The Ducks Like You campaign released a copy of the Mighty Oregon campaign’s phone banking script Friday. Ducks Like You states that the script shows a “constantly changing narrative” regarding Mighty Oregon’s position on the LTD bus contract.
The main sentence at issue in the script is:
“We want to give students more for their money by cutting big ticket items like the LTD contract.”
In the photo, released by Ducks Like You, the word “cutting” is crossed out and replaced with “renegotiating.”
“Clearly, it was their plan to cut LTD contracts,” Ducks Like You wrote, “But then made edits in order to manipulate the student body.”
Mighty Oregon presidential candidate Taylor Allison stated that her campaign’s position towards the LTD contract has not changed, and that completely cutting LTD was never Mighty Oregon’s plan. Allison emphasizes that the changes were made to the script only to clarify, not change, Mighty Oregon’s position.
“The only reason why it was crossed out and re-written is that our volunteers and everyone working on our campaign knew what we were trying to do with LTD,” Allison said. “We’ve never ever attempted to get rid of free bus passes for students, we’ve never ever talked about getting rid of free bus passes for students.”
Allison calls the release of the script a political move on the part of Ducks Like You, to get votes.
“It’s incredibly disrespectful for these statements to be made when they have never approached us to explain our position,” Allison said. “We’ve actually taken the initiative to try and explain our position to them, and they’ve not cared or been interested in letting students tell the truth.”
Allison claims that she spoke with Helena Schlegel, Ducks Like You’s campaign manager, and clarified her position on the LTD contract. The LTD bus contract has become a major issue in this election, with both Ducks Like You and Mighty Oregon campaigning on the contract.
“If them taking one of our phone banking scripts lets us spot the fact that they’re lying to students and spreading false information, then I’m glad we’re able to clear it up today,” Allison said.
Schlegel sees things differently.
“We repeatedly reached out to Mighty Oregon to ask them to clarify their position on LTD and each time we received a different response,” Schlegel said. “Taylor confronted me about the issue earlier this week and I made sure to check in with our team to make sure we were not stating false information.”
Discussion about the LTD contract between the two campaigns has mostly occurred on Facebook, according to Lamar Wise. The LTD contract is not one of the Ducks Like You campaign’s main platform points, but the issue came to light during a recorded conversation between members of the Mighty Oregon campaign and presidential candidate Thomas Tullis.
“The reason that we’ve been saying that Mighty Oregon is thinking about either cutting or renegotiating the LTD contract, is because of what was said in the recording,” Wise said. “At first we didn’t even know that Mighty Oregon wanted to cut LTD until the recording was released.”
Wise believes that Mighty Oregon’s recent support for LTD is a response to Ducks Like You’s heavy campaigning on the issue.