By and large the national liberal media have ignored gubernatorial races this election cycle, preferring to focus on the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. That is perfectly understandable, of course, but not when a juicy watercooler-worthy story comes along.
Take the curious case of the fiancee of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D), Cylvia Hayes, who recently made headlines because of the revelation of a decades-old sham marriage she once entered into in order to procure a green card for an immigrant. As if that wasn't juicy enough, however, the Oregon First Lady disclosed that she once purchased a plot of farm land with the intention of growing marijuana thereupon:
A retired real estate broker told The Oregonian on Monday night that he sold Cylvia Hayes and her then-boyfriend a 60-acre parcel in Washington in late 1997, and after the property went into foreclosure, he found marijuana trimmings in an upstairs bedroom.
Hayes, 47, issued a statement Monday in response to the story writing "the property in Okanogan was intended to be the site of a marijuana grow operation that never materialized. I was never financially involved with it. I did not pay any part of the down payment or mortgage payments."
So yes, while that was a (hash) pipe dream that never materialized, it's quite an astonishing thing to admit publicly when your fiance is three weeks away from either being reelected or turned out of office.
Yet the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have ignored this story on both morning news programs and the evening newscasts. It's inconceivable that the media would react similarly to such a real-life soap opera were the characters in question Republicans in a reliably conservative, Republican state, rather than liberal Democrats in deep-blue Oregon.
