Gov. Kate Brown, Sen. Jeff Merkley and other Democratic notables are suddenly scrambling to support Amanda La Bell, a registered Democrat who just days ago was nominated by the Working Families Party to represent the 54th House District. Democrats are hoping that La Bell, who co-founded the Bend Diaper Bank, is the right person to mop up the mess the party has made of a perfect opportunity to pick up a legislative seat from Oregon’s struggling Republicans.

Democrats, to their chagrin, do have their own candidate on November’s ballot. Nathan Boddie, a Bend city councilor, waltzed unopposed through the party’s primary. Then disaster struck. In late June, the House Democratic campaign committee yanked its support for Boddie, followed quickly by a cascade of left-leaning interest groups.

At this point, party leaders, including House Speaker Tina Kotek, should have explained to voters exactly why they’d tossed Boddie overboard. What, exactly, did he say? What, exactly, did he do? To whom did he say and do what he did, and what were the circumstances of his offenses?

Instead, the allegations against Boddie have remained maddeningly vague. A press release issued by FuturePAC, the House Democrats’ campaign mechanism, referred to “allegations of inappropriate behavior.” An earlier FuturePAC statement contained a bit more information, suggesting that Boddie had engaged in sexist behavior and used a homophobic slur. But party leaders steadfastly refused to release enough information to give voters a clear picture of Boddie’s supposed offenses, without which, presumably, they hoped everyone would assume the worst.

Maintaining this cloak of secrecy did two things. It made a victim of Boddie, whose behavior may, indeed, have been as horrible as Kotek and others would like us to believe. And because it victimized him, the party’s shadow campaign created an opportunity — and, no doubt, an incentive — for him to remain on the ballot rather than dropping out. Why, one might ask, should he quit simply because he’s lost the support of people who won’t tell the public exactly what he’s supposed to have done?

Let’s assume that Boddie’s behavior was deplorable enough to shock the conscience of voters. (His response to a subsequent and unrelated allegation that he’d groped a Bend woman in a bar years earlier certainly doesn’t speak well for his good sense or his sensitivity.) And let’s say party leaders had done the right thing and detailed the behavior that cost Boddie their support. Do you suppose Boddie, saddled with ugly details, would have refused to drop out of the race? That seems unlikely. And if he had dropped out back in June, the party could have placed a different candidate on the ballot.

Instead, less than eight weeks before ballots will be mailed, a number of Democratic leaders would like voters in District 54 to support a candidate to whom they have just been introduced. The months preceding this year’s primary weren’t enough for Kotek and company to learn as much as they’d have liked about Boddie, yet we’re supposed to become sufficiently well-acquainted with La Bell in the next month and a half to hand her a seat in the Legislature? Democrats are playing voters for fools.

At this late stage, there is only one responsible choice, and that’s Republican candidate Cheri Helt. If nothing else, Bend voters know her thanks to her years on the local school board.

In the meantime, here’s hoping Democrats — and Republicans — learn a couple of lessons from this year’s fiasco. First, operate transparently. If House Democrats had been more open in June, they probably would not have had to resort to last-second electoral gymnastics. Second, encourage multiple candidates to run in party primaries. The pressure and scrutiny of a contested primary might have revealed enough to steer Democratic voters away from Boddie. And if nothing else, a contested primary would have introduced them to other candidates, who could then plausibly emerge as third-party options in the case of a Boddie-like implosion.