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.”
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