Canning Not ‘Dull’

Calling the smart and courageous Doyle Canning “Dull” Canning (“Carpetbaggering Dilettantes Abound,” 5/12 ) was a low punch even for a former politician and state employee like Tony Corcoran, who supports a slate of mainstream Democrats who have played the partisan fundraising game in Salem for years.

Corcoran and his so-called “Hot Air Society” should set a higher standard for rhetoric and truth. Canning is anything but dull. A fresh-faced progressive attorney and environmental activist who has worked closely with Bernie Sanders, Canning is precisely what the state and the world needs now. Our survival, let alone prosperity, depends on new visions to advance climate action, regulate polluting industries, incentivize sustainable logging and agriculture, create jobs and housing for the homeless and immigrants, expand the right to collective bargaining and a long list of alternatives to business-as-usual, including ending pay-to-play politics along with subsidies to the main culprit — the oil and gas industry.

Jack Cooper

Eugene

Editor’s note: Val Hoyle won the Democratic nomination for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District with about 65 percent of the vote as of May 20. Doyle Canning had 16 percent.