Forward Oregon

Yesterday State Rep. Greg Macpherson , who is running for Attorney General, came to Willamette University to address the College Democrats. I used the opportunity to blog about his speech. Below are the PARAPHRASED remarks by Rep. Macpherson as recorded by yours truly.

When I was in high school during the Vietnam era, I had a editorial column in the school paper. I used my column to speak out against the Vietnam War despite where I grew up, Albany, being conservative and holding the biggest Veterans Day celebration in Oregon. After a while the newspaper adviser wanted to see the articles before they would print and they would come back with big red lines through them. So we decided to start a off campus newspaper that we distributed at school. The logo was of a column of sunshine coming down from the clouds. We called the paper The Shaft. We thought we were subtle. There was talk for a while of expelling all of us but cooler head prevailed.

Last session a bill to protect the rights of high school journalists was proposed. Remembering my days as a high school journalist I pushed the bill through the House Judiciary Committee. The bill passed senate became law and now the free speech rights of high school journalists are protected. It is not most important thing but it is indicative of my record and what I can do as the Attorney General.

The Attorney General stands at the intersection of Oregon law and public policy. I’ve been practicing Oregon law for 30 years and been a state legislator for 3 terms. At its core position is chief lawyer, what to defend, who to sue, and giving legal opinions to state agencies. But, it is more than that if it was it would be an appointed position. It is also an advocacy position.

It is about safe guarding our landscape. It is not just talking about it, I did it last year by writing Measure 49. I want you to recall the maps showing a disease spreading through the Willamette Valley. We hammered it out through long weeks of public hearings with angry people on both sides. We worked out a compromise with the Republicans but as soon as it went public, they pulled out. It didn’t get one Republican vote. We had to bring it to the house floor twice to counter attacks that would appear during the election. In the end we got it right because through our work and the work that people like you did during the election, it passed. We won’t see huge subdivisions, strip malls, rock quarries, and billboards. As AG i will implement Measure 49 which is challenging in and of itself. There is a principal of law that if you rely on the approval and you invest money you get vested right. We need an AG to push back against defiant counties to make sure that Measure 49 is implemented.

The Attorney General also needs to defend the consumers of Oregon. Until right before the last election payday loans and car title loans sharks were charging people 500, 600 percent interest. I worked in the legislature to cap the interest 36% and the AG needs to enforce cap and i will.

The Attorney General also need to defend the civil rights of Oregonians. In the last session, we passed domestic partnerships and on the same day we passed 30 year old proposal to add sex orientation to our nondiscrimination statutes. It was originally introduced in the 1977 session and finally we passed it last session. Its important for the AG to up for Oregonians. The Death with Dignity Act is another example. It helps people on the way out of life. Death with Dignity runs smack into outsiders religious notions of morality and the Bush administration, who tried to use the FDA to sabotage the ability of doctors to help their patients. I will fight back against these kind of intrusions in federal court, where I will argue these cases personally and bring to bear the prestige of the office of Attorney General.

The final area of responsibility for the Attorney General, is to promote public safety. In this area there is a lot of demogaugery and doing things out of fear. This year Kevin Mannix, a perennial candidate for whatever, has an initiative to institute mandatory minimums for property crimes. Right now the legislature is working on a package of bills in response. Our existing experience with mandatory minimums is M11 fixed sentences regardless of the circumstances of the crime. As a result of Measure 11, our prison system increased from 6,000 inmates in 1994 to over 14,000 now. We use to spend 6% of our state budget on prisons and 9% on universities now it is flipped. We are now are now living in the great prison state and it would be worse if not for prosecutors who are using discretion. The public is easily swayed by the fear of crime. We need to combine enforcement with treatment dollars. Most of property crime is done drug addicts so they can feed the habit. I am hopeful that the legislature will work out a proposal. I hope it will be on the ballot and get more votes than Mannix’s initiative.

Its a part of being smart on crime rather than tough on crime. Take home cooking of meth as an example. People would buy over the counter cold remedies and cook pseudoephedrine with iodine. The would poison the people that would live in and near these houses and kids especially would be affected because meth is common drug for women of child bearing age. In legislature many people said we had to follow the federal war on drugs but I don’t think we’re winning the war on drugs and i don’t know anyone that does. Thats why we found an Oregon solution, putting the pseudoephedrine behind the counter and required a prescription to get it. By doing so we reduced the number of meth labs in Oregon dramatically, for 40 busts per month before the legislation to 18 in all of 2007 after it took effect. Thats what we need to do find the sweet spot of public policy and as Attorney General, I will draw on my experience as a legislator to do just that.

This race is more than talking a good game but instead it is about action. I’ll stack up my record of public service against anyone. I can find common ground and work with people like I did on Measure 49. I have been through it. Be ware of the gonna people, people that say they are gonna do things. Look for the action.

One of the things I noticed is how different (and better) the transcript is from the speech, in terms of its impact. The campaign has just done a poor job with messaging and selling itself. First, how often do you think that Macpherson talks about student first amendment rights when not patronizing young activists? Making me feel like hes talking down to me is not a good way to start a speech. Secondly, I disagree with Kroger on mandatory minimums but Macpherson’s waffling on the position (though he was more clear in this case than in the past) and subsequent failure to understand that concentrating power at the hands of the district attorneys is the problem prevents him from gaining any traction with me. Furthermore, this comment proves very problematic:

I will fight back against these kind of intrusions in federal court, where I will argue these cases personally and bring to bear the prestige of the office of Attorney General.

This was originally a highly successful line of attack from the Kroger campaign that Macpherson has stolen. I asked a follow up question during the Q and A about what important cases he has tried and Macpherson was unable to point to a watershed case that he has argued, saying only that he won an appellate case “just last year”. Macpherson’s job is to convince me that he will be a better manager of the Department of Justice than Kroger, because that is the only way I am voting for him. Reminding people that the AG ever shows up in court is horrible strategy, as Kroger not only has vastly superior in court credentials than Macpherson, he was throughly engaging and inspiring during his speech at the Willamette Dems, which Macpherson was decidedly not. I am going to take a step back and another look at this race before I make a final decision, but the picture is becoming more clear.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: AttorneyGeneral, Greg Machperson, John Kroger, Willamette University College Democrats

Tonight John Kroger, who is running for Attorney General, came to Willamette University to address the College Democrats. I used the opportunity to blog about his speech. Below are the PARAPHRASED remarks by John Kroger as recorded by yours truly.

I spend all of my time driving around the state giving the same speech over and over, because thats what politics has become. After a while the speech starts to loose its force for both the audience and for me, so tonight, I’m going to throw it out the window and try something different.

I’ll tell you why I’m running; its not about public policy. I care about public policy; I want to end the meth epidemic and our state to be pro-environment. But thats not why I am running, I’m running because this state and this country are a mess i find it unbelievably frustrating.

The war drives me nuts. Kids are on their 3rd and 4th tours of duty and we can find funding for that, but the kids at home, who are suffering from child abuse, we can’t find money for them. Child abuse is appalling in this state. We just got a horrible report card on dealing with child abuse. Oregon got a D we aren’t doing anything about it

We put laws on the books, like for protecting the environment, and then ignore them. We let people violate them and there are no consequences.

The other day, I went to drug treat center and there were 14, 15 year old kids and they are in there because they’re addicted to cocaine, meth, and heroin and it made me cry. Who gets addicted to hard drugs at 14? Kids that had hard drugs in the home. 90% girls there were sexually abused because of drugs in their home and their parents are on drugs or the people coming into their house to get hard drugs abuse them. For these kids the drug treatment center is first safe place they have ever been. The first place where they went to sleep at night safe, the first place they ever went to go to school. But these treatment centers have empty beds and turning away kids because there is no funding. We have all kinds of stuff we fund, but we don’t give the funds for the 14 year old sexually abused heroin addict.

It makes me sad and its symptomatic of a broken process.

Single parents are another situation that is just horrible. How many of you were raised by a single parents? Thats a lot and it’s even harder if money is a problem. In the State of Oregon 100,00 single parents don’t get child support. I was talking to a family at a neighborhood barbecue and they were telling me about how her daughter didn’t get her child support. Their daughter could barely make the rent and they had to buy groceries so that their daughter and grandkids could eat. That shouldn’t have to happen. We should make sure it doesn’t.

Politics is all about money today. My first campaign was in college as a sophomore and I have been doing it for 20 years. 85 percent of my time during this campaign is spent fundraising. Right now, talking to you, this is a break. The same thing happens with every politician. I want more than for you to help my campaign, i want to challenge you because we have to do something better for our the state for the country. It’s not going to work without you; we need your energy to elect candidates with vision to change the way things are done.

The baby boomer generation hasn’t done it for the us. I am 41 and my generation is just starting to get more influence, but it’s not clear we can do it any better. We need energize young people like you to make every level of government.

Part of that is so that an addicted kid can get help and so a single mom can get some help not from hand out but what she is legally entitled to.

I am asking for your help. Its what we need; I need your help to make change. Oregon has the potential to be a great lab of democracy, but we need people to go out and make it happen.

I absolutely loved Kroger’s speech. It was passionate, well delivered, articulate, and inspiring. Rather that lecturing us like a professor or many other candidates, Kroger sat down at the table in the conference room where we hold our Dems meetings and was deeply engaging while tapping into fundamental progressive values that are deeply at the core of my being. I have previously complained that this race was tepid and left me wanting for some inspiration. I believe I may have found that tonight.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: AG, Attorney General, John Kroger