Forward Oregon

I have a problem. I don’t like being undecided. In my opinion it is generally is a state reserved for the uninformed and the uninvolved. Yet, my inability to embrace a Attorney General candidate continues to confound me, leaving me still undecided.

In an effort to break this gridlock, I went to a Greg Macpherson endorsement announcement/fundraiser on Tuesday. This is not the first time I have seen the candidates. A couple of weekends ago at the Rebooting Democracy Conference, I watched the two debate and reacted in a Winners and Losers post:

Losers: The AG candidates - Both support mandatory minimums and were boring as all get out, though Kroger was livelier and certainly won the debate. I still have yet to start caring at all about this race.

On an intellectual level, I know why I should care about this race. The Attorney General is a hugely important position as the state’s lawyer. But that has not translated to any passion or even deciding on a candidate on my part.

Macpherson has a long and impressive track record as a state representative. He was the one of the most significant authors of the Measure 49 land use fix, which definitely gives him an advantage in that area. It seems like he would be an good manager of the Department of Justice. John Kroger on the other hand, would be much more adept in a court room or on the stump rallying against Kevin Mannix. His record as a prosecutor is long and impressive suing Enron among others. I believe he would be very effective suing polluters to enforce environmental regulation.

One thing that is frustrating me with my choices is the “Oregon-ness” if you will of the candidates. Macpherson is running on a traditional Oregon political platform that I heartily disapprove of, which suggests that only if you were born here can you know Oregon well enough to represent its people. I am not a native Oregonian. I was born and raised in San Francisco, a city that I love very very dearly, but I chose to live in Oregon. I pay taxes here, I vote here, I work here, and I go to school here. Why that qualifies me for scorn in the rhetoric of so many candidates I don’t understand. Similarly, John Kroger chose to live here and teach at Lewis and Clarke School of Law. Arguments from Macpherson should ask whether Kroger’s experience as a federal prosecutor in New York would help him with Measure 49 claims rather than making hay over whether or not he is getting funding from lawyers without the last name Kroger from other states.

Finally, I disagree with both candidates on Measure 11 and mandatory minimums. During the Rebooting Democracy Conference Kroger acknowledged that his opinion on M11 differed from mine. However, Kroger made the argument that he was best for opposing Mannix’s upcoming ballot measure expanding Measure 11. Macpherson said he supported M11 at Rebooting Democracy, just like he did when speaking to the state’s district attorneys:

Greg Macpherson: Measure 11 is the law in Oregon, and I think the reason that it works as well as it does is because of the good work of the people in this room.

When I asked him about the quote during his fundraiser, he seemed to want it both ways. The inherent flaw in mandatory minimums is that the prosecutor gets to decide if you will be charged with a Measure 11 crime. If you are poor, a member of a minority community, or a non-English speaker, you are more likely to be charged with a M11 crime. Furthermore, especially with disadvantaged people using public defenders, the power is exclusively in the hands of the prosecutor, encouraging pleading out to a lesser crime because of the risk of being sent away not because of guilt. Macpherson didn’t even acknowledge this contradiction, which concerns me.

I have still yet to find a candidate I am supporting, and will probably wait until they both visit the Willamette College Democrats in the next three weeks. This race is such a conundrum.

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Tags: AttorneyGeneral, AG, John Kroger, Greg Macpherson, Measure 11, mandatory minimums