Register-Guard: Merkley offers effective leadership

U.S. Senate: Merkley The House speaker offers effective leadership
Eugene Register-Guard, April 19, 2008

Oregon Democrats sense opportunity as Gordon Smith seeks a third term in the U.S. Senate and are looking for the candidate who can run the strongest race against the Republican in the fall. That’s a tactical consideration.

A more important question is which candidate can best serve Oregon’s and the nation’s interests in Washington, D.C. Jeff Merkley isn’t the jazziest campaigner of the six Democrats on the May 20 ballot, but he is by far the best prepared. Democratic voters should nominate him.

Merkley, 51, is the only Democrat in the race with experience in elective office, having represented a Portland district in the Oregon House for five terms. As minority leader during the 2003 and 2005 sessions, he helped engineer the Democratic victories in 2006 that ended 16 years of Republican control of the House. His colleagues elected him speaker for the 2007 session.

That session was the most productive in recent memory, with important achievements in the areas of education funding, civil rights, consumer protection and budgetary stability. Merkley also presided over an efficiently run supplemental session earlier this year.

It’s telling that of the 31 members of the House Democratic caucus, all are supporting Merkley. They have nothing to fear from him, because he can’t run for re-election to the Legislature while pursuing a U.S. Senate seat. Merkley imposed tight discipline to keep his slender majority united and treated Republicans fairly in such matters as committee representation — and did it without making enemies of any of his Democratic colleagues. A more convincing demonstration of leadership would be hard to find, and it’s a type of leadership badly needed in hyper-partisan national politics.

Merkley’s strongest opponent is Steve Novick, 45, a political and public policy consultant. He grew up in Cottage Grove, entered the University of Oregon when most people his age were starting high school and graduated from Harvard Law School at age 21. Novick worked for the U.S. Department of Justice for 10 years prosecuting polluters — most famously in the Love Canal cost recovery case — before returning to Oregon 12 years ago.

Novick is whip-smart, funny and politically skilled. Any Democrat who takes on Smith will be up against a lavishly funded Goliath, and Novick would be well-cast in the role of David. His model would be the late Paul Wellstone’s 1990 Senate campaign in Minnesota, in which a challenger with no record in elective office defeated an incumbent despite being outspent by a ratio of 7-to-1.

The primary race has offered a preview of this approach, with Novick, who was born without a left hand and stands 4 feet 10 inches tall, presenting himself as being on the side of the little guy and as “a progressive with a strong left hook.”

Merkley doesn’t have Novick’s spark, but he has an equally compelling story. Born in Eugene and raised in Roseburg and Portland, he spent a summer in Ghana as an exchange student. A graduate of Stanford and Princeton universities, he was the first in his family to attend college. He embarked on a series of internships and fellowships in Congress and the Pentagon, which pointed him toward a career as a diplomat or weapons analyst. But in 1991 he returned to Oregon to work as a director of Habitat for Humanity and later as president of the World Affairs Council of Oregon.

Merkley and Novick agree on the big issues facing the country — both oppose the war in Iraq, favor action to combat global warming and support universal health care. To set themselves apart, each has caricatured the other: Novick paints Merkley as a political insider unwilling to stand firm in opposition to the war in Iraq, while Merkley portrays Novick as a reckless thrower of verbal bombs. Neither caricature sticks. Each is a candidate of intelligence and integrity. The real difference is that only Merkley has a proven record of effective leadership in public office.

A third candidate in the race is Candy Neville, 58, a Eugene real estate broker. Neville’s husband, Register-Guard Associate Editor Paul Neville, has not participated in interviews or discussions involving this race, and also has recused himself from writing editorials relating to Smith. Neville did not surrender her citizenship when she married a journalist, and any awkwardness her candidacy causes is the newspaper’s problem, not hers.

Neville entered the Senate race because of her opposition to the Iraq war — for others the war is an issue, she says, but for her it’s the issue. The engine of Neville’s passionate commitment to ending the war, however, is not fueled by political experience of any kind.

If Neville were the only anti-war candidate, anti-war Democrats would want to vote for her. But Novick and Merkley are both strong critics of the war, differing from Neville only in the sense that the focus of their concerns is broader.

Three other Democrats are on the ballot — Pavel Goberman, David Loera and Roger Obrist. None has succeeded in breaking into the top tier of candidates.

Oregon Republicans also have a choice. Opposing Smith for the GOP nomination is Gordon Leitch, 74, a retired ophthalmologist who calls for a return to a monetary system based on gold and silver. Leitch paid his filing fee in gold coin.

While a Senate campaign offers a vehicle for Leitch to spread his message — he also ran for governor two years ago — Smith clearly deserves Republicans’ support.

A Merkley-Smith contest would be give Oregon one of the nation’s best Senate races. Smith entered the U.S. Senate with four years of legislative experience, including one session as Senate president. Merkley is following the same path, but with a longer record in Salem. Merkley is better prepared than any of his five opponents to take on the incumbent, He deserves Democrats’ support.

Posted April 20, 2008
In the News, Spotlight