed primary, because the Democratic electorate in Oregon is in fact quite liberal, even though the state as a whole is not. The Democrats in Oregon aren't especially wealthy and they aren't especially well-educated -- but they are pretty darn liberal.

We've gotten so used to talking about demography in the primaries that we've forgotten about plain old ideology -- partly because, until fairly recently, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama were in any particular hurry to run to the political center. But with Clinton having increasingly run to Barack Obama's right, we will have an interesting experiment on our hands in Oregon. More on this when we do our Oregon delegate preview tomorrow or Monday.

CASCADING FROM DESERT TO SEA, Oregon is simultaneously extremely liberal and extremely conservative, with a fair number of independents thrown in the mix for good measure. As much as any state, its overall demographic data can be a little misleading. For example, "gun ownership rate." The gun ownership disparity between liberal Portland and conservative eastern Oregon is wide. Oregon also boasts the smartest and best voting process, as all ballots are mail-in. As a result, Oregon has one of the best voter turnout rates in the country, minus the long lines.

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

John McCain will run strong in the eastern 2/3 of the state, what is essentially the 2d congressional district. A high percentage of military vets live in Oregon, and Republicans actually outnumbered Democrats in terms of self-identification in 2004. The state doesn't have a high number of minority voters, but given the looming influence of Portland with its larger population base, Oregon scores out in much of our demographic data as not particularly hopeful for John McCain. The areas that are Republican are really Republican, white evangelical, "American" ancestry, gun-owning areas that probably rabidly oppose Barack Obama. It truly is the Obama v. Nobama election in Oregon.

What Obama Has Going For Him

Same-sex households and Starbucks:Walmart both rank 3d nationally, giving a pretty strong indication of Democratic voting, as well as underscoring that the liberal bastions of Oregon are pretty strongly liberal. Obama enjoys one of his higher fundraising-per-capita locales, as well as a realtively (top-third) education rates. Unemployment is in the top third, making the economic malaise a bit more pronounced in Oregon, and the state went for both Gore and Kerry pretty handily. Barack Obama will win the state of Oregon.

What To Watch For

Oregon's mail-in system allows for the field operations to see well in advance where the turnout seems strongest and where it needs a boost. As a result, if any of the candidates or their running mates show up with a surprise visit in Oregon in the final two weeks, you can probably infer that the internal numbers are telling the campaigns that a big jolt is needed in an underperforming area.

The other thing you might infer, particularly from Barack Obama's campaign, is whether he has a day to boost Jeff Merkley's Senate chances. That's the big race in Orgeon this year, as incumbent Gordon Smith runs away from John McCain and toward Barack Obama, as he has been doing all year. Obama stumping for Merkley might be interpreted as an indication that Obama thinks he's already going to win big nationally, now he wants both as many Democratic Senators as he can get and a Senator who owes him credit for helping him get over the hump by boosting turnout.

Oregon also gives me an opportunity to re-dsiplay for you one of my favorite charts Nate's done this year, one that many of our visitors haven't had a chance to see. It's fascinating, and you can see why the Mountain West is right on the cusp of many Democratic flips (NM, CO, NV).

This is a great graph, everyone should look at this graph. Brief explanation: the higher the state, the more liberal the kerry voters, and the farther left, the more conservative the bush voters. Since Oregon is near the top left had corner, that means it's liberals are very liberal, and the conservatives are very conservative, and there are no moderates. I assume this person was elected in one of the cities populated by the former.

[Coyote]

Well, I've always placed my point of view on what a friend told me, way back when I was learning, "TA-DAA", that gay people are, you know, regular people. He said that "sex is what's between your legs; gender is what's between your ears". I've heard that from others since, and expanded what I think I understand to include such things as genderqueer and other outlooks.

It also makes me wonder how I'd relate to the "Pregnant Man" that's been in the news. You have a person who identifies as male, and is undergoing GRS, but halts the process to have a baby (an inherently female process) and is now having another baby...

I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms, but I think if the folks here on this board who know and live this stuff could compose a sort of quick-reference FAQ or brief glossary it would be helpful. Some of us don't even know what is or isn't offensive, or feel uncomfortable asking for concern of raising offense...

If GALE and others could make something up, say a Sticky in the ARSE forum, it would help a lot.

[Coyote]

CASCADING FROM DESERT TO SEA, Oregon is simultaneously extremely liberal and extremely conservative, with a fair number of independents thrown in the mix for good measure. As much as any state, its overall demographic data can be a little misleading. For example, "gun ownership rate." The gun ownership disparity between liberal Portland and conservative eastern Oregon is wide.

Another can of worms I hope I'm not opening... but I think that relying on gun ownership as a barometer can be too tricky. Western liberals (ie, liberals in general and Democrats in particular) out in this part of the country tend to be open minded about gun ownership, and in fact it was a gay friend who convinced me to join the NRA. Most of the gays I knew in California (LA and San Jose) were gun owners and one was a Randroid. Of course, "gays" are typically lumped in with "liberal", with Log Cabin Republicans being seen as a sort of oddity.

