Democrats In Panic Mode As Long-Held Oregon Seat May Fall To GOP Newcomer Alek Skarlatos Who Thwarted Paris Terror Attack

If the name Alek Skarlatos sounds familiar, you’ve most likely heard of him for being one of the servicemen who thwarted a terror attack on a Paris train in 2015, subduing and disarming a *SUSPECTED* jihadist who opened fire with an AK47. The Oregon resident was awarded the Distinguished Service medal by Governor Kate Brown and the Soldiers Medal by the U.S. Army, and he would go on to star on a season of Dancing With The Stars. He would then star as himself in a Clint Eastwood produced movie about the aforementioned train attack.

Then Skarlatos decided he’d had enough with crazed leftist antics, and decided to run for Congress against entrenched incumbent, and far left lunatic, Peter DeFazio, who first won the seat in 1986.

As we near election night, Skarlatos and DeFazio are running neck-and-neck in the polls. Save for his original run and the 2010 Tea Party year election, which were both marginally close, DeFazio has won the seat by at least 15 percentage points every election. Needless to say, 28 year old Skarlatos is putting a scare into the democrat establishment.

Willamette Week reports:

The Cook Political Report rates the district as even, with Hillary winning the district by .1% over Trump in 2016. Even though solid polling data is next to impossible to find, Real Clear Politics lists the race as a toss-up.

Cue the wackjob hacks in the media to run damage control for the embattled DeFazio. Eugene is the biggest city in the district, and their weekly rag, Eugene Weekly, recently ran a story with the headline “The Trumpster Fire Challenging DeFazio”:

“His appeal is 100 percent tied to Donald Trump. Some of it may be because he’s young and handsome. But none of that has to do with his credibility on any of the issues,” says Democratic Party of Lane County Chairman Chris Wig. “Skarlatos has no experience that relates to any kind of governance whatsoever.”

Skarlatos did not respond to Eugene Weekly’s attempts to contact him on four different platforms over a three-week period, even as the campaign season entered its final stretch following Labor Day Weekend. EW instead drew on his interviews with other sources, including right-wing groups.

In 2018, he pivoted to politics and made an unsuccessful bid for Douglas County commissioner.

Despite this early political failure, Skarlatos is trying to give DeFazio a run for his money in the race to represent Oregon’s 4th, out-fundraising the veteran incumbent by $1.1 million in the third quarter alone, according to tweets from the Skarlatos campaign. He has raised more than $3.9 million during the 2020 election cycle, most of it in the past few months.

Seventy-five percent of Skarlatos’ total donation amount is from out-of-state, according to receipts filed with the Federal Election Commission. And 64 percent of those individual donations are from outside Oregon. In comparison, 89 percent of DeFazio’s total donation amount comes from outside Oregon, but only 60 percent of individual donations to his campaign are from out-of-state. Overall, Skarlatos has fewer individual donations.

“I think the important thing with Alek Skarlatos is that most of his money is coming from out of state,” says Douglas County Democratic Party official Alana Lenihan. “It’s not even residents of Douglas County or the state of Oregon.”

The nonpartisan public opinion poll Rasmussen Report changed the district rating from “Safe Democratic” to “Likely Democratic” in July. That’s partly because the district’s two progressive college towns — Eugene in Lane County and Corvallis in Benton — sit between Curry, Linn, Josephine and Douglas counties, which are all majority Republican. The report warned that changes to the academic school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including remote learning, could affect the election results.

Skarlatos has aligned himself with the far-right wing of the GOP. He is endorsed by Sen. Tom Cotton R-Arkansas, Stephen Moore — who advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — and Arthur Laffer. A controversial Reagan economist, Laffer is best known for the Laffer Curve, which has been used to support the theory of trickle-down economics and argues for lower taxes on the wealthy. Laffer’s trickle-down theory was the basis of such radical tax-cutting campaigns as California’s Prop. 13 and Oregon’s disastrous Measure 5.

“I believe in lower taxes and lower regulation,” Skarlatos said in a candidates forum hosted by the City Club of Eugene on Oct. 15. His support for economic freedom made headlines in late May when he posted a picture of himself next to the owners of Casey’s Restaurant in Roseburg. Skarlatos visited the diner after it was fined $14,000 for reopening in violation of Gov. Kate Brown’s executive order during the first wave of COVID-19 infections. In the picture, Skarlatos stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the owners and gives the camera a thumbs up. No one is wearing a mask.

