 |
Vicki Walker
Tattoo she'd get: A butterfly on her hip.
This primary to replace Democratic incumbent Bill Bradbury, who can’t run again because of term limits, pits three accomplished state senators against each other.
They are vying for a big job. In addition to serving as custodian of all state records, the secretary of state performs three primary functions: overseeing the Elections Division, auditing state agencies and serving on the State Land Board with the governor and state treasurer. As an added bonus, Bradbury’s successor will get to tackle a monster political issue—the redrawing in 2010 of legislative districts.
Sen. Kate Brown, who has represented Portland in the Legislature since 1992 and was Senate majority leader until recently, is probably the most familiar among the three to local voters. A juvenile-rights lawyer, Brown is a champion on equity issues and was an effective fundraiser for her caucus.
Sen. Rick Metsger (D-Welches) may also be familiar from his 16 years as a reporter and sports anchor at KOIN TV. In the Senate, he has concentrated on transportation and has earned a reputation as a consummate deal-maker.
Either Brown or Metsger could be a fine secretary of state, although neither has advanced many specific ideas about how to make the office perform better. And neither possesses the fiery energy of Sen. Vicki Walker. The Eugene Democrat has produced a 16-page booklet of ideas about how to remake the office. That thoroughness is no surprise.
Since entering the Legislature in 1999, Walker, a mild-mannered court reporter by day, has been a whirling dervish of activity, much of it directed at annihilating the status quo. Walker crusaded against mismanagement at the publicly owned workers’ compensation insurer, SAIF Corp. In that battle, she did what was then unthinkable for a Democrat: blasting former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, whom SAIF was then paying $40,000 to lobby the Legislature. (Walker later tipped WW to Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s, leading to an exposé, “The 30-Year Secret, WW, May 12, 2004).
But Walker has done far more than challenge Goldschmidt: Along with Metsger, she authored Senate Bill 408 in 2005, a bill that plugged a billion-dollar tax loophole for utilities. She passed a bill that ended golden parachutes for school administrators and another that prohibits the state from entering into secret settlement agreements. Under her guidance, the state’s 75 auditors would crank up government accountability, and the hucksters and fast-buck artists who make a living from the initiative system would face a very determined elections cop.
Video of WW endorsement interview(thanks to Portland Community Media)
If there is bad stuff going on with the initiative system, it's Bill Bradbury's abuse of his office to fraudulently keep off the ballot conservative measures that his public employee union friends don't like.
One of the things about Portland liberals that really troubles me is how hard they are willing to work to stop the people of Oregon from voting on conservative measures. Instead of fighting my proposals in the public marktet place of ideas, they do everything in their power to make sure those ideas are never placed on the ballot where they can be openly discussed. Then they defame me personally rather than refute my ideas.
You call yourselves Democrats and then do everything you can to insure that people don't get to vote on measures you don't like. So much for majority rule, supposedly the mainstay of democracy.
When I eventually get something on the ballot in spite of all your efforts to keep it off, you spend four or five million dollars campaigning against me, and then afterwards say the measure didn't pass because it had my name on it. Go figure.
If you really wanted to get fraud out of the initiative system, you would ask Bill Bradbury to resign. There would be no better place to start cleaning up the system. For every forged signature that has made it through our stringent review process, it would be safe to say that Bradbury has thrown out a thousand valid ones. No joke.
From what I have heard from both Vicki Walker and Kate Brown, they would follow in Bradbury's footsteps and try to kill the process. Why not just appoint Tim Nesbitt to the office and stop pretending the unions aren't calling all the shots? Why not pass a law requiring that only liberal measures can be on the ballot? After all, that's what you really want.