10:00 a.m. - NBC, Ch. 8 on directtv. Sunday 9/10

I just saw a Saxton commercial, that says something like....by any measure "Oregon schools are mediocre." (It's up on his website - it's the "Great Schools" TV spot.)

Wow! Now Saxton is attacking Karen Minnis! Since she has been Speaker of the House, and by all accounts the most powerful legislator in Oregon for years, certainly the blame for our "mediocre" schools lies squarely at Minnis' feet.

Some background on Minnis and school funding:

Oregon schools are being forced to cut programs to the bare bones: http://www.blueoregon.com/2006/09/a_message_to_ma.html#more

Class size alarmingly high, schools cutting elsewhere to stop class size from getting even bigger:

Suburban elementary class sizes are growing Wednesday, January 25, 2006 STEVEN CARTER The Oregonian Class sizes in elementary schools in much of suburban Portland have increased in the past five years to 25 or more students, a new analysis from the Oregon Department of Education shows.

In Russell’s analysis, Schwarzenegger’s Legislative success can be neatly explained by California’s lack of partisan primary during the 2003 recall. Here’s a less exotic explanation: he’s a Republican governing an overwhelmingly Democratic state.

From Russell: In a whirlwind of legislating, Schwarzenegger and the California Assembly 1) raised the minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.00 an hour over the next two years; 2) required drug companies to negotiate prescription prices or lose access to the huge California Medicaid market; 3) approved bond issues to build new schools, affordable housing, roads and rail lines; and 4) imposed strict new standards for limiting greenhouse gases over the objections of oil and auto companies. (Numbers added by author)

I share Russell’s enthusiasm for the progress California’s making on a host of issues, but again, he loses me with the gratuitous attacks on our Governor. Let’s move beyond Rusell's rhetoric and look at what Oregon has been doing during the same time:

1) Oregon already has a minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, and our Governor has fought Republican-led efforts to weaken it every session. 2) Governor Kulongoski worked with the Legislature to enact a bulk purchasing program to save Oregonians millions on prescription drugs. He’s also taken on pharma to created a pooled purchasing program with Washington state and is changing the way our state negotiates drug prices: instead of individual agencies negotiating price, agencies are pooling resources to maximize savings. Also, he’s enthusiastically supporting the bulk purchasing expansion on November’s ballot. 3) Governor Kulongoski worked with members of both parties to enact the most sweeping transportation enhancement in fifty years. The 2003 Transportation package is creating good, living wage jobs now, and will help keep our transportation infrastructure competitive in the future. He’s also committed to building on Oregon’s successful ConnectOregon next legislature. 4) Governor Kulongoski took on the auto industry to enact tough tailpipe emissions, and successfully defended those greenhouse gas restricting rules in court. He’s set also working to make Oregon a leader in energy independence, unlike his opponent who thinks renewable portfolio standards are a “gimmick.”

Early in his administration, Governor Kulongoski made the difficult decision – one that he thought was in the best interest of our state – to make structural changes to our state’s public retirement system. With all due respect, if the premise of Russell's column is that our Governor is too beholden to the major constituencies who influence our primaries, then that’s an analysis totally at odds with the considerable political hit Ted took for taking on PERS reform.

Lesson from CA: Install D majority in both houses. Not that native Oregonians generally look to CA as an example for good governance.

I can't believe anyone would lionize the recall of Gray Davis as a good method of selecting one's governor. The R's took advantage of the popularity hit Davis took from the Enron-engineered energy crisis and forced a chaotic election. Remember KL + GWB = TL.

One quick thing: Russell writes that the Governor -- who increased Oregon Opportunity grants by 70% last year -- is failing to address "soaring college and university tuition" costs. People can download the Governor's Education Enterprise here and judge for themselves if college access is being addressed, rhetoric in this column notwithstanding.

Good point, btw, Ed. It's interesting to me how Russell can be so outspoken about the role of money in our modern initiative system yet silent about it's effect on the California recall.

JB Eads, I share Russell’s enthusiasm for the progress California’s making on a host of issues, but again, he loses me with the gratuitous attacks on our Governor.

Yesterday I heard Ted K. give an excellent speech to the State Central Committee. It is a fact of life that many old friends had been discouraged with the Gov. they'd seen recently--not the guy they thought they'd voted for.

Yesterday, the sentiment of some of us after the speech was "Great speech, but where has that guy been hiding the last couple years?".

And someone high in the campaign took the time to converse with me afterwards and said "He gets it! We know a large percentage of Democratic voters voted for someone else in the primary!". I said "Thank you, you are the first person from the campaign to admit that. "

My point is that it is time to quit blaming all dissent on PERS. I am not a union member, I am someone who has known Ted Kulongoski for a quarter of a century. It would be much more fruitful to have Ted give lots more speeches like that, and (as I suggested to the man from the campaign) do what Ron Wyden did in Jan. 1996---stand in front of groups of people, give short remarks, and then do Q & A.

This is an election year. People have the right to debate the performance of an incumbent and not just be told "He is the nominee and you WILL give unquestioning support to his campaign".

Of course Saxton is an idiot and clueless about the process. But as anyone in politics should know by now, people want to be asked for their vote and have the candidate say "this is what I have done and this is why I am proud of what has been done".

