The cost of elections is on the rise. Adjusted for inflation, the 2022 congressional elections are set to cost $9.3 billion dollars, compared to $6.7 billion in 2018, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. And the average cost to win a seat has doubled since 2004.
In this episode, Kyle Kondik shares his outside spending analysis, where outside spending is targeted and how outside spending is influencing his assessment of races. Kyle and Miles Coleman also discuss updated Sabato’s Crystal Ball House and Gubernatorial ratings and what political ads tell us about some key races.
Sprinklers keep the grass green in the landscaping surrounding a pond and a pool at a property previously owned by Byron Garth. The land is in the Central Oregon Irrigation District, and Garth bought the water rights in 2016, as he was building out the multimillion-dollar estate. Emily Cureton Cook/OPB
The Redmond Potato Show in 1912 and in the 1960s. For roughly half a century, much of the Central Oregon Irrigation District’s water fed potato farms, and those potatoes fed the West Coast. Local high schoolers were excused from school for a week to help with a harvest that filled as many as 20 rail cars a day in the 1950s. Deschutes County Historical Society
