The race for State Representative, District 16 is another in which no Republican opposition has emerged – so whoever wins the Democratic primary this month would presumably also win the general in November. In this race, we are endorsing Sami Al-Abdrabbuh.
However, we have to say, Al-Abdrabbuh’s opponent, Sarah Finger McDonald, made this a hard choice – she is an enormously well qualified and compelling candidate, that is widely respected.
So, here’s what swayed our decision. Most everyone we’ve talked with about Al-Abdrabbuh focused on both his deep intelligence, and his seemingly inexhaustible ability to show up and get things done. And these observations square with our experiences of Al-Abdrabbuh over the years.
For instance, both he and his opponent are Corvallis School Board members, but it is Al-Abdrabbuh that ascended to the presidency of the Oregon School Boards Association – a position he took amid a certain amount of controversy, but nonetheless, then leveraged the new job to meet with school district leaders throughout the state. He likes pointing out that most of Oregon’s districts serve small conservative communities, but that all the districts statewide share a common goal to educate the students they serve.
This is typical of Al-Abdrabbuh – there are those that love him, and others that don’t, but everyone would stipulate that he puts in the work and seeks divergent opinions.
Two endorsements cited in a couple of Al-Abdrabbuh’s mailers stirred some controversy. Both Rep. Dacia Grayber and Rep. Tom Andersen were included as endorsing Al-Abdrabbuh, when in fact, they hadn’t. In the instance of Grayber, we talked with the Al-Abdrabbuh campaign worker that mistakenly placed the representative’s name in the campaign literature from a list of prospective endorsers, while then leaving another endorser’s name from that list off the mailer that was supposed to be included.
We can relate, it’s the kind of mistake that happens at newspapers too – people get overly rushed when a print deadline approaches. In the instance of Andersen, both he and Al-Abdrabbuh have both said they talked, and both seem to believe that the other could have misinterpreted, and neither believes they can recount the conversation well enough to offer a full recounting. We noted that Al-Abdrabbuh issued a prominently displayed correction on his campaign site upon learning of the error.
In the debate we hosted for this race, Al-Abdrabbuh consistently demonstrated a compellingly wide and deep understanding across issues, but we sometimes had to pin him down. He often struck us as knowing so much that he didn’t quite know where to start, which isn’t entirely uncommon for the candidates we’ve hosted over the years. Likewise, Al-Abdrabbuh is also generally guarded in his comments, something we often see in candidates and officials that are thinking forward to how they’re going to seek common ground with others, given that no legislator is an island.
Conversely, Finger McDonald also has an excellent reputation among peers, and is universally liked. She is also more able to quickly come to a sound position. In the debate we hosted, she was refreshingly direct, which we’ve also seen in our past interactions with her. In fact, if we were judging on issues alone, some of us preferred Finger McDonald’s positions.
Notably, her debate answers on the prospect of legislation that could impact our local landfill was direct – she won’t support anything that will take veto authority away from the County if it chooses to deny an expansion, but she still may look to impose more rigorous health and environmental protections on a statewide basis.
On the other hand, when we asked about Optum’s takeover of The Corvallis Clinic, neither candidate was, in our opinion, satisfyingly definitive. But it was Al-Abdrabbuh that talked about working the phone to see what could be done – and sometimes – really – it’s the work behind the scenes that makes things happen.
At least to our way of thinking, both candidates demonstrated different but roughly equal approaches concerning issues, so our support for Al-Abdrabbuh comes down to our belief that he’s more likely to bring home the bacon. We know that’s not the loftiest consideration, but it’s not unimportant, and our fair burgh’s current Representative in Salem has proved capable in this regard.
When we asked the candidates which committees they would like to sit on, Al-Abdrabbuh replied he’d like to get on the House Ways and Means Committee. Which, even with his caveat that he knows that’s not likely to happen in his first term, seems brazen. But, given a term or two, we can see Al-Abdrabbuh getting it done, if only by the sheer force of his work ethic alone.
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