Oregon GOP Senate candidate facing plagiarism charges

Oregon Republican candidate Monica Wehby is caught in a plagiarism scandal surrounding both her healthcare and economic policy plans, which appear to have been copied from multiple sources.

Though the plagiarism allegations are only focused on her healthcare and economic plans, Wehby’s campaign has removed all of its policy proposals from its website. Her campaign spokesman, Dean Petrone, said in a statement on Wednesday that when the issues with the healthcare and economic plans were uncovered, they were taken down.

{mosads}“These website pages were authored by staff that are no longer employed by the campaign and were immediately removed once brought to our attention. Dr. Wehby will continue to fight against Jeff Merkley’s attempts to distract voters from his failure to help middle and working class Oregon families,” he said.

Petrone did not respond to a request for comment on whether the campaign removed the rest of its policy pages due to similar issues.

But according to the Statesman Journal, the one staffer Wehby employed at that time, Charlie Pearce, says he had nothing to do with the proposals.

“I did not author either of those policy positions,” Pearce he said. “Any statement to the contrary would be false in the extreme.”

The Statesman Journal is reporting Pearce and Wehby were sent a copy of the plan to review in an email, but the paper hasn’t yet revealed the sender of the email.

BuzzFeed reported earlier this week that much of Wehby’s healthcare plan matched, nearly word-for-word, poll questions tested by the GOP group Crossroads GPS.

An unnamed spokesman said in a statement to BuzzFeed that the allegations were “absurd,” noting the fact that Wehby practices medicine as a pediatric neurosurgeon.

“Dr. Wehby is too busy performing brain surgery on sick children to respond, sorry,” the spokesman said.

But the following day, BuzzFeed again uncovered apparent plagiarism from the campaign, this time in Wehby’s economic plan, sections of which appear to be lifted from a plan released by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) just a month earlier.

Wehby has pitched herself as an independent, non-partisan alternative to Merkley, who Republicans say votes in lockstep with Obama. And she’s made her medical background a central focus of her campaign, touting it as an advantage in tackling healthcare.

But Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D) campaign manager, Alex Youn, said in a statement the evident plagiarism is “not shoddy staff work — it’s what Wehby believes and who she wants to represent.”

“The Wehby campaign wants Oregonians to believe Wehby hadn’t read her own healthcare and economic plans until today. That’s ridiculous,” he said. “This is her policy platform, and it’s the reason she is running. In the end this is more proof that Wehby is in lockstep with national Republicans and their billionaire special interest allies, and will be a rubber stamp for their priorities in the Senate.”

Most polling has shown Merkley with a solid lead over Wehby — between 12 and 19 points over the past few weeks — but a survey out this week from GOP pollster The Polling Company showed him only ahead by eight points among likely voters. Merkley remains heavily favored to retain his seat this fall, however.