Skip to main contentJohn Kroger once prosecuted a Brooklyn Mafia capo for the murders of a dozen guys with names like Big Anthony "Tony Muscles" Frezza and Sal "The Hammerhead" Cardaci.
In his memoir, Kroger recounts a prison interview with Mario Parlagreco, a witness against mob boss Gregory Scarpa Jr.
"Mario described, in graphic detail, how he cleaned up Cardaci's blood and brains in the bathroom of Mike's Candy Store," Kroger writes in his book, Convictions: A Prosecutor's Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins and Enron Thieves, set for release in May. "Mario's face wrinkled up, and he began to cry quietly, not sobbing, just a few tears. He was, I think, reflecting on his loss of innocence. All I could think of, as I waited for him to finish, was how to use his sorrow to my advantage."
A decade later and 3,000 miles away from New York, Kroger is running in the Democratic primary for attorney general of Oregon. If elected, he'd run Oregon's Department of Justice, which is responsible for consumer protection, battling organized crime, investigating public corruption, enforcing child-support agreements, defending lawsuits against the state and advising state agencies.
Kroger's opponent, Greg Macpherson, took a different path to the May 20 primary. As a senior partner in the state's biggest law firm, Macpherson has forged relationships with large corporations and compiled a distinguished legislative record in three terms in the Oregon House.
Both men say they'll energize an office that under incumbent Hardy Myers—sometimes derisively referred to in political circles as "Hardly Matters"—has seldom made headlines in his three terms.
Kroger and Macpherson are both lanky Harvard graduates, Democrats (there is no Republican in the race) and accomplished lawyers. Yet their backgrounds could hardly be more different.
A third-generation Oregonian, Macpherson has practiced law for 33 years but has never tried a case in court.
Kroger, 16 years Macpherson's junior, hopscotched across a half-dozen jobs in a half-dozen states before becoming a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School six years ago. He appeared in court 1,000 times as a federal prosecutor.
Neither man is shy about addressing his opponent's shortcomings.
Macpherson, 57, notes that most of the financial support for "Professor Kroger" comes from out of state. By using Kroger's title, Macpherson gets a dig in about his opponent teaching rather than practicing law. Voters have a clear choice, Macpherson says: "perspiration versus aspiration."
Kroger, a pugnacious ex-Marine, says Macpherson is a defender of the status quo and will seek to protect the same powerful institutions Kroger wants to challenge:
"I prosecuted Enron, and Greg's firm represented them," says Kroger, who kicked off his campaign at the base of Enron's former Portland headquarters.
Much like the Democratic presidential primary, the AG's race presents strong candidates with different styles and skills. And just like the presidential race, the choice for this office can have a huge impact, on issues ranging from consumer product safety to property rights to same-sex marriage.
Macpherson is a problem-solver and the consummate insider. His Attorney General's Office would probably operate smoothly, if unspectacularly.
Kroger is a crusader and an outsider who wants to shake up a state he thinks has grown stale. As attorney general, he would probably put his office at the center of public conversation.
"Without being critical of Hardy, nobody's taken a hard look at how this office operates or what it does since 1980," says Bill Gary, a Eugene lawyer who worked in Oregon's Department of Justice for 12 years, including six as the top deputy for former AG Dave Frohnmayer. "It's important for organizations to be periodically reinvented, and that's the opportunity in this race."
Here's a look at both men.
Greg Macpherson
Place of birth: Corvallis
Education: Harvard, Georgetown Law
Family: Second wife Victoria is a lawyer, 26-year-old twins from first marriage
Car: 2005 Subaru Outback
Other transport: Has ridden in Cycle Oregon 10 times.
Key endorsements: NARAL, Oregon League of Conservation Voters, Gov. Ted Kulongoski, ex-Gov. Barbara Roberts, House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D-Portland)
Greg Macpherson is as Oregonian as a rainy winter day. He grew up on a Willamette Valley dairy farm and attended a two-room schoolhouse through sixth grade, then "went to town" for high school in Albany.
If Oregon has a political establishment, Macpherson is part of it. For more than 30 years, he's practiced law at Stoel Rives.
The firm represents many of Oregon's biggest companies, including Nike, PacifiCorp and Tektronix. Myers, the current AG, was Macpherson's law partner at the firm. Both Myers and his predecessor as AG, now-Gov. Ted Kulongoski, have endorsed Macpherson.
