• Surprising no one but the renegade labor union that launched an inexplicable campaign to have him removed from office, state Rep. Paul Holvey easily trounced the recall election that wound up Tuesday, Oct. 3. A 19-year veteran in the Legislature with a strong record of support for labor, Holvey — a Democrat representing much of Eugene — kept his seat when the voters in District 8 supported him by an overwhelming 9-1 margin despite the expensive and unfounded campaign mounted against him by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. The UFCW leadership wasted a pile of its members’ dues as well as taxpayers’ money on its ridiculous attack. Do the union workers need to recall the recallers?
• It’s too early to start serious talk about national championships, but the Duck footballers and volleyballers are both winning big and have been ranked in the top 10 in the nation. The football team has this weekend off before challenging October games against Washington, Washington State and Utah. The volleyball team stumbled at home against WSU last Sunday and also has a tough October, with four Pac-12 matches at home and four on the road. By Halloween, we should know much more about how scary good these teams can be.
• On the Duck sports notes, the Daily Emerald has been tracking the allegations by the University of Oregon’s women’s beach volleyball and rowing teams that the school is not providing equal treatment to the teams as required under TItle IX. The Emerald broke the story that the teams are suing the school and writes that according to public records, “While 49 percent of UO’s varsity sports athletes in 2021-22 were women, the university spent over $60 million on its male athletes and only $20.4 million on its female athletes.”
• Spooky season is here! For some it’s pumpkin spice latte season and, either way, pumpkin patches are sprouting up around town, and here at the Weekly we’re already plotting costumes since Halloween is on a Tuesday this year. We hear Northern Lights Christmas Tree Farm has opened its corn mazes and has weekend hayrides, as does Detering Orchards. Get a full list of Halloween fun from Travel Lane County at EugeneCascadesCoast.org/events/halloween and tell your favorite haunts to submit themselves to our What’s Happening calendar so all of us who love an orderly printed list of events know where to go!
• Dare to be depressed and awed by the writing in the front page feature in the Sunday, Oct. 1, New York Times about security guards carrying the burden on the streets of Portland. It’s maybe not totally fair to Portland, but this article paints the NYT’s current favorite grim Portland picture of not enough police, and too much drugs, homelessness and mental illness. We wonder if Mayor Ted Wheeler will respond? Meanwhile, we were dying over the Fox News “The Five” report on similar problems in Seattle and “liberal cities.” The folks interviewed in the “progressive hellscape” pushed back on the “crime is rampant” narrative, telling Fox, “crime is a social issue that could be solved by giving people their basic needs,” and “I haven’t seen crime in Seattle, I have seen laughter and fun,” and “you’re from New York apparently.”
• No City Club of Eugene meeting Friday Oct. 6 in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day on Oct. 9. Later this month, Oct. 27, the topic will be “Dangers to Journalism: A Threat to the First Amendment,” with speakers including Eugene Weekly Editor Camilla Mortensen, the University of Oregon’s Peter Laufer and Micah Loewinger, a reporter for WNYC’s On the Media, which airs on KLCC 11 am Sundays.