Skarlatos’ unmasked appearance at the restaurant appears to reflect his emphasis on the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis despite the major health concerns associated with the restaurant’s reopening. His health care policy also centers on market freedom. His campaign website states that the free market is the best way to improve healthcare quality and increase access to services.

“Skarlatos is not with Oregon women,” DeFazio said in an email to EW.

Skarlatos also supports unlimited Second Amendment rights. “I just hate any gun law because I think it’s an infringement,” Skarlatos said in an interview with the owner of Basin and Tackle, a fishing store in Coos Bay. “Even President Trump passing the bump stock ban I think was a huge mistake.”

Canning says that Skarlatos’ immigration platform is “just a continuation of the white nationalist agenda of the Trump administration, and it’s out of step with Oregon values.”

Skarlatos’ response to the Black Lives Matter protests has also toed Trump’s party line. In a tweet from Aug. 10, Skarlatos called protesters “the mob.” He said, “The chaos we see is the result of failed leadership by elected officials who choose to placate and stand by rioters and looters instead of local businesses.”

“Alek Skarlatos’ attitude towards the Black Lives Matter movement is a relic of Jim Crow,” says Lane County Democratic Party official Wig. “Skarlatos is racist.” The majority of Eugene and Springfield Black Lives Matter protests have been peaceful on the part of BLM protesters.

Far left “news” site Salon was even called upon to run to DeFazio’s aid, falling back on the overplayed racist and Q Anon cards:

Former Oregon National Guardsman Alex Skarlatos, better known as the “Paris train hero” after he and four others subdued a gunman while traveling in Europe in 2015, is running in Oregon’s 4th Congressional District. Democratic groups claim that his association with Timber Unity, a group linked to extremist groups such as the Proud Boys, QAnon and the Three Percenter movement, raises “serious questions about his affiliations.”

“Their Salem log truck rallies were a smorgasbord of climate denial, anti-vaxxers, gun nuts, anti-immigrant, militia groups, QAnon,” Steve Pedery of the conservation group Oregon Wild told Salon.

A photo displayed on the Skarlatos campaign’s Facebook page shows the Republican candidate posing with Timber Unity protesters holding a banner with the QAnon slogan last year.

“Alek Skarlatos has been hoping to skate through this election without answering any real questions — and with good reason. The more we learn about him, the more troubling his candidacy gets, and his association with an extreme right wing group is just the latest alarming news about him,” Abby Curran Horrell, executive director of House Majority PAC, said in a statement to Salon. “Alek Skarlatos needs to disavow this group immediately, or answer serious questions about his affiliations.”

Skarlatos’ campaign did not respond to questions from Salon. Julie Parrish, a Timber Unity board member, told Salon in an emailed statement that reports linking the group to extremists were hit pieces.

“Let me be really clear: Our board doesn’t support racism in any way, shape or form,” she said. “We’re not part of QAnon, or any other group. We have one focus — protect jobs for working Oregonians in the natural resource sector — regardless of their party, race, sexual orientation or gender.”

Skarlatos has allied himself with Timber Unity, a new right-wing “anti-environment” group linked to a Republican walkout which thwarted legislation aimed at combating climate change, according to Mother Jones. The group’s members have reportedly “had no qualms associating with violent extremists and far-right groups,” including being photographed with members of “neofascist or militia groups.” Their rallies have “prominently featured messages backing QAnon,” and their private Facebook group is “awash with violent threats, conspiracy theories and sometimes racist messages that likely violate the platform’s terms of service,” according to the report.

Yet none of these “reporters” seem to address the accusations of DeFazio being a socialist. Back when the democrats shied away from the term “socialist”, DeFazio was suspected of being part of the socialist caucus, which everyone mocked at the time. Fast forward 10 years later, and mainstream democrats are openly embracing marxism.

DeFazio touts himself as a transportation and infrastructure wonk, often using his fallback phrase “OUR CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE!” Yet DeFazio didn’t ask any questions of the Obama administration when the 2009 stimulus, which was passed in no small part with promises of fixing our infrastructure, ended up doing next to nothing to fix any roads, bridges, or highways.

The seat has been held by democrats since 1975. In fact, no Oregon Congressional seat has flipped parties since 1997, and even that was only a short term flip that had only been won in the previous election.

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