Oregon Primary Election

(Portland, Oregon) For those who missed the results of this week's Oregon primary election:

Presidential candidate John Kerry added Oregon to his string of primary victories Tuesday as he easily defeated the last-gasp challenge of his only remaining Democratic rival, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Massachusetts senator was winning more than 80 percent of the vote, compared with about 16 percent for Kucinich, who spent a month campaigning in Oregon on the platform that the United States should quickly remove its troops from Iraq.

The fact that the presumptive Democratic nominee for president lost 16% of the voters to Dennis Kucinich must be at least a little troubling to the Kerry campaign. That bloc of Democratic voters will probably be easy pickings for Ralph Nader running as an independent candidate endorsed by the Reform Party.