State Rep. Ed Diehl failed to do some mathing, upfront, prior to jumping into the "Clawback" tax
campaign 
and seemingly learned little from the "No Tax on Gas" 250,000 signature win. Jason Williams of the Taxpayer Association of Oregon who has been doing this kind of work for twenty-five years did the math on that one. Three million Oregonians were directly affected by the gasoline tax. That was the rallying cry. That was the push, passion, momentum and fun coming from Williams with giving all the success to the 2000 volunteers.
Diehl was a great spokesperson for that win on delivery day to the Secretary of State's Elections Division in Salem. Ed spoke clearly and directly that December day in 2025 upon delivering the first batch of signatures.
But, then what happened with Clawback, what did Ed Diehl fail to notice? How did Ed fail to notice, only 200,000 Oregonians were affected. 60,000 businesses and 160,000 car owners (if they bought American made cars). Three million to 200,000 Oregonians. That was the math. Plus, what the heck did Clawback mean? That was confusing. Explaining it was confusing. Some thought they already signed "that one". Doing a petition, volunteers must be truthful about what is reflected in a petition.
Then Ed decide to run for office in January 2026. The more Ed's campaign went on the less he gave credit to the volunteers for the "no tax on gas" win. Same for not giving credit to Jason Williams. Anyone who knows Jason's history clearly sees the footprint on the gas tax win was his footprint.
The Clawback footprint is Ed Diehl's. The postmortem analysis last week from Diehl to an audience fell mostly to "we ran out of time" reason for the failure. Jason Williams was at that meeting. Why didn't Ed ask Jason to weigh in as to why that petition failed? Jason spoke at the meeting and was gracious and diplomatic towards Diehl.
Was this a tale of hubris and ego once the "I'm running for governor" bug hit him?
How and why did Ed pick the campaign team he did? Was Clawback a strategy to try to keep Diehl's name more in the headlines? Did Diehl believe he could just order those same 2000 volunteers to come out, and do what they did for "No tax on gas", just for him? Ed's comment to the Willamette Week was a bit of a flippant response about "working with" the legislature, saying he'd just have any and all tax bills go to petitions if they didn't do what he wants, again as though the volunteer Army was his to deploy and direct?
Jason Williams was the one who gave thanks to the volunteers and other groups no holds barred, a heart filled thank you at the December 2025 delivery then a follow-up post card in May after the win on Measure 120.
Diehl spending $45,000 of the "no tax on gas" money for a lawsuit, was that another strategy to keep Ed's name in the headlines? How did a sitting legislator who makes the laws not know that his own lawsuit on "policy" was not "law"?
Which actually goes for the entire legislature in 2020. How did any of those legislators not know that Kate Brown violated the Oregon Emergency Law starting with her first executive order in March 2020? That's still a mystery to this day.
June 6, 2026
