Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's March to the Governorship

Chapter 17: Strategizing Toward Victory

185 chapter seventeen Strategizing Toward Victory In the summer of 1990, while we secretly waited for our August television buys to go on the air, policy issues and campaign matters were bouncing off every surface. It reminded me of the movie title, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. In the “good” category, I had just won the solid endorsement of Oregon’s AFL-CIO delegates. Their summer labor convention gave Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer only polite applause during his speech. I received four standing ovations from the delegates and an $8,000 check from AFL-CIO President Irv Fletcher when my speech concluded. The next day the AFL-CIO state endorsement became official, and a number of new checks from individual unions were added to my campaign totals. I also received the overwhelming political endorsement of the Oregon Public Employees Union by a greater than two-to-one vote of the full membership plus the unanimous reaffirmation of the OPEU Board of Directors. The fifteen-thousand-member union stood prepared to make a significant volunteer commitment to my campaign plus strong financial support. Then on top of the ongoing environmental and economic challenges of the timber/spotted owl controversy, that summer brought yet another environmental crisis to the forefront. In southern Oregon’s Klamath County a battle had been brewing for several years over the proposed construction of a hydroelectric facility on the Klamath River. Two years earlier the voters of Oregon had cast their vote statewide to designate several miles of the Klamath River as a State Scenic Waterway, a designation that would likely put an end to the plan to build a dam on the last free-flowing, pristine segment of the Klamath River, a stretch used extensively for fishing and rafting. Yet, unbelievably, that summer of 1990 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recommended granting a license for a dam on this stretch of the river, labeled as the Salt Caves Hydroelectric Project—in spite of the earlier decision by Oregon voters and the support of state regulatory agencies to protect that waterway. I immediately held a press conference, adamantly criticizing the federal government’s action. ”I’m outraged that the federal government wants to turn this beautiful Oregon river into a pond, 186 Up the Capitol Steps ignoring our state agencies and our voters.” I reminded the press and our citizens that three of our Oregon congressional members were actively supporting HB 4728 to designate the last free-flowing stretch of the Klamath River as a National Wild and Scenic River, halting this damaging construction project forever. I strongly supported the legislation. Little could I have guessed at that point in 1990 that I would be dealing with this issue for the next four years plus. Meanwhile, two late July news items hit the press. The first related to my job as Secretary of State. My office had just qualified six more state initiative petitions for the November ballot, bringing the total to eleven. I knew these six new measures would now rear their heads in my public appearances, at press conferences, and once our scheduled governor’s debates began in September. Two of the measures fell into the category of anti-abortion laws: one prohibited abortion except in cases of incest, rape, or to save a mother’s life. The second was a parental-notification measure. There were also measures requiring seat belts, a work-replacing-welfare bill, a recyclable packing measure, and a tax credit for children going to private schools. These new measures would certainly supply lots of fodder for disagreement and controversy during the rest of the campaign season. On the timber front a good piece of news came out of Congress that, for a change, almost all sides could agree on. First, Congress passed a new trade bill to ban the export of logs from most state lands in Oregon and Washington. The legislation also created a permanent ban on the export of logs cut on federal lands in the West. It was a first step toward preventing job loss caused by the environmental measures to protect the spotted owl. Banning these exports would help supply timber to the mills and keep more workers on the job. However, logs harvested from private forestlands would remain available for international export. The export ban would cover only about one-sixth of the raw logs harvested from the Northwest each year. The remaining millions of board feet would continue to be exported. It was...