Macpherson is a storied name in Oregon politics. Macpherson's father, Hector, served in the state Senate and co-sponsored Senate Bill 100, the 1973 law that established Oregon's land-use planning system. Macpherson's grandfather served in the Oregon House and helped found the Oregon Department of Education.
"I come from a family that believes you step up and make things work in your community," Macpherson says.
At Stoel Rives, Macpherson specializes in the important, if unexciting, area of employee-benefit plans. Among his clients are Daimler (formerly Freightliner), Roseburg Forest Products and the City of Portland Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund.
Macpherson's personality reflects the precise, deliberate nature of his practice. He rarely appears in public without a tightly knotted tie. At the gym, he dons sandals to protect his feet before entering the shower.
Despite his pedigree, Macpherson didn't begin his political career until he was 52 years old.
"I wanted to get my financial house in order first," he says.
As a senior partner at Stoel, he says he was on track to make between $300,000 and $500,000 a year before deciding to reduce his billable hours so he could serve in the Legislature.
In the Oregon House, where he represents Lake Oswego, Macpherson has been in the middle of major issues.
In 2003, he led a fiercely contested effort to reduce benefits under the Public Employee Retirement System, or PERS, at Kulongoski's behest.
"It was clear some local governments would go bankrupt if we didn't change the system," Macpherson says.
The PERS fix reduced the growth of government contributions, freeing up scarce dollars for K-12 education, human services and other programs.
But public-employee unions have not forgotten Macpherson's lead role in cutting their benefits. Their anger is a main reason the Oregon Education Association and Service Employees International Union—both powerful allies—strongly back Kroger. (The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees will not endorse in the race.)
Bill Gary, who represented the City of Eugene in PERS litigation, says public employees may hold a grudge against Macpherson. But Gary says Macpherson performed a necessary service.
"He's shown exactly the kind of political courage that it takes to be AG," Gary says.
While pension reform is Macpherson's biggest legislative accomplishment, he also touts a 2005 meth bill he co-sponsored. That bill made pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in meth, available by prescription only. Pharmaceutical companies hated the bill.
"I've never been lobbied harder on an issue," he says.
Since 2005, the number of meth labs busted annually in Oregon has dropped from 588 in 2001 to 20 in 2007, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
In 2007, Macpherson chaired a committee that developed Measure 49, an effort to roll back some of the land-use changes mandated by 2004's Measure 37.
Environmentalists praised his work, which helped win him the endorsement of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters. Even Republicans who unsuccessfully opposed Measure 49 commend Macpherson's work on what was perhaps the session's most contentious issue.
"Greg was honest and he was fair," says Rep. Bill Garrard (R-Klamath Falls), who has endorsed Macpherson. "I don't think I would call Greg aggressive, but he is very persistent."
During his legislative tenure, Macpherson has also cast at least one high-profile vote that has raised questions about his independence and commitment to consumer protection. Previously, a legal loophole allowed utilities such as Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp to keep money collected from customers that was supposed to pay the utilities' income taxes.
After Enron bought PGE in 1997, it recognized the loophole could be lucrative. Over the next eight years, Enron collected nearly $1 billion from ratepayers for tax payments and kept nearly all of it.
In 2005, lawmakers closed that loophole—without Macpherson's help.
"Macpherson was one of only two D's in the legislature who voted against 408," says utility lawyer Dan Meek.
Macpherson declared a potential conflict of interest because PacifiCorp, one of his law firm's largest clients, opposed the bill. After declaring the conflict, he voted against the bill (as allowed by legislative rules). He says he did so because last-minute amendments should have been given a public hearing and could lead to unintended consequences.
Macpherson denies he voted to serve PacifiCorp's interest. He notes that several of the large companies who supported the bill are also Stoel Rives clients.
"I've always made my decisions based on what I think is right, regardless of how it may affect the firm's clients," he says.
Macpherson says his Attorney General's Office would advocate for Oregonians more broadly than in the past.
"Hardy Myers primarily focused on public safety and victims' rights," Macpherson says. "Those are worthy issues, but I would extend the office's reach."
"For example, we don't generate as much economic activity out of our university system as other states," he says. "The transfer of intellectual property is a legal issue, and I'll take that up."
Macpherson differs with Kroger on Measure 11, the law that provides mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes. Simply put, Macpherson says he's more willing to consider reducing sentences.
