Senate District 13
October 19, 2014
The two candidates in Oregon Senate District 13 are Kim Thatcher (R) and Ryan Howard (D).
REP. KIM THATCHER has been serving in the Oregon House since 2005. She has always been supportive of immigration control measures. In 2007 she and a colleague introduced a slate of bills, called the Sensible Immigration Package, which included bills requiring evidence of citizenship for persons registering to vote for first time; a bill prohibiting state government from employing individual who is not legally present or legally employable; one permitting law enforcement agencies to apprehend person based upon probable cause that person is in violation of immigration law, and one requiring Dept. of Human Services to verify lawful presence in U.S. of applicants for public assistance. All were stifled by the Democratic Party leadership.
Again in 2011, she introduced several good bills, including one requiring evidence of citizenship to register to vote for first time, one prohibiting state agencies from providing employment, products, services or licenses to persons who are not lawfully present in the U.S., and one requiring all business to sign up for the federal E-Verify program.
During the current campaign she replied to the Oregon Abigail Adams Voter Education Project’s candidate questionnaire, giving these answers to the questions on immigration:
15. Do you support AUTOMATICALLY registering people to vote using DMV data? No.
17. Do you support requiring proof of eligibility when registering to vote? Yes.
32. Do you support mandating all Oregon employers to use the federal E-Verify system to determine the employee's work eligibility status? Reluctantly, because until borders are effectively controlled, incentives (jobs, benefits, etc.) need to be carefully guarded.
Her campaign website is at http://kimthatcher.us/. In the Issues section, in Protecting Freedoms and 2d Amendment Rights, there is this statement:
“Kim continues to push for measures that will increase the integrity of our elections process. One simple improvement Kim is pushing for is the adoption of Federal ID standards for voting in state and local elections. There are thousands of people weighing in on how our cities, counties, and state will be governed, who have not even met minimal Federal ID requirements.”
RYAN HOWARD has served on the Newberg City Council since 2010 and as President of the Council since Jan. 2014. He is an attorney and a graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School.
For his campaign for Oregon Senate, he maintains a website is at: http://www.howardfororegon.com/. His website has an Issues section but there is no mention of immigration in the Issues section or elsewhere in the website. He did not reply to the OAAVEP questionnaire. In the absence of any statement, we can assume he will take the Democratic Party leadership’s position which supports benefits for illegal aliens and their employers, along with lax or no enforcement of the immigration laws.
