The battle for Eugene mayor between incumbent Kitty Piercy and challenger Jim Torrey apparently will last another five months.
Both Piercy and Torrey were failing to get more than 50 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election, forcing a runoff between the two in the Nov. 4 general election.
With nearly 40 percent of the vote counted, only 339 votes separated the two candidates. Torrey led 48.2 percent to Piercy’s 47.3 percent. Two minor candidates held the rest of the votes.
Overwhelmingly white. You have to understand that demographically, Portland is overwhelmingly Caucasian in racial make-up.
We had group like 'The Knights of the Golden Order' and other racial supremacists work real hard before WW II to keep Oregon as white as possible.
The ship building and other war industry boom of WW II brought the first Negroes in any number here. In fact, they were crowded into an area reclaimed from the Columbia River known as Vanport that was flooded out in a major disaster that killed many.
It has been a hard road for many minorities in Oregon. Eugene, the second largest city is worse off. You can go through the day with only seeing a scattered few Negro faces in a sea of white.
The KKK used to be a regular fixture in the July 4th parade in Eugene, and the large wooden then concrete cross downtown was originally put on Skinner's butte overlooking the train station to remind blacks not to let the sun set on them here.
The crowd in Portland was overwhelmingly white. It cannot have been any other way, most people there are white, so that is unavoidable.