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Saxton ads fuel scrutiny of farm's labor
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Race
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Oct 13, 2006 11:45am |
| Category | Analysis |
| News Date | Oct 12, 2006 11:00am |
| Description | The Republican candidate for governor, Ron Saxton, has run ads saying illegal immigrants are "pouring in" to Oregon and criticizing Democratic Gov. Ted Kulongoski for his handling of the issue.
But Saxton, who was part owner of a farm near Salem until about 2000, acknowledges that he used migrant workers on his farm and that he can't say for sure whether some of them were undocumented.
In a September interview with The Oregonian, Saxton responded, "I don't know," when asked whether illegal immigrants worked on the farm. Illegal immigration wasn't such a big issue in the 1990s, he said.
"You know, it wasn't anything we talked about 10 years ago," he said. "There was no discussion back then about those issues."
This year, illegal immigration has become a hotly debated national issue, and Saxton has made it a high-profile topic of his campaign. His uncertainty over hiring practices at his farm, however, shows how quickly a sound-bite issue can get complicated in the heat of a political campaign. |
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