Attack ad avalanche!

The latest election porn, dropped off by our mail carrier today, consisted of four pieces, all vicious negative ads against candidates. One was from the camp of the feckless Multnomah County district attorney, Mikey Schmidt, who is apparently trailing challenger Nathan Vasquez in the polls. Last week, Mikey was running against Trump; this week, he's back to running against Betsy Johnson. Because Mikey's tough on guns! Sure. Sure he is.

Schmidt's problem is that he's really running against his own record as D.A., which is undeniably bad. But maybe he'll distract enough sheep by painting his opponent as a right-wing nut, when in actuality Vasquez is just a sensible centrist. Way more sensible and centrist than Mikey, anyway.

Next, I was a little surprised to see a straight-up attack ad aganst Shannon Singleton, who's running against Jessie Burke and Sam Adams for Sister Sushi Jayapal's old spot on the county commission. That mailer points out that Singleton has been involved with the worse-than-worthless "joint office" on homelessness that's burned through nine figures but only made the tent squalor in Portland worse. It's why I can't even think of voting for her. Go Burke.

The last two mailers took aim at Sister Sushi herself, now running for Congress. They rightly point out that under her "leadership," the county has become a drug-infested dump. "Let's not reward her for a record of failure." Amen to that.

Jayapal's opponent, Maxine Dexter, has denounced these flyers, which she says she had nothing to do with. Who's paying for them, then? A dark money group called "Voters for Responsive Government." Could it be Big Pharma, maybe?

Anyway, wow, what a negative load. And not a light moment in the whole pile. I miss "Who killed Packy?".