From the Editor: Mail Tribune Editor Bob Hunter's Blog

Facebook at first glance seemed like a harmless sideshow. Now it has roughly 500 million users worldwide. But does that really make it a player in the news business? Yes.

The MT has been on Facebook for a couple of years, but largely in a passive role, with stories automatically posting in the middle of the night. Hardly what you could call “social” media. But we’re changing, maybe slowly, but changing nevertheless. We’re encouraging reporters and other staffers to post on the Mail Tribune site and plan to provide more daily updates there (along with on our own website). Oh, yeah, and then there’s Twitter. … More to come.

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(12:30 a.m.) Well, we got the next batch of election results at about 10:30 and went into Defcon 4, editing stories, matching them with photos and placing them on the pages. A mad dash, with little time for circumspection. So now, more or less in its wake, here’s some circumspection:

Jackson County went heavily Republican, which is not wildly surprising, but given the nature of some of the Democratic candidates, it was at least worthy of raised eyebrows. Two races in particular were notable:

• The District 3 Senate race, in which incumbent Democrat Alan Bates, generally considered a moderate, was at last count trailing challenger Dave Dotterrer by more than 900 votes. Bates was one of the architects of the Oregon Health Plan and given the less-than-favorable view of government-developed health plans, perhaps that’s a negative. But Dotterrer added plenty of his own to the negativity scale, with his campaign launching a wave of attack ads on Bates in the final weeks. Dotterrer may end up spending $400,000 when all is said and done. With a guestimated 30 percent of ballots still to be tallied, this race is not over, so check in again early Wednesday.
• Republican John Rachor was easily outdistancing Democrat Mark Wisnovsky, leading by more than 5,600 votes late Tuesday. Wisnovsky is a Democrat, but has deep ties in the business community and is well known as the operator of Valley View Winery. Rachor owned seven Burger Kings (he has since sold them) and was active in Search and Rescue, but it’s doubtful that you could have gotten 5 percent of voters to recognize his name before the election. But they apparently did recognize the R next to it.
• Other races: Not many are likely to be really surprised by Don Skundrick’s defeat of Jeff Golden in the other commissioner’s race, but, again, the margin (8,300) was, well, surprising.
• Still shaking our heads a bit over the overwhelming (2-1) passage of Measure 71 which authorizes the Legislature to meet annually. Never made sense to us to have an every-other-year gathering to figure out how to run the state, but didn’t see this kind of vote coming.
• How about those write-in candidates in Phoenix? Write-ins won’t be officially tallied for a few days, but it appears that the last-minute write-in effort — fueled by an unpopular water price hike — will send three Phoenix incumbents out the door.
• Eric Navickas, the occasionally unclothed Ashland City Council member, got the heave-ho after a concerted advertising campaign effort that featured PAC spending in support of Michael Morris, a planning commissioner who has expressed sympathy for the plight of businesses. He’ll be joined on the council with another newcomer, Dennis Slattery, the husband of the Ashland Chamber director. Sense a trend there?
• Then there’s the governor’s race — which we’ll likely be talking about for days to come before we know the winner. At 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Republican Chris Dudley was leading former Gov. John Kitzhaber by about 19,000 votes out of 1.1 million cast. Can former Trail Blazer Dudley knock down the free throws at the end of the game to hang on, or will Kitzhaber drop a couple of treys for the come-back win? You won’t want to miss this exciting finish.

First batch of Jackson County election results are in and a few stories can be written on the runaway races. But it’s the second round of ballots that usually nails down the bulk of the races. In May, that second round wasn’t reported out until after 11 p.m., which made a lot of news people at newspapers and TV stations very unhappy for what seemed like hours and then very busy for what seemed like only minutes in the time left till deadline. We’ve made entreaties for earlier second-round results this time, now we’re waiting with fingers crossed. County Clerk Chris Walker said a couple of days ago that the county computer system has to be shut down, and counting stopped, in order to run a batch of results. If all goes well, she said, we should have that second batch by 10:30. Here’s hoping.

No local concession speeches or declarations of victory that we’re aware of. But state Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, seemed confident his early comfortable lead would hold despite the onslaught of ads against him during the race.

 “Negative campaigns don’t work,” Esquivel said. “Negatives solidified the (Republican) base, and the base showed up.”

With all the apparent anti-government sentiment coursing through the body politic, one statewide ballot measure seems to run against the flow. Ballot Measure 71, which would create annual sessions of the Legislature, is passing handily just about everywhere in the state. With 910,000 votes in, the measure is passing 67 to 33 percent. With about 50,000 ballots counted in Jackson County, it’s passing with nearly the same margin, 66 to 34 percent. Seems that despite their distrust of politicians, voters recognized that trying to run a multi-billion dollar operation while meeting only every two years was not a recipe for success.

An MT reporter’s phone conversation with state Rep. Dennis Richardson, R-Central Point, was interrupted by a huge roar when the latest results in the governor’s race were posted at the Chris Dudley party at the Rose Garden, showing Dudley leading by 10,000 votes statewide. The gap is now nearly 20,000, favoring Dudley.

OK, this could change things: County Clerk Chris Walker reports that thousands of ballots from Ashland have just arrived at the elections office. That certainly could change things in the Bates-Dotterrer race in which Dave Dotterrer, the Republican challenger for the state Senate seat, was leading by 1,200 votes. Also could affect commissioners’ races, although the large margins held by the GOP pair seem close to insurmountable. (8:58 p.m.)

For those wondering if the Republican tidal wave would sweep through locally, the answer appears to be in and it’s … yes. With a 45 percent turnout counted so far (out of a projected 70 percent) GOP commissioner candidates Don Skundrick and John Rachor are leading by a lot (that’s a technical term) — Skundrick up by 8,700 votes and Rachor up by about 6,000. Dave Dotterrer is ahead of Alan Bates by 1,200 votes, still close but a surprising margin nonetheless. Sal Esquivel is winning easily in his House race, as is virtually every other local Republican running for the Legislature. Democratic Rep. Peter Buckley, who occupies a safe Ashland seat, is the exception. Even he has conceded 40 percent of the vote to Sandra Abercrombie, a very nice woman who is really more interested in talking about her grandkids than about politics (and good for her, I say).

Looks like the county finally paid its electric bill or its computer got plugged in. Results available here.

With more than a half million votes counted in the governor’s race, Democrat John Kitzhaber is leading Republican Chris Dudley 53 percent to 44 percent, according to state elections reports.