House Race 30 uncovers 2010’s greatest hypocritical act by Doug Ainge

In House District 30 Democrat Doug Ainge and Republican Shawn Lindsay are running for the open seat. Ainge’s side put out a mailer (similar to other mailings across the state in other races) falsely attacking Lindsey for supporting a sales tax. It was the great sales tax hoax as Lindsey is the taxpayer favorite and a tax cutter and Ainge the big government pro-tax candidate. Ainge ran ads saying he will fight a sales tax. Here is what the Willamette Week uncovered.

“All of which makes the June 12, 2003 op-ed Ainge wrote for The Oregonian all the more interesting. In that piece, Ainge argued strenuously, if not necessarily in the most thoughtful fashion that it was high time for a sales tax:“It is clearly past time to tax tourists, drug dealers, prostitutes and all other sectors of the underground economy,” Ainge wrote in that op-ed. “We must lower the state’s marginal income tax rate from 9 percent down to 5-6 percent. We must cap property taxes once again. Then we must institute a 5-6 percent sales tax, with all consumables exempted.”

Oregon Catalyst