Welcome to Memorial Day weekend, Weekend Reader readers! 

Were you clamoring for an Oregon gubernatorial rematch between Gov. Tina Kotek and her Republican nemesis, state Sen. Christine Drazan? Not so much? Well, sorry: That’s how Tuesday’s primary election played out, with Kotek easily besting a batch of little-known Democratic contenders and Drazan claiming a surprisingly easy victory on the Republican side. 

And Kotek essentially launched the general election campaign this week with an ad that signaled her election strategy: to link Drazan as closely as possible to the policies of President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Drazan will do everything she can to focus attention on the performance of Kotek, whose ratings have dropped in the Portland area, a Democratic stronghold. My sense now is that Kotek still has the edge, but she could be vulnerable in a race that doesn’t include a thir candidate like Betsy Johnson in 2022. 

In Benton County, voters apparently are on the way to ousting two-time County Commissioner Pat Malone in favor of Adair Village City Councilor John Wilson. The most recent results show Wilson with a 490-vote edge over Malone. All the votes aren’t counted yet – and ballots received by the elections office up to seven days after Election Day still count if they were postmarked by Tuesday. But those uncounted votes probably aren’t enough to tip the race to Malone in a campaign that was dominated by the controversy over the Coffin Butte Landfill. 

In a rare contested judicial election that didn’t appear to get much news coverage, Yema T. Measho scored a surprisingly easy victory over two contenders. Measho will replace Judge Joan Demarest, who’s retiring from the bench. If the Gazette-Times had any preelection coverage of the race, I didn’t see it. 

These judicial races – which typically draw few candidates and much less interest than they should – likely are going to get more competitive, now that the Legislature has boosted salaries for judges. A circuit court judge in Oregon now makes $204,060 annually. (I should note here that I think that’s a fair salary for judges, considering their workload.)

To that point, voters in Lane County this week did something rare: Unofficial returns show they apparently have ousted a sitting judge.

The tightest Benton County race may be in Philomath, where voters are deciding whether to make permanent a ban on psilocybin services or manufacture. As of Saturday, ban proponents enjoyed a seven-vote lead out of 1,671 votes cast. A couple of observations here: First, if you’re thinking recount, it’s unlikely but not necessarily out of the question: State law calls for automatic recounts only in races where the margin is less than 0.2% of the total votes cast in that particular race – by my calculation, that would be three votes in this case. Second, something tells me it’s unlikely that psilocybin providers are clamoring to hang their shingles in Philomath. (And even though psilocybin continues to show therapeutic promise, its rollout across the state has not been nearly as robust as proponents had hoped. But that’s a topic for another day.)

Benton County turnout for the primary as of Saturday was about 46%, which is OK for a primary election, but it still means that more than half of all registered voters couldn’t be bothered to fill out a ballot. Statewide turnout is about 39%. You’ll miss these elections when they’re gone. Or, considering these turnout numbers, maybe not.

Are you outraged about the Trump administration creating a $1.776 billion fund (the amount is not an accident) to supposedly compensate Trump allies who feel they were unfairly investigated and prosecuted? (Among the supposed beneficiaries of the fund will be Jan. 6 rioters who were prosecuted and found guilty.) If so, this won’t do anything to quell your outrage: The Associated Press reports that the Department of Justice is removing from its website news releases about the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants, calling the releases “partisan propaganda.”

A day after the final episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” aired on CBS, Colbert turned up again on late-night TV: as the guest host of “Only in Monroe,” a community-access TV program in Monroe, Michigan. It was another full-circle moment for Colbert: He had hosted the Monroe show in 2015, shortly before taking over “The Late Show” from David Letterman. 

“Fjord,” director Cristian Munjiu’s Norway-set drama about political polarization, has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s the second time Munjiu has won top honors at Cannes. Muniju said the film is about “left-wing fundamentalism” – it’s about Romanian evangelicals who move to Norway but have their children taken from them by child services for spanking them. Oh, boy; expect the movie to be hotly debated, especially by people who haven’t seen it.

Overall, the consensus is that this year’s Cannes festival has been disappointing but the top prize winners typically earn at least the early fast lane to Oscar nominations. And the win for “Fjord” marked the seventh straight time that the independent film distributor Neon has backed the Palme d’Or winner, an astonishing streak.

This is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer (at least until Memorial Day itself), and also the traditional start of summer-movie season. That usually is a signal for adults to steer clear of the multiplex for a few months, as screens fill with sequels and superhero movies and sequels to superhero movies. But I’m working on a separate blog post about movies scheduled for summertime release that might appeal to adults. I should have that posted by the end of the weekend. 

But it probably says something about me that I will be standing in line in August for this movie: “Coyote vs. Acme,” a live action/Looney Tunes mashup in which long-suffering Wile E. Coyote finally sues the powerful Acme Corp. for selling him so much defective merchandise. Am I worried that this is one of the three movies Warner Bros. shelved, opting to take a tax writeoff instead? Yes. Will that be enough to keep me away? Not at all. You high-minded sorts, go ahead and buy your tickets to Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” I’ll be rooting for justice for plaintiff Coyote. 

That’s it for this weekend. Let’s gather here next week and compare notes on movies – in the meantime, have a safe and happy holiday. Now, if I can only get these starling hatchlings in the back yard to shush.