As November approaches, political campaigns are coming about in full swing and there have been a few hiccups in the race for the Senate seat.
Some troubles have come from republican candidate Dr. Monica Wehby’s campaign and accusations of plagiarism have been linked to some of the plans previously posted to her website.
Current Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Randall Children’s Hospital Monica Wehby are running against one another.
Merkley was first elected as a democrat to the Oregon Senate in 2008.
Merkley is centering his campaign on focusing on issues such as education, health care, climate change, veterans, women and families, foreign policies and LGBT equality, among others. Merkley is also working on co-sponsoring a bill with Massachusetts’ Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in order to help college students refinance student loans while the rates remain low.
Wehby’s campaign focuses on term limits, the second amendment, health care, veterans, budget, education and natural resources – just to name a few.
On Sept. 16, BuzzFeed published a story on the discovery of extreme similarities between the health plan Wehby previously held on her website and the health plan from Karl Rove’s Group Survey, American Crossroads.
The article shed light on these similarities as a line from Crossroads regarding the purchasing of health care across state lines:
“Allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines to increase the number of options in the market place.”
A line from Wehby’s plan on the same subject:
“Allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines to increase the number of options in the market place.”
The following day, BuzzFeed posted another article that showed the similarities between her economic plan and the plans of Republican Senator Rob Portman, a 2012 congressional candidate, as well as Gary DeLong and the Crossroads group of Karl Rove where Wehby has previously taken her health care plan. The offending pages were then taken down from Wehby’s site.
Wehby later released a statement to the Associated Press about the discrepancies, stating, “The concepts and ideas are my concepts and ideas that I agree with. But as far as wording goes, I had no idea that the same wording had been used elsewhere until all this happened. So we took it down.”
Merkley’s campaign spokeswoman, Lindsey O’Brien, addressed the problems in Wehby’s campaign and released a statement on Sept. 18.
“The Wehby campaign is simultaneously claiming Wehby is a health policy expert, but hadn’t read her own health care or economic plans until yesterday,” said O’Brien. “That’s ridiculous. Monica Wehby bears full responsibility.”
In addition, Merkley’s campaign manager, Alex Youn, released a statement that said, “That’s not shoddy staff work — it’s what Wehby believes and who she wants to represent.”
The general election date for Oregon is Nov. 4.
Follow Jennifer Fleck on Twitter @jenniferfleck