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An Afghan' s atyplca Ipath to Walden's D.C. office
BUSINESS, PAGE G1
NSL= 2 DAYS
ENL= ELECTION 2012:PRECINCT PROFILES
By Andrew Clevenger The Bulletin
WASHINGTON — In a way, Ahmad Jan Ali's path to Washington has been pretty typical: graduate from college, get a Capitol Hill internship through a helpful connection and then land a full-time position as a congressional staffer.
LEFT
With Oregon's shift to all-mail voting, precincts today may serve little purpose except to provide a glimpse at voting trends in such small pockets of the state. With just days to go until Election Day, The Bulletin is examining four Central Oregon precincts. Jefferson County's Precinct 17 is third in the four-part series.
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IN D.C. A fghanistan native's story so remarkable: He taught himself English by listening to cassette tapes of political speeches and worked as an interpreter with the U.S. military for three years. Army Col. Bob Elliot, one of the American officers he worked with, lived in Oregon, so Ali took advantage of a visa program for Afghans who had helped the U.S. military and continued his education in the Beaver State. "When he picked me up at the airport, Oregon was like a paradise to me," Ali said recently, sitting in the offices of Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, who recently hired the 27year-old. It was September, and Ali couldn't believe how green the trees were compared with his home. See Ali /A7
Will progress on cancerpass the price test?
Photos by Ryan Brenneckel The Bulletin
jim Cloud loads a truck ofgrain at his farm in Culver last month. The third-generation farmer is most interested in what the two presidential candidates have to say on the deficit and foreign policy. "That's what affects my pocketbook."
By Lattren Dake • The Bulletin By Virginia Postrel Bloomberg News
When Apostolia Tsimberidou was a young hematologist, a diagnosis of chronic myelogenous leukemia meant a patient had only a few years to live. The median survival time when she started medical school in 1985, she recalls, was just 3.5 years. Then came Novartis' Gleevec (imatinib), which the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2001. Unlike traditional chemo drugs, which work
Landon Roberts, a social studies teacher and football coachat Culver Middle School, remains torn between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney because "no one represents my feelings (on) how I would want the world to be handled."
by poisoning the body's fast-growing cells, Gleevec is a so-called biologic that works by altering the behavior of abnormal protein molecules — in this case, inhibiting an enzyme that m akes the cancer cells proliferate. With Gleevec, the death rate for patients with the disease plummeted to only 1 percent or 2 percent a year. The estimated eightyear survival rate has increasedfrom 6 percent before 1975 to 87 percent since 2001. See Molecular /A8
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Source: Jefferson County
By Adam Liptak New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON — In the razor-thin 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy campaigned in 49 states. Richard Nixon visited all 50. The current contest is just as close and intense, but the candidates have campaigned in only 10 states since the political conventions. There are towns in Ohio that have received more attention than the enttre West Coast. The shrinking electoral battleground has altered the nature of American self-governance. There is evidence that the current system is depressing turnout, distorting policy, weakening accountability and effectively disenfranchising the vast majority of Americans. "It's a new way to run a country," says Bill Bishop, co-author of "The Big Sort," a 2008 book that examined the most important cause of the trend: the recent tendency of like-minded people to live near one another. That demographic shift means the country is now dominated by solidly Democratic states on the coasts and solidly Republican ones m the tntertor and m much of the South. In a close election, all of those states are out of reach for one candidate or the other. This state of affairs is not rooted in the Constitution but rather in the fact that almost every state chooses to allocate its electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. See Battleground /A6
Election news • Five misconceptions about why we have the
Electoral College,A2
• Obama, Romney fight for an edge in the swing states,A4
• Ryan plans a robust role if elected vice president,A4
• Oregon's top election prize: control of the Capitol, B3
INDEX AnIndependent
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CULVERsfaras Peggy Beck isconcerned, there are two types of politicians. "Liars or thieves," said the 64-year-old Culver resident. "Most of them are both." Beck stood in the kitchen of Culver's community center, clad in an apron. She had just finished serving senior citizens homemade lasagna. She believes in the power of local politics but is disenchanted with the national political scene. Beck won't bother to vote this election. And although most of her neighbors seem more politically engaged, Beck's lack of enthusiasm and disappointment with the country's direction was echoed throughout this small farming community. The town, nestled in the valley southwest of Madras, was perfectlydivided in 2008. The same number ofpeople — 185 — voted for Democrat Barack Obama and for RepublicanJohn McCain. This year,the number of registered Republicans is edging out Democrats. Jefferson County's Precinct 17 encompasses the town of Culver, population 1,350. Karen O'Hara, 62, will cast her vote for Mitt Romney, but she's not particularly excited about her choices. "The last person I really liked was Reagan," said O'Hara, who has worked at Round Butte Seed Growers, one of the town's largest employers, for the past 16 years. The tiny downtown of Culver is surrounded by large fields. Here, people keep an eye on wheat prices. And when the high school football team goes on a losing streak, well, some joke it must be the farmers' fault because they stopped growing potatoes, and now the kids are too scrawny. See Precinct 17/A4
Contested states: from 30 in 1976 to 'l0 today
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TODAY'S WEATHER Not as cloudy High 66, Low43
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TOP NEWS SANDY: In storm cleanup, questions turn to dealing with the next disaster, A3
Fall back yet? If yoLi didn't last
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