It's easy for Oregon Republicans to ascribe GOP gubernatorial challenger Ron Saxton's loss to national forces working against them. It's also true that Gov. Ted Kulongoski owes his opponent a "thank you" note.
Consider how bad things looked after May's Democratic primary.
Kulongoski's approval ratings had hovered down in Bush territory; former Gov. John Kitzhaber had considered challenging Kulongoski in the primary; and the 43,000-plus member Service Employees International Union went with longshot challenger Jim Hill in the primary, while other powerful Democratic players sat on their hands.
But Saxton failed to exploit Kulongoski's vulnerability in the general election—in part because he abandoned the political center to win over enough conservatives with tough stances on immigration and spending in the Republican primary. And that left Saxton with no appeal to the center, where disaffected Democrats and independent voters reside. Saxton even alienated some key moderate Republicans who supported him in 2002, like Bruce Samson, former director of public policy for Qwest and general counsel of NW Natural.
"He lost a lot of moderates," Samson says. "The Saxton that I knew before—something happened to that guy."
Here's who else Kulongoski can thank for his second term—and who may regret betting on red:
The Oregon Education Association
Before the primary, the 43,000-member teacher union sent its message of unhappiness with Kulongoski by declining to endorse a candidate.
Three days after the primary, when the message was received and Kulongoski looked weak, OEA endorsed him over Saxton and subsequently launched a $500,000 independent expenditure campaign, "Teachers for Ted."
What they want: K-12 to be the governor's top priority.
Ben Westlund Kulongoski's margin of victory was less than 7 percent—only about 3 percentage points more than the 4 percent that Constitution Party candidate Mary Starrett gnawed out of Saxton's hide.
Just imagine if Westlund, an independent state senator from Central Oregon, had gone through with his plans for a third-party run. Westlund threatened to run to Kulongoski's left on taxes, health care and the Iraq war. In the meantime, while Westlund's disappearance (and ultimate endorsement of Kulongoski) aided the governor, Starrett's appeal to bedrock conservatives forced Saxton to stay right.
What he wants: Westlund is considering a 2008 run for state treasurer and would surely love help from the guv.
Campaign staff Over the summer, Kulongoski upgraded his campaign staff. Hired gun Jim Ross came from California to take charge. Josh Kardon, a hard-nosed aide to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, quieted the Grand Ronde tribes, which spent nearly $1 million against Kulongoski in the primary. Former AFL-CIO director Tim Nesbitt strengthened union relations. And Kulongoski's press secretary, Anna Richter-Taylor, got her underfinanced boss tons of free media.
What they want: Kardon's boss doesn't have to worry about running against Saxton in 2010. Nesbitt and Richter-Taylor want Kulongoski as energized for the next four years as he's been for the past four months. (Whether Nesbitt joins the governor's staff will help determine that outcome.)
Here's who's unlikely to be invited to the inauguration:
Big Timber With the exception of Weyerhaeuser (which primarily cuts privately owned trees), Oregon's timber industry placed a massive, $1.4 million bet on Saxton. Kulongoski sued the feds last year to block logging on millions of acres of roadless areas and, as a member of the state land board, has influence over Oregon's vast state forests.
What they won't get: Four of seven spots on the powerful state Forestry Commission are up for appointment by Kulongoski.
Auto dealers Kulongoski's support for tougher tailpipe emissions and newfound concern about global warming drove car dealers into Saxton's camp. They donated well over $175,000 to the Republican's campaign.
What they won't get: A break from potentially costly regulation. Kulongoski plans to press on alternative energy and air cleanup. Both policies will require new investment, additional regulation and cost sharing, which point toward deep-pocketed market participants like auto dealers.
The beer and wine industry Over the past 15 years, no lobbyist has done more for his clients than Paul Romain of the Oregon Beer & Wine Distributors Association. Romain killed tax increases and preserved monopolies. Romain's clients strongly supported Saxton (and House Republicans).
What they won't get: Any sympathy from the governor. Kulongoski and legislative Democrats could use a higher beer tax to support social programs, and could help big grocers by undoing legal protections Romain erected around his clients.
Kulongoski just appointed, with his fellow Democrats on the State Land Board, his and Kitzhaber's natural resource adviser to head the Dept of State Lands. That agency is to manage Common School Lands to produce and maximize returns to the Common School Fund. The State got sections 16 and 36 in every township at Statehood, as well as all submerged lands. Over a century, the State has traded or sold timberland, and tried to consolidate its timber holdings in the State Forests. Elliott State Forest is all CommonSchoolLands. It is managed, as per fiat by Kitzhaber, to produce no more than 24.5 MMBF of timber a year, about 30% of that expected from a managed forest. The State does not intend to allow gravel mining from any submerged lands. The est. 700,000 acres of grazing lands in arid Eastern Oregon are hard pressed to produce revenue beyond what a bloated State bureaucracy takes in management fees, and thus produce little if any money for the CSF. There is great impetus to have those lands not used to produce revenue, and that is why Kulongoski hired his resource preservation expert to lead the Department. He mission is to protect those lands from use. Just as her job at Pacific Rivers was to protect rivers. Funding for education is NOT a part of the plan. That money all has to come from elsewhere.