There's a lot of cross-over, and while the stereotype has a lot to back up that "gun ownership = conservative = votes Republican" meme it's not such a solid, easy grouping.

[Cecelia5578]

There's been a few posts over at fivethirtyeight.com that I like looking at because it provides a great explanation of oregon politics. I wasn't planning to post it on this site because I figured most of you (Uraniun, Ohma, and hawkwings being the only notable exceptions) don't care about oregon politics. But after reading this thread, apparently there are quite a few people who are. ( )

Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?

Democrats like to pretend that Oregon, like Wisconsin, isn't really a swing state because they've usually managed to win it in the end. But a swing state it is -- Al Gore won there by less than 7,000 votes, and John Kerry improved on those numbers, but not by much. And yet Oregon also has a reputation for being extremely progressive: people think of its assisted suicide law or its decriminalization of marijuana, or the bohemian atmosphere of Portland, and naturally enough come to that conclusion. How to reconcile these two things?

There are two ways to be a swing state. One is to have a lot of moderates. That doesn't really describe Oregon; a moderate state like Ohio would never pass an assisted suicide law. The other way is to have both a lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals, who happen to roughly balance one another out. Oregon is one such state.

Exit polls from 2004 contain a basic question about the ideology (conservative/liberal/moderate) of each voter. We can apply a Likert scale to these responses, assigning 10 points to every liberal, 5 to every moderate, and 0 to every conservative. We will call this result a Liberalness Score. The average voter in Oregon has a Liberalness Score of 4.65, which ties it with Minnesota as the 13th most liberal state in the country. (Massachusetts is the most liberal state at 5.65, and Utah the most conservative at 3.30. Note that only a handful of states have a rating above 5 -- that is, have more self-identified liberals than conservatives.)

But here's where it gets interesting. The average Kerry voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 6.20 -- just slightly left of center. However, in Oregon, the average Kerry voter was a 7.17. This, as it happens, is the highest score in the country; the Kerry voters in Oregon were more liberal than the ones in Vermont (7.11) or even the District of Columbia (6.97).

Meanwhile, the average Bush voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 2.58 -- pretty darn conservative. But in Oregon, the average Bush voter was a 2.01 -- very conservative. And guess what? That is the lowest Liberalness Score for Bush voters anywhere in the country. The Bush voters in Oregon were as conservative as the ones in Tennessee (2.02) or Utah (2.15).

So the liberals in Oregon are as liberal as any in the country, whereas the conservatives are as conservative as any in the country. This is how you wind up with the weird political soup wherein Oregon has decriminalized marijuana but has also passed a gay marriage ban, or how it allows assisted suicide but also has one of the nation's lowest effective tax rates.

A graph of the Liberalness Scores of Bush and Kerry voters in each state is below.



As you can see, there's really not all that much relationship between the Liberalness Scores of Bush voters and Kerry voters in a given state. But there are three basic regional clusters:

1. In the South, where Republicans are very conservative and Democrats are moderate;
2. In New England, where Republicans are moderate and Democrats are liberal;
3. Finally, some western states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado, where the Democrats are liberal but the Republicans are still quite conservative.

There aren't really any states where both Democrats and Republicans are moderate, although Rhode Island almost meets that description. Part of the reason is that the moderate wing of the Republican party is on life support everywhere outside of New England, and even that suffered a big symbolic blow when Linc Chafee was voted out of office in 2006.

But getting back to Oregon, this is a relevant factor in light of the state's closed primary, because the Democratic electorate in Oregon is in fact quite liberal, even though the state as a whole is not. The Democrats in Oregon aren't especially wealthy and they aren't especially well-educated -- but they are pretty darn liberal.

We've gotten so used to talking about demography in the primaries that we've forgotten about plain old ideology -- partly because, until fairly recently, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama were in any particular hurry to run to the political center. But with Clinton having increasingly run to Barack Obama's right, we will have an interesting experiment on our hands in Oregon. More on this when we do our Oregon delegate preview tomorrow or Monday.

CASCADING FROM DESERT TO SEA, Oregon is simultaneously extremely liberal and extremely conservative, with a fair number of independents thrown in the mix for good measure. As much as any state, its overall demographic data can be a little misleading. For example, "gun ownership rate." The gun ownership disparity between liberal Portland and conservative eastern Oregon is wide. Oregon also boasts the smartest and best voting process, as all ballots are mail-in. As a result, Oregon has one of the best voter turnout rates in the country, minus the long lines.

