​ ALBANY – Please join the Linn County Democrats for our Election Night Gathering and Monthly General Meeting on Tuesday evening, Nov. 6, at Two Rivers Market, 250 Broadalbin St. S.W.
  A social time and no-host dinner will start at 6 p.m. at Taqueria Alonzo in Two Rivers Market. A short monthly general meeting, including brief remarks by Democratic candidates, begins at 6:45 p.m. The election night watch gathering will follow in Taqueria Alonzo and the adjacent Linn County Dems Campaign Office, where dessert will be served.
  The election ends locally at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
 There will be televisions with election results in both Taqueria Alonzo and the Linn Dems Campaign Office. Attendees are welcome to bring their laptops, tablets and smartphones to get local and statewide election results.
  The Linn County Dems also invite all Democrats to join them in the Veterans Day Parade through downtown Albany on Saturday, Nov. 10.
  For more information about the election night gathering and participation in the parade, contact Linn Dems Co-Chair Graham Kislingbury at 541-974-2075 or g.kislingbury@comcast.net.

  A Vigil of Protest and Lament will start at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, in front of the Linn County Courthouse, 300 Fourth Ave. S.W. in downtown Albany.
 "Gather tomorrow as we come together to process our reactions to the Kavanaugh nomination, says Christine Webb of Albany Region Indivisible, which is hosting the vigil. "Bring signs. Wear black. This will be a very organic event." Please share this event on your Facebook pages."

Carly Gabrielson, campaign manager DeFazio for Congress released the following story in an email on  Thursday, Sept. 6.
​
EUGENE — Art Robinson's deeper connections to illegal activity were revealed in a photo of political operative W. Samuel Patten and Robinson at his home in Cave Junction, Oregon in 2014.

As part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Patten pled guilty on Friday to working as an unregistered foreign agent for Ukraine and funneling $50,000 of illegal foreign money to Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural committee. Additionally, prosecutors argue that Patten's business partner, a Russian national, has ties to Russian intelligence. 
 
Patten worked for Cambridge Analytica, the corrupt political data company that illegally harvested data from 50 million Facebook users and interfered with elections around the world. The company admitted to, "effectively managing Robinson's (2014) campaign in its entirety" and Robinson was Cambridge Analytica’s first federal political client.
  
But, in March 2018, The Washington Post, Willamette Week, and Roseburg News-Review interviewed Robinson about his engagement with Cambridge Analytica. Robinson said nothing about Patten’s visit to Oregon. In fact, he tried to distance himself from the disgraced company while defending their work for his campaign. He told the Willamette Week that, “Cambridge Analytica didn’t manage work for us, they did political targeting.” In an interview with the Roseburg News-Review, Robinson said that he didn’t, “feel any qualms about what we did because it was perfectly above-board.”
 
“Art Robinson has never fully explained the extent of his relationship with Cambridge Analytica or to the company’s primary funder, Robert Mercer. Oregon’s voters deserve to know the extent of Robinson’s relationship to Patten. It’s time for Robinson to come clean about his ties to illegal activity plaguing our representational democracy,” said Carly Gabrielson, DeFazio’s campaign manager. 
 
Cambridge Analytica was partly owned and funded by hedge fund billionaire and right-wing political extremist Robert Mercer. Mercer first began meddling in Oregon elections in 2010 when he funded a super PAC aimed at electing Robinson. DeFazio was the first member of Congress to be attacked by a Wall Street-backed super PAC. Since then, the Mercer family has spent $1.7 million on Robinson’s failed congressional campaigns. Mercer also funds Robinson’s institute, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which Robinson runs from his sheep farm in Cave Junction. Mercer has given Robinson’s institute $1.77 million including a $150,000 donation at the start of 2018.
 

  Monday in Helsinki, Donald Trump shocked the world. He stood beside autocrat and adversary, Vladimir Putin, who directed an attack on our democratic elections, and shockingly discredited American intelligence agencies.
  On the world stage, Trump had a chance to send a strong message that the U.S. will hold Russia accountable for an assault on our country, but instead, he chose Putin over America. The outrage could be heard around the world.
 Despite the overwhelming evidence from U.S. intelligence agencies that Putin and Russia manipulated our 2016 elections, or the very detailed indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of 12 Russian spies for breaking into Democratic National Committee servers and stealing files to attack our election process, Donald J. Trump publicly and defiantly sided with Putin, not U.S. law enforcement agencies or the American people.
  He unequivocally said, "I don't see any reason why it WOULD be Russia." We all heard it plain as day.
 We are watching. And counting the days until Donald Trump is held to account for his outrageous crimes against democracy.

The Supreme Court is the most important judicial body in the country. The decisions it reaches impact all Americans, even the ones that end up five votes to four. 
Since the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court has taken a radical rightward turn. In the past 72 hours alone, it sided with big money interests against working people in an effort to destroy the union movement in this country. And it affirmed the president's Muslim ban and chose fear, racism and xenophobia over the American ideals of religious freedom and tolerance. 
Those decisions, both 5-4 votes, were only possible because of the unprecedented actions of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to deny President Obama's nominee a vote ahead of the 2016 elections. He did it because, in his own words, "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice."
Now that Justice Kennedy will retire at the end of July, Mitch McConnell should remember those words. And our job right now is to make sure he does, and to make it clear the American people want a say in Justice Kennedy's replacement.

The truth is, the American people deserve a Supreme Court justice who respects the rights of workers instead of bowing down to big business. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality in this country, we need a court that will protect workers' rights and not just concern themselves with corporate profits.
The American people deserve a Supreme Court that will move us back in the direction of one person, one vote and stop our slide into an oligarchy, in which the political life in this country is increasingly controlled by a handful of billionaire families. I fear that President Trump's next Supreme Court nominee would take the disastrous Citizens United decision even further by supporting the elimination of all restrictions on campaign finance, effectively allowing billionaires to contribute unlimited sums to candidates.
We also cannot risk a Supreme Court that would put in jeopardy the privacy rights of all Americans and a woman's right to control her own body. Reproductive rights in this country are at risk. Despite overwhelming opposition from the American people I believe there is a very strong chance President Trump's next nominee would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. We cannot allow that to happen.
The Supreme Court also recently sided with those who want to make it harder for people to vote. In the year 2018, it should not be too much to ask for people to be able to vote without harassment. Our job should be to make it easier for people to participate in the electoral process, not harder.
Now, the Koch brothers immediately pledged to spend more than seven figures pressuring Democrats into supporting President Trump's nominee. 
This time, we must be united, from the start, that there can be no vote on ANY nominee until the American people have had their chance to make their voices heard.

I believe most Americans want a Supreme Court that will stand up for civil liberties, constitutional rights, workers' rights, environmental rights and women's rights.
By now we know that is not what we will get from Donald Trump's nominee. And I believe the American people have a right to make their voices heard about that at the ballot box in November.

Please sign my petition: Tell the U.S. Senate that we should not vote on any potential Supreme Court justice until after the American people have had a chance to vote in November and a new Senate is sworn in next January.

In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders