09.21.2023
As the Harney County trial on Measure 114 wrapped up its 4th day, the state’s case certainly seemed to be fading.
It’s impossible to say which way this will go. While the Judge has made numerous statements that indicate he has serious issues with 114, he did allow testimony from the state on subject matter he had previously stated was not to be considered.
Given that the state has an army of tax payer funded lawyers there and gun rights advocates had exactly one, this made that one lawyer’s job a lot harder.
Later however, the judge had some tough questions for the state’s witness who was providing the testimony that was not supposed to be allowed.
Only time will tell. While we think the trial is going as well as can be expected, there is no question that if the state loses, it will use your money to appeal. So we are far from close to the end of this assault. Our thanks to Gun Owners of America for funding the state case.
On another note, the House Republican Leader, Vikki Breese Iverson, has stepped down from that role. It is hard to imagine better news, although we could use a lot.
Iverson snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the last legislative session and was responsible for one of the most embarrassing sessions since Christine Drazan engineered defeat after defeat for Republicans.
It was Iverson who promised to sue over HB 2005, the “ghost gun” bill she helped pass by providing quorum. As you know, that promise, like most promises from politicians, appears dead. So, once again someone else will be responsible for cleaning up the mess that Iverson made.
The Democrat House Speaker, Dan Rayfield, said “he enjoyed working with Breese-Iverson and looked forward to working with her more” and “She was wonderful to work with, and we found a lot of common alignment on things.”
Of course they did. Iverson rolled over for virtually everything the far left wanted. Her “leadership” set back Oregon in ways that would be hard to calculate.
We can only hope that this move is not intended to clear the way for her to run for the Senate seat that Lynn Findley may be prohibited from seeking reelection to. We will be watching.
At this time we only have rumors of who is slated to replace her. And the rumors are not anything to be optimistic about. But we will wait and see. For now we can only rejoice that Iverson is no longer running the Oregon House Republicans into the ground.