As to appointments to the Board of Forestry, that has been a joke since Barbara Roberts. The appointments of presevationist know-nothings to State Boards is to be expected. We get the intended result. Millions are spent on studies to find ways to prevent landslides that bring large woody debris and rock to streams, and millions are spent on helicoptering logs and rocks into streams that have been determined to be lacking in landslide debris. You can take that notion through its logical course of all things a politically appointed board with a politically directed mandate that is to be supported by politcally directed science, and it is politboro management. And, in Oregon today, who cares?
Kulongoski cannot become the Education Governor because he does not have the votes to pass revenue bills, and sustain vetoes. He has no source of revenue to become the Education Governor. He has no constituency outside the education unions and big business employers to demand wholesale improvements in education. The labor force is now alien driven, whether for entry level strong backs or sophisticated big minds. Mexico for backs, and India and China for minds. The need is being filled.
The public cares not a whit about beer and wine, and all the Kulongoski auto regulations will do is further depress the domestic industry and promote the imports, which his union bedfellows will have to deal with. Westlund is a turncoat, and he can be painted that way by either side. Quislings do not fare well over time. Kardon does a good job of presenting a stuffed shirt of pontification with a bad eye job and a slow modem as a senator, and seniority will continue to allow his kind to exist. Maybe Oregon will have the next Strom Thurmond or Byrd or Teddy Kennedy from this guy. Wyden will totter into his old age, just another tall guy in a bad suit. If we haven't figuered out that Oregon does not have a Republican farm team, we are not looking. There is no competition in the future. Nobody cares. Those that say they do are spending the winter in Palm Springs or Mexico. Nobody here cares.
Not cutting public timber did not come with a replacement industry, and our version of West Virginia, complete with wind bag senators, will only continue be overgrown by blackberries while the urban areas thrive, despite a foundering education system that will further starve for resources. Again, who cares? The boomers will not. The aliens will not. Caring is demanding results and raising money. When nobody cares, they also keep their wallets closed. And Kulongoski will retreat to his hidey hole and might come out in four years to endorse someone to succeed him. Or not.
There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE to suggest that Ted Kulongoski, nor for that matter any candidate for the Oregon legislature, was motivated to place a viable health care plan which would bring affordable health care to Oregonians AND Oregon's public institutions on his campaign agenda. Health care was not on Kulongoski's electoral radar this political season. There is no reason to believe that it will place any higher on his 2007 legislative agenda. Kulongoski and the Democrats have no more courage to take on the private health insurance industry and the public sector health care elite with a bold new plan to change the status quo any more than the Republicans. Kulongoski will fail. He has already failed. And because the Democrats will control all of state government in 2007 the burden of failure will be entirely upon Ted Kulongoski and the Democrats. They will tinker at the edges but by July 2007 they will be no closer to bringing affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions then they are today.
Oregon's public institutions will spend roughly $625,000,000 in INCREASED health care costs during our newly reelected governor's next four year term. That means $625,000,000 LESS in delivered public services throughout our state. This is an uncomfortable economic circumstance (similar to a raging civil war in Iraq denied by George W. Bush) that Ted Kulongoski has and continues to ignore to this day. The Oregon Community Health Care Bill can stabilize and reduce the health care costs to public institutions by 20%. Taxpayers, voters and citizens take note.
The Oregon Community Health Care Bill has been the ONLY solution on the public table for the past two years that directly addresses Oregon's moral and economic health care crisis and can bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions. It can succeed because it does not rely on the federal government and the private health insurance industry, both of which have failed and will continue to fail to bring affordable health care to Oregonians and Oregon's public institutions.
If you want to know the health care policy story in our state and not a story which repeats the same old, same old, same old, then join 17,000 of your fellow Oregonians and sign up for Oregon Health Watchers by writing to ellmyer@macsolve.com . You'll find out more of the truth of health care politics, how it affects you and what you can do about it then from any other source. You won't be disappointed.
Richard Ellmyer
Oregon Community Health Care Bill author and project champion
President, MacSolutions Inc. - A Macintosh computer consulting business providing web hosting for artists and very small businesses.
Writer/Publisher - Oregon Health Watcher commentary - Published on the Internet and distributed to 17,000 readers interested in public health care policy in Oregon.
http://www.goodgrowthnw.org/health.html
True story from Nevada (as told to me recently by my instructor at UNR during a class on "Public Finance"): When 9-11 occurred, Nevada's budget-sustaining revenue from its sales tax went into the basement because of the hit taken by the tourism industry. They had a) a Rainy Day fund in place to save their budget, and b) the political will and courage, after the crisis, to pass a payroll tax to replenish their Rainy Day fund so as not to be vulnerable to such drains on their fund in the future, in case of an unexpected emergency.
Lessons can be learned from other places. When I was making my farewells this past spring, I asked a former govenor's staffer what the future would hold for my Oregon; in a comment remarkably similar to Bearbait's West Virginia take on the future of Oregonians, in the entire state, not just Portland, he replied, "Serf's Up!"