Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Oregon Republicans don't even have a barrel-bottom to scrape

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' OR-Gov: This report on GOP recruiting woes in the Beaver State from veteran analyst Jeff Mapes is just brutal:

In past years, it was not unusual to find potential candidates for Oregon governor doing early spadework for their campaigns at the annual Dorchester Conference for Republican activists.

But with the next gubernatorial primary just over a year away, there was barely a hint at this year's gathering here that any Republican is even looking at running.

The lack of activity was so pronounced that the conference's Saturday night satirical show ran a video that began with an announcer intoning, "Now we go live to the 2014 Republican governor's debate." The camera then panned over a debate stage with two empty chairs, the monotony broken only by a broom-wielding janitor.

That would have been a funny video... at a Democratic gathering! I'm pretty amazed that Republicans would even "joke" like that about themselves, though, because that's effing painful. And buried at the very end of the piece is about the thinnest possible reed of hope that a candidate might even emerge: Mapes mentions that state Rep. Bruce Hanna "provided lanyards with his name and website on them for the attendees." But is he even expressing direct interest in the race? That would be a no.