Key Demographics



Note: Factors colored in red can generally be thought to help McCain. Factors in blue can generally be thought to help Obama. Factors in purple have ambiguous effects. Except where otherwise apparent, the numbers next to each variable represent the proportion out of each 100 residents in each state who fall into that category. Fundraising numbers reflect dollars raised in the 2008 campaign cycle per eligible voter in each state. Figures for seniors and youth voters are proportions of all residents aged 18+, rather than all residents of any age. The figure for education reflects the average number of years of completed schooling for all adults aged 25+. The figure for same-sex households reflects the number of same-sex partner households as a proportion of all households in the state. The liberal-conservative index is scaled from 0 (conservative) to 100 (liberal), based on a Likert score of voter self-identification in 2004 exit polls. The turnout rates reflect eligible voters only. Unemployment rates are current as of June 2008.

What McCain Has Going For Him

John McCain will run strong in the eastern 2/3 of the state, what is essentially the 2d congressional district. A high percentage of military vets live in Oregon, and Republicans actually outnumbered Democrats in terms of self-identification in 2004. The state doesn't have a high number of minority voters, but given the looming influence of Portland with its larger population base, Oregon scores out in much of our demographic data as not particularly hopeful for John McCain. The areas that are Republican are really Republican, white evangelical, "American" ancestry, gun-owning areas that probably rabidly oppose Barack Obama. It truly is the Obama v. Nobama election in Oregon.

What Obama Has Going For Him

Same-sex households and Starbucks:Walmart both rank 3d nationally, giving a pretty strong indication of Democratic voting, as well as underscoring that the liberal bastions of Oregon are pretty strongly liberal. Obama enjoys one of his higher fundraising-per-capita locales, as well as a realtively (top-third) education rates. Unemployment is in the top third, making the economic malaise a bit more pronounced in Oregon, and the state went for both Gore and Kerry pretty handily. Barack Obama will win the state of Oregon.

What To Watch For

Oregon's mail-in system allows for the field operations to see well in advance where the turnout seems strongest and where it needs a boost. As a result, if any of the candidates or their running mates show up with a surprise visit in Oregon in the final two weeks, you can probably infer that the internal numbers are telling the campaigns that a big jolt is needed in an underperforming area.

The other thing you might infer, particularly from Barack Obama's campaign, is whether he has a day to boost Jeff Merkley's Senate chances. That's the big race in Orgeon this year, as incumbent Gordon Smith runs away from John McCain and toward Barack Obama, as he has been doing all year. Obama stumping for Merkley might be interpreted as an indication that Obama thinks he's already going to win big nationally, now he wants both as many Democratic Senators as he can get and a Senator who owes him credit for helping him get over the hump by boosting turnout.

Oregon also gives me an opportunity to re-dsiplay for you one of my favorite charts Nate's done this year, one that many of our visitors haven't had a chance to see. It's fascinating, and you can see why the Mountain West is right on the cusp of many Democratic flips (NM, CO, NV).

This is a great graph, everyone should look at this graph. Brief explanation: the higher the state, the more liberal the kerry voters, and the farther left, the more conservative the bush voters. Since Oregon is near the top left had corner, that means it's liberals are very liberal, and the conservatives are very conservative, and there are no moderates. I assume this person was elected in one of the cities populated by the former.

What, didn't include me? I happen to be both a transsexual and from fucking Oregon.

[General Zod]

This is a great graph, everyone should look at this graph. Brief explanation: the higher the state, the more liberal the kerry voters, and the farther left, the more conservative the bush voters. Since Oregon is near the top left had corner, that means it's liberals are very liberal, and the conservatives are very conservative, and there are no moderates. I assume this person was elected in one of the cities populated by the former.

That sounds about right for Silverton, at least the last time I was there anyway; there isn't a whole lot of in-between considering how small the town itself is. Although it probably helped that he'd served as mayor already, I'd be somewhat more skeptical of his (her?) chances to win if he weren't running as an incumbent.

[Saxtonite]

Salem-sorta a mixed bag, for some reason I always associate the Salem area with Protestant fundies.

Association from the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, I've always placed my point of view on what a friend told me, way back when I was learning, "TA-DAA", that gay people are, you know, regular people. He said that "sex is what's between your legs; gender is what's between your ears". I've heard that from others since, and expanded what I think I understand to include such things as genderqueer and other outlooks.

It also makes me wonder how I'd relate to the "Pregnant Man" that's been in the news. You have a person who identifies as male, and is undergoing GRS, but halts the process to have a baby (an inherently female process) and is now having another baby...

I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms, but I think if the folks here on this board who know and live this stuff could compose a sort of quick-reference FAQ or brief glossary it would be helpful. Some of us don't even know what is or isn't offensive, or feel uncomfortable asking for concern of raising offense...

If GALE and others could make something up, say a Sticky in the ARSE forum, it would help a lot.

Well, sex isn't what's between your legs, in short--it's what is in your head, too. We now know that sexual identity is far more biological than might have previously been ascribed, the result of some real differences in the brain

That said, the weirdoes (there are weirdos in every subculture group) and flamboyant sorts are always the ones that garner the most attention, leaving people like me who as you well know is just another tall blonde girl inherently less "sexy" to the news articles of the day.