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Monica Wehby at one time seemed like the perfect candidate to take on freshman Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. That didn't last.

(The Oregonian)

Monica Wehby at one time seemed like the ideal candidate to run against Jeff Merkley, a freshman U.S. senator whose most notable legislative achievement – incremental filibuster reform – is almost impossibly inside-baseball, and whose well-earned reputation as a liberal populist is likely to have turned off many moderates. Wehby, meanwhile, is a fiscally conservative neurosurgeon with moderate social views and automatic credibility on health care policy. Her gender also complicates the threadbare Democratic "war on women" narrative. Who better to run against a shaky incumbent who floated into office in 2008 on the Barack Obama bubble, especially now that the bubble has burst?

Speaking of bursting bubbles ...

The collapse of Wehby's campaign has been almost painful to watch. First was the late-breaking revelation this spring of a 911 call made in 2013 by estranged boyfriend Andrew Miller, who reached for the phone as Wehby entered his house without permission. He accused her of stalking him. Shortly thereafter, Oregonians learned that Wehby's ex-husband had called the cops on her in 2009. According to a police report filed two years earlier, her ex accused her of "ongoing harassment."

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The incidents raise obvious questions about judgment and self-control, but just as significant are questions about anticipation. Did Wehby and her campaign really think these episodes wouldn't come to light? If so, they were shockingly naïve.

Then, of course, there was Wehby's aversion (until very recently) to debating Merkley, which many voters have probably interpreted as an admission of incompetence. Chunks of her policy material also turned out to be plagiarized, further eroding the credibility of a campaign seemingly built on the assumption that serving in the Senate ain't brain surgery. In the end, questions about Wehby's suitability for elective office loom so large that her views on policy hardly matter. She's unelectable.

That's a shame. There's no question that Merkley's competent. His weakness, rather, is his highly partisan record. If Merkley had patterned himself after fellow Democrat Ron Wyden, we'd be happy to endorse him. Instead, he quickly became known as one of the Senate's most left-leaning members. For instance, while Wyden in 2011 supported free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia – not surprising given Oregon's dependence upon trade – Merkley opposed them.

Merkley, in fact, has neither co-sponsored nor endorsed his colleague's effort to boost timber harvests on Oregon's so-called O&C lands. Wyden's proposal was by far the less aggressive of two sponsored by Oregon lawmakers – the other was championed by Rep. Peter DeFazio – and Merkley has been reluctant even to rub shoulders with it. Instead, he told The Oregonian editorial board last week, he's acting as a kind of conduit for public input. Whatever that means. Presumably, supporting even Wyden's bill would anger environmentalists just as supporting free trade would annoy unions. And when you're running for re-election, you can't have that.

Merkley is smart, thoughtful and certainly well-intentioned. He's also right at times, as in his fight to prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But all too often, we simply disagree with him, whether the issue is a sweeping home-refinance scheme or a pandering proposal to give Social Security recipients a raise, which would be paid for by raising taxes on people with six-figure incomes. Talk about trying to buy votes. So, we're not going to endorse him either.

We're under no illusion about the outcome of November's election. Merkley will win a second term. Perhaps over the next six years he'll drift closer to the political center. If not, Republicans will have an even lengthier record to work with in 2020, at which point they may even succeed in offering Oregonians a moderate candidate who can withstand both the scrutiny and pressure of a high-stakes campaign.

In the meantime, we're going to write in a candidate: "Ugh."