Another Abortion Hypocrite?

Wealthy Republican businessman Mike Erickson has had great success as a college football player, holding the record for field goals at 32 for Portland State University, and in business has also proven very successful. But a new bombshell may once again dash Erickson's hopes for winning any elective office. Oregon's tossup 5th Congressional District seat to replace longtime Democratic Congresswoman Darlene Hooley who is retiring is one of the best hopes of the GOP to pickup a seat in Congress this year. Republicans slightly outnumber Democrats in this district. Erickson hoped a massive carpetbombing of the airwaves with paid TV ad after ad to unfairly destroy his Republican opponent, former state legislator, Kevin Mannix, over a number of 83 tax issues he supported while in legislature would be enough to help him capture the nomination over Mannix. Erickson never expected that Mannix to also fight dirty and drop the abortion bomb on him. Mannix has produced a woman who claims that Erickson got her pregnant and gave her money for an abortion and dropped ger off at an abortion clinic and left her there. Not the type of conduct you would normally expect from someone like Erickson who is running on a prolife, profamily campaign platform.

This latest bombshell should be yet another wakeup call to voters in this battleground Congressional district that cabdidate Mike Erickson seems more than willing to tell conservative GOP primary voters absolutely anything to get elected, even if the reality is sometimes far different. Erickson would no doubt be highly likely to vote for many tax issues while in Congress. He is strongly promilitary, and has shown no willingness to want to save $500 billion tax dollars by supporting defunding the Iraq War for example. Erickson is far more likely to support smaller million dollar cuts in human services programs for food stamps like most Republican tax and spenders in Congress do. Yesterday, in West Virginia where Hillary Clinton won the votes among poorer White voters, 1/6 of the residents of this poorer state collect food stamps due to extreme poverty. And Erickson is running on a strong anti-illegal immigrant platform as well, that offends many Hispanics as being highly racially moltivated in nature.

The Erickson abortion bombshell story is yet another example of GOP candidates for office attempting to paint themselves as "profamily" to conservative voters, even if the truth may be far from the reality. During the 2000 election campaign, HUSTLER Magazine publisher Larry Flynt hit candidate George Bush with allegations that he got a 15 year old girl pregnant in 1971 while serving in the National Guard in Texas, and that his father's Congressional office might even have been used to help arrange an abortion which was illegal under Texas law back in 1971, prior to the 1973Roe v. Wade decision. The Bush family may have acted to quiet down any family scandal that might hurt the father's standing among voters in his Texas Congressional district according to the story. Howevever in the case of the Bush abortion story, while the woman denies the story, in the Erickson case, the woman involved now confirms the story to two major Oregon newspapers, THE PORTLAND TRIBUNE and THE OREGONIAN.

If anything, Erickson now finds himself typecast as the latest example of a Larry Craig Republican "family values" morality hypocrisy, where conservative GOP candidates for office and politicians paint themselves as moral pillars of society, but then are brought back down to Earth like a Senator David Vitter)R-LA) when a different reality is found out. Running for office as a "Ronald Reagan" type Republican is certainly far better than having to run as a "Larry Craig" type Republican.

Erickson has spent a great deal of money to paint one image of himself to conservative GOP voters in his district. In his fairytale image of himself to the voters, no one pays taxes, or at least any tax increases, illegal immigrants aren't pouring over the borders, and Erickson isn't driving pregnant girlfriends to abortion clinics. Such are the things of some GOP fairytales.