"We've gone on a prison-building boom and underinvested in other services," he says. "The difference between us is, I don't think we should say, 'No changes.'" (Kroger says he would keep current sentencing guidelines in place for violent crimes.)
Macpherson says being AG would be a natural continuation of his legislative service and big-firm legal experience.
"What the AG does is oversee a range of legal work," he says. "As the lead lawyer for a range of Stoel Rives clients, I've spent a career managing a flow of legal work."
He says one of Kroger's criticisms—that Macpherson has never tried a case in court—is irrelevant.
"The job of attorney general is being a leader and an advocate. It's not being a trial lawyer," Macpherson says. Rather, Macpherson argues, his opponent's lack of familiarity with state government and the players in Oregon's legal system is a disqualifier.
"Professor Kroger just took the [Oregon]bar exam last year," he says. "Is it reasonable that the chief legal advocate for the state should be licensed in Oregon for less than a year?"
John Kroger
Place of birth: Cincinnati, Ohio (no relation to Kroger grocery)
Education: Yale, Harvard Law
Family: Never married, recently engaged
Car: 2002 Honda Civic
Other transport: Has run in the Hood to Coast Relay seven times.
Key endorsements: OEA, SEIU, 23 district attorneys, Sierra Club, former Gov. John Kitzhaber, Portland City Commissioners Erik Sten and Randy Leonard
John Kroger moved to Oregon in 2002, the same year Macpherson first ran for the Legislature. Kroger knows two things about his new home: He loves it and he wants to make it better.
"On a big range of issues, I have a sense of moral urgency and am just incredibly frustrated about where we are as a state," Kroger says.
Like a prosecutor, Kroger runs through his evidence: a recent study that ranked Oregon 49th in spending on drug treatment for young adults; a report that gives Oregon a "D" in child welfare; a recent evaluation by Business Week that says Portland is the "third most toxic city in the country."
Timid, complacent leadership, Kroger says, is to blame.
"This state needs somebody who is going to fight for fundamental improvements," he says. "The reality is that the Democrats [who run the state] play defense all the time because they don't have a strategic vision."
Make no mistake, Kroger wants to play offense.
Until the second week of March, the political shorthand was that he wanted to be Oregon's version of former New York AG Eliot Spitzer, who brought corporate criminals to their knees with aggressive tactics. But well before Spitzer's disgrace, which aborted his tenure as New York governor after barely a year, Kroger distanced himself from comparisons with the New Yorker.
"I'm not following Eliot Spitzer's game plan," he told Oregonian columnist Steve Duin in September. "He's not my model for this job. I don't need a model. I know precisely what I want to do."
In contrast to the hubris that felled Spitzer, Kroger displays a remarkable level of self-criticism. Beyond courtroom drama, his memoir describes Kroger's evolution as a person and a prosecutor through a series of painful mistakes and ethical dilemmas.
"By 2003 I had become a very good prosecutor," he writes about his decision to leave the federal Department of Justice. "I had also concluded, to my regret, that sometimes it is impossible to be both a great prosecutor and a good human being."
When Kroger was growing up outside Houston, he seemed unlikely to become either. He says he was an alcoholic by the time he was 15. When he was 16, he and a friend got caught stealing hubcaps off a state senator's Mustang. Kroger was then a senior in high school, and his father gave him an ultimatum:
"After you get that diploma, I want you out of here within 48 hours."
So, on his 17th birthday, Kroger joined the Marines. "The Marines drove into me the idea that you have an obligation to serve," he says. "Since then, I've always tried to find a job where I can do the maximum amount of good."
After three years of service in California and Panama and on a submarine as a member of an elite recon unit, he won acceptance to Yale.
"You could say I was an affirmative-action case," Kroger says. "I was the only veteran in a class of more than 1,300."
Kroger immersed himself in philosophy, particularly the "utilitarian" theory of philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which, boiled down, says a person's actions should be judged by their social consequences. "I've always tried to judge whether I'm having a positive impact on the world," Kroger says. "My view of how to do that has evolved over time."
After college, he landed jobs as an aide to then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)—now a powerful U.S. senator—and then-House Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.), before becoming a campaign aide to first-time presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.
When Clinton won, Kroger writes in his memoir, "I, because of my abrasiveness, was…relegated to a backwater at the U.S Treasury Department."
Kroger then went to law school and in 1997 secured a job working as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, where abrasiveness came in handy. His first big case involved the prosecution of Scarpa, whom the feds believed had committed more than a dozen murders and controlled much of Brooklyn and Staten Island.
