Strange Up Salem

06/06/2026

It's pleasing that the City of Salem has reversed course and will investigate a complaint that questions whether Betsy Vega qualifies to be a city councilor, even though she is leading her Ward 6 opponent, incumbent Mai Vang, by 40 votes. In this blog post I share the city's statement, along with the complaint filed by Vang's campaign manager, Paige Barton.

Excellent news. Today the City of Salem issued a statement (copied in below) saying that city staff will investigate a complaint challenging Betsy Vega’s qualification to be a candidate for the Ward 6 city council seat. Though the statement doesn’t mention Vega by name, it’s clear that she is ...

06/04/2026

Unbelievable, but true. So far officials at the City of Salem are refusing to confirm that Betsy Vega has lived in Ward 6 for a year prior to her (apparent) election on May 19, 2026. This is required by the city charter, yet city attorney Dan Atchison has responded to an allegation that Vega failed to meet the residency requirement with a big bureaucratic yawn. In this blog post I urge people to contact City Manager Namburi and demand that city officials enforce the residency requirement for newly elected councilors.

We’re all familiar with bureaucracies behaving badly. But I expected more from officials at the City of Salem when it comes to enforcing their own requirement for serving as a city councilor, because they’re refusing to make sure that Betsy Vega meets the residency requirement for serving as the...

06/02/2026

It was nice to know that I'd be pleased with whoever won the Eugene regional in the NCAA baseball tournament yesterday, since Oregon played Oregon State in the final. Oregon ended up winning 4-1 due to OSU pitchers not being able to find the strike zone in the seventh inning. Now I can wholeheartedly root for Oregon in the Texas super regional. Both Oregon and Oregon State had great seasons, so both are winners to me.

I thought it was screwy when the pairings for this year’s NCAA baseball playoffs were announced, and the Eugene regional had Oregon, Oregon State, Washington State, and Yale. Huh? How could it be that the surviving original members of the PAC-12 conference, Oregon State and Washington State, were ...

05/31/2026

The Salem city charter says that a city councilor must have resided in their ward for a year before being elected. A Salem Reporter story wrongly said that the residency requirement pertains to the filing date. So if Betsy Vega didn't live in Ward 6 continuously from May 19, 2025 to May 19, 2026, it sure seems like she is ineligible to be the Ward 6 city councilor notwithstanding her 40 vote lead over incumbent Mai Vang. Vang's campaign manager says there is evidence that Vega wasn't a Ward 6 resident for the period in question, so we'll have to see how this plays out.

Currently Betsy Vega has a 40 vote lead over incumbent Mai Vang in the Ward 6 Salem City Council race. Since it looks virtually certain that Vega will have gotten more than 50% of the vote when this race is certified by Marion County Elections, seemingly Vega will replace Vang as the Ward 6 councilo...

05/29/2026

I'm too old to have a mid-life crisis, which is why I'm calling this red Tesla my end-of-life crisis car. Got it just two days ago. Am enjoying the Model Y Premium a lot. Photos and some reasons why are in this blog post.

I’m too old to have a mid-life crisis. So I’m calling my just-leased Tesla Model Y my end-of-life crisis car. While it isn’t a red convertible with a beautiful blonde sitting in the passenger seat, I can check two of those three boxes: the Tesla is red and my beautiful wife of 36 years , Laure...

05/27/2026

Oregon law allows mail-in ballots to be received up to a week after election day. That's today, May 26, for the May 19 election. Two races that were too close to call before are still tight. But likely Betsy Vega will defeat incumbent Mai Vang in the Ward 6 city council race and incumbent Micki Varney will defeat Chris Cummings in the Ward 8 race. If these results hold, progressives will go from a 6-3 majority on the city council to a 7-2 majority.

Today was the end of the seven-day deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned to the Marion County Elections Office after the May 19 primary election where the races for Salem mayor and four city council seats would be decided if a candidate got over 50% of the votes. As I wrote about on May 20 in....

05/25/2026

Chernobyl was a 1986 Soviet Union nuclear plant disaster. Donald Trump is a 2026 United States presidential disaster. The common ground between them is how authoritarian regimes detest truth and adore lies, because truth-telling undermines the fiction of the infallibility of an authoritarian cause or person. In this post I include an inspiring quote about truth from the HBO miniseries, Chernobyl.

On the advice of a friend, I just finished watched Chernobyl, a five-episode HBO miniseries about the 1986 nuclear plant disaster in what is now Ukraine, but at that time was part of the Soviet Union. This historical drama aired in 2019 during the first Trump administration. Which is fitting, becaus...

05/23/2026

A couple of lengthy test drives in a Tesla Model Y with Full Self-Driving was the game changer for me. Today I cancelled my reservation for BMW's iX3 because the red Model Y that my wife and I will be leasing is to be delivered to us next week. While there's a lot to like about the Model Y, Full Self-Driving is amazing in how it makes driving, or rather being driven, so much more pleasant. It's like having a chauffeur at your continual beck and call, albeit one that needs supervision in case a serious driving mistake is made.

A test drive made a heck of a lot of difference. On May 6 I wrote “I’m one step closer to having a 2027 BMW iX3. Sadly, it’s a small step.” That was when I put down $1,000 on a reservation deposit for BMW’s new electric vehicle with 434 miles of range and fast charging. I wasn’t wild abo...

05/21/2026

In this blog post I share the election results for Salem mayor and four city council seats as of 8:45 pm tonight, May 20. More ballots remain to be counted. Based on who currently is leading in each race, progressives would move to a 7-2 majority on the city council, up from 6-3. But Micki Varney and Chris Cummings are tied 50-50, with Varney only leading by 36 votes. So this is a "too close to call" race until all the votes are counted. The big win for progressives is Vanessa Nordyke beating incumbent Julie Hoy in the mayor race.

The races for Salem mayor and city council are nominally nonpartisan, but in reality almost always there are conservative and progressive slates for these offices. So given the extent to which even local politics has become nationalized, every two years control of the city council hinges on whether....

05/20/2026

Looks like Salem will have a new mayor, Vanessa Nordyke. She's leading incumbent Julie Hoy 56-44, enjoying a 2,412 vote margin. While there's still many votes left to count, Nordyke's lead looks virtually insurmountable. So that's a progressive pickup. In the four city council races, Nishioka is leading Martinez 65-35; Inbody is leading Gwyn 54-46; Vega is leading Vang 52-48; Varney is leading Cummings 51-49. If these leads hold up, and several could switch as more votes are counted, progressives would go from a 6-3 majority on the city council to a 7-2 majority.