Oregonian calls Senate race for Merkley

Although 15% of votes are left to be counted, The Oregonian projects that Democrat Jeff Merkley has won the Senate race against incumbent Republican Gordon Smith. Merkley is currently leading by a little over 5,000 votes. The votes remaining to be counted mostly come from Multnomah county (where I live), where voters are overwhelmingly liberal.

This makes me happy, both for partisan reasons and because I just don’t like Smith, who lent his name and image to homophobic mailers four years ago.