"I first saw him in action when he had been a prosecutor for only a few months," says Leslie Caldwell, who was a senior prosecutor in the Brooklyn office and later led the Enron Task Force. "He was cross-examining the defendant, a vicious and well-known mafia boss. John was so skilled that he made a fool of the witness and exposed him as the corrupt liar he was."
Other former supervisors are equally effusive.
"John was a superstar from the minute he walked into the office," says Kelly Moore, who was chief of the violent crimes and terrorism section of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office.
After three years without a vacation, Kroger finally took three months off. He bought a bicycle and rode across the county, solo. His trip ended in Portland. "I had fallen in love with a city," he writes in his memoir.
In 2002 Kroger snagged a job teaching law at Lewis & Clark, where the floor-to-ceiling window in his office juts into the mossy woods of adjacent Tryon Creek State Park. He lives a 10-minute walk from campus.
Three months after arriving at Lewis & Clark, he rejoined the U.S. Justice Department on a temporary assignment as part of the team prosecuting Enron execs.
Kroger's job was to investigate a subsidiary of the Houston energy giant that got its start as part of PGE—Enron Broadband. The results were mixed. Kroger indicted seven Broadband employees but left the task force to return to Lewis & Clark before the cases went to trial. Two of the Broadband executives pleaded guilty.
"I expected the remainder of the Broadband case to end on an equally successful note," he writes. "Instead, the ride has proved very bumpy."
Trials of the five other defendants indicted during Kroger's tenure ended in hung juries or acquittals.
In his book, Kroger says his initial scorched-earth approach—threats of long prison sentences based on limited investigation—was a "huge mistake," because well-educated executives were less susceptible to such tactics than professional drug dealers and Mafia killers.
"When I transplanted my skills to the white-collar [crime] world, they were much less successful," he writes. "The reasons for this were so obvious I should have realized it before I made a fool of myself."
Ultimately, however, Caldwell says evidence from the Broadband investigation played a key role in the conviction of Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who was sentenced to 24 years in prison. Caldwell thinks Kroger has the right skills for public office.
"He has great judgment, a tireless work ethic and a strong sense of what is right," she says.
Kroger plans to attack two issues immediately: meth and pollution.
His approach to meth is to ramp up treatment rather than just rely on incarceration. He says programs in Texas and other states have shown $1 spent on treatment saves $4 to $8 of spending on law enforcement. Treating meth addicts, he says, does far more than just reduce drug trafficking and addiction: It also reduces related property crimes and child abuse.
He dismisses Macpherson's claims of success on meth. "That bill [which required prescriptions for drugs containing pseudoephedrine] reduced the public-health hazard of cooking the meth here," he says. "But it did absolutely nothing to reduce demand or address the associated property crimes and child abuse."
Kroger also proposes to make prosecuting polluters a priority and beef up support of environmental enforcement. "My goal is to make Oregon the national leader in environmental protection," he says. His pitch on crime and pollution has convinced 23 county district attorneys and the Sierra Club.
"Greg Macpherson is a friend of mine, but when you look at the two candidates' backgrounds, it's clear John will take a stronger position on public safety," says Clackamas County District Attorney John Foote, one of the DAs who endorsed Kroger.
"We feel the AG's office hasn't really been used to protect the environment," says the Sierra Club's Ivan Maluski. "We thought Kroger would not only go after polluters but make sure that state agencies the AG advises would change their approach as well."
Like other lawyers who support Kroger, Portland trial lawyer Mike Williams says voters should focus on what each candidate has actually done rather than how long he has lived in Oregon, or when he took the bar.
"I think Greg Macpherson would be a good attorney general," Williams says. "I think John Kroger would be a great attorney general."
will debate each other at City Club at the Governor Hotel on Friday, March 28. Doors open at 11:30 am. $5 for non-members.
FACT: The Oregon Department of Justice has a $140 million annual budget and 1,200 employees, including about 300 lawyers.
FACT: Among the bills Macpherson sponsored was one that outlawed teenagers talking on cell phones while driving.
Fact: Like Macpherson, Kroger would take a big pay cut if elected. His salary is $117,000. The AG makes about $74,000.
FACT: Since no Republican entered the AG's race, whoever wins the May 20 Democratic primary will replace incumbent Hardy Myers.
WWeek 2015