MEET THE NEW BOSS

Union boss Tim Nesbitt has replaced Bill Sizemore as the most powerful unelected figure in Oregon politics.Read 'em and weep.

Last Friday, a Multnomah County Circuit Court jury made it official: The most powerful unelected figure in Oregon politics is no longer anti-tax activist Bill Sizemore but statewide AFL-CIO chief Tim Nesbitt.

The jury found that Sizemore and his organization had engaged in forgery and racketeering in placing initiatives on the ballot, and it awarded the Oregon Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers damages that could total nearly $2.5 million.

Unless reversed on appeal, the decision could mean the end of Sizemore's political effectiveness.

But perhaps more significantly, the trial signaled the success of Nesbitt's six-year drive to transform Oregon's unions from passive targets to the masters of the initiative process, where many of the state's important political decisions are made. "Nesbitt has reoriented unions in a very effective way," says Oregon State University political-science professor Bill Lunch.

Nesbitt is quick to credit OEA and AFT leadership for actually bringing suit against Sizemore, but it's clear that litigation is just one element of the broader strategy he designed to disarm Sizemore.

It's difficult to overstate the clout the anti-tax crusader wielded in this state as recently as two years ago. Although Sizemore won the Republican nomination for governor in 1998 (and lost badly to incumbent John Kitzhaber), his influence peaked in the 2000 elections.

That year, Sizemore placed six initiatives on the ballot, most notably Measure 91, which, opponents said, would have triggered budget cuts of $2 billion.

Sizemore, who has never held office, cast such a shadow over Salem that for years nearly every significant legislative decision included the anticipation of how he might react. In order to reduce support for Measure 91, for instance, the Legislature referred a similar but watered-down proposal, Measure 88, which passed, while Sizemore's Measure 91 failed.

Although it wasn't obvious at the time, Sizemore's greatest triumph--the passage of Measure 47's property-tax cap in 1996--sowed the seeds of his destruction.

Sizemore's victory both impressed and depressed Nesbitt, then an official with Service Employees International Union. Nesbitt says that in 1995 it was obvious another property-tax measure was imminent, because Measure 5, passed in 1990, had failed to slow the growth in property taxes. Still, the unions were paralyzed. "We all saw Measure 47 coming, but we didn't do anything," Nesbitt recalls. "In initiative politics, we had no ability to counter bad measures."

Shortly thereafter, Nesbitt says, he wrote a report for the SEIU board proposing a new approach to the initiative system. He wanted to go on the offensive instead of always playing defense. Reaction to his proposal was mixed. "Some people said that it would be like mutually assured destruction--whatever we did, they'd do more," Nesbitt recalls.

But in 1999, Nesbitt replaced Irv Fletcher as president of the statewide AFL-CIO, making him the state's top union official. Sizemore soon gave him a chance to test his strategy.

To counter Sizemore in 2000, Nesbitt invested in sophisticated phone and direct-mail operations. "We realized that we need to get our members to the polls," he says. "And so we got a 86.3 percent turnout from union households in this state, which was the best in the nation."

Sizemore's measures all failed, but he claimed partial victory, noting that the unions spent countless hours and several million dollars to defeat him. But the tax-buster didn't realize just how strongly Nesbitt and other union leaders had embraced pre-emptive tactics.

A seemingly insignificant forgery case involving a Sizemore employee in 2000 led to the formation of the Voter Education Project, a union-funded effort to scrutinize Sizemore's operation. "We realized then that the forgery and the slipshod accounting were a far larger part of his operation than we had known," Nesbitt says.

The Voter Education Project's scrutiny was partially responsible for Sizemore's three initiatives being rejected by the secretary of state this year before they reached the ballot. The project's efforts also dovetailed with the information produced in Sizemore's trial, providing a paper trail of damaging evidence.

The final link in Nesbitt's strategy comes in November, with Measure 26. That initiative, for which Nesbitt is chief petitioner, would force signature gatherers to be paid on an hourly basis rather than for each signature, thus reducing a prime incentive for fraud.

Nesbitt scoffs at the notion that he has dethroned Sizemore, but Lunch thinks he is being too modest. "Historically, the unions dealt primarily with politicians and other opinion leaders and viewed initiatives as unimportant," the OSU professor says. "I think Nesbitt is much better than his predecessors at recognizing just how important they have become."

WWeek 2015

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