I don't think Russell's "Gov. Ted Kulongoski and his advisors have apparently decided to take a low profile " is an attack, just a statement of fact.

Ed - lesson from Washington DC - don't put both houses in charge of one party. As the Ds found out in 1994, and the Rs will likely find out in 2006, all absolute power does is breed arrogance and incompetence. Or are you one of those hypocrites who decries one party rule except when its your own?

Russell, this has to be one of the best pieces I've read from you lately. I imagine you'll get ripped badly by the rapid partisans who lurk about this site, but for the unaffiliated voters like me, you've hit the nail on the head. I've been advocating for a valid third party ever since I proudly cast my first presidential vote for John Anderson...but you've got me thinking that what we need is no parties rather than three parties. After all, the Ds and the Rs are such captives of their respective special interest groups that they don't govern for fear of alienating their bases.

Keep it coming Russell. Great stuff.

Indie Andy -- I want Jeff Merkley (D), not Karen Minnis (R), to be the next speaker of the Oregon House. If you think this makes me a "rapid partisan" or "hypocrite," I think that says more about you -- and the column you praise -- than it does me.

The Oregon Opportunity Grant system is great and it's great that Kulongoski supports the near doubling of it's funding. However, out in the real world it really underscores the unrealisitic definitions of middle class fostered by the federal government.

I'm a single parent making just over $40k per year. I have two kids. That means that I make too much for my kids to qualify for the OOG. Yet the reality is that I live paycheck to paycheck and don't own my home. Which means that my kids would have to incur potentially massive debts just trying to get a college education and my capacity to offset those costs is minimal.

Meanwhile college tuition costs are expected to continue to grow at three times the rate of inflation while my income most certainly is not. Which I suppose might result in our family income being considered low enough to qualify for OOG by the time my 8th grader graduates from high school. But by then her older sister will no longer be considered part of the family which likely will mean that the two of us will still be considered to wealthy for her to qualify for OOG. And that still doesn't address the potential that she'd end up an indentured student for a large chunk of her adult life afterwards.

Expanding college access to middle class students -- those who need the help but make too much to qualify for other programs -- is EXACTLY what the Governor's shared responsibility model is designed to do. You can download details here. When fully phased in, every student now in 8th grade will have access to a post-secondary education.

The lesson from DC is not to put a party of fascists in charge of both houses. They have turned Congress into a one-party ruled fiefdom, cutting Dems almost completely out of legislative business. That comes not out of just having majorities, but betrayal of the democratic ideal of action by consensus by espousing tyranny. Democracy encompasses arriving at a consensus with minorities, not treating them as second-class citizens. There is no reason to assume that Democratic-majority legislatures will behave the same. I think we are highly-sensitized to that now.

Look at where voting for John Anderson got us, IA: Reagan became President and JA became... nobody. Yes I voted for him, and learned from it; I guess that's good. George Washington shared your disdain for political parties, but it didn't stop them from forming a partisan faction pushing his agenda, namely the Federalists. It's a naive position.

It seems that their naivete left the Congress vulnerable to domination by a single party. We need to improve their design, and it must allow more than one effective opposition party. We will never get there with the corporatists in power, as they are now. We need to form an effective coalition against them, and the Democratic Party is the vehicle we have. We need to reject corporate influence in our party, not drive it off a cliff.

Kulongoski's shared responsibility model isn't really detailed there. It's just asserted in different language in the one .pdf and the other .pdf says exactly what the page it's linked from says, which isn't much. So I don't have anything more than assertions that my child will qualify if our circumstances remain essentially unchanged by the time she graduates from high school. And even if the assertions do pan out that still doesn't address the indentured student syndrome that she'd likely face unless the entire post-secondary paradigm is radically altered between now and then.

By virtue of the 2003 California recall -- where all voters decide whether to recall an elected official and simultaneously choose a replacement -- Schwarzenegger is the only major public officeholder in the country who was not nominated in a partisan convention or primary. He was elected in a race where every registered voter had a chance to choose from a multiple list of candidates -- including partisans and independents.

The party primary has outlived its usefulness. The candidates the parties choose are simply not acceptable to unaffiliated voters who make up the growing portion of the electorate.

This seems to be another in a series of rather bizarre attempts to push "anti-party" theories about the value of non-affiliated candidates and non-partisan election schemes. This piece starts in Russell's now signature fashion with a reasonable accounting of the facts and apparent defense of progressive values, and then lurches into baseless advocacy for the "anti-party" agenda with no intellectually credible demonstration of a link between the two. It is the style of argumentation the radical right wing has mastered --- recite a few facts that are guaranteed to establish rapport with the audience, and then throw in the non-sequitor agenda advocacy --- which makes it all the more difficult to understand what Russell is actually up to here.

Ed Bickford and a few other folks have succinctly pointed out what is actually going on in California: The big D legislature representing the people has picked up where the steroids left off and, thankfully, finished the job of neutering Arnie.

As to why he won the first election: Try the fact that under the really dumb California populist recall system, his previous career as an actor in a bunch of movies that make American film the cultural equivalent of empty calories resulted in "favorable" name recognition in a crowded field of dozens of candidates. One of the first rule of electoral politics is that voters who aren't overly informed vote for the names they know. And most voters vote for the names they know that let them express their hormones. In other words, that system favors candidates who campaign to the uninformed, by appealing to interests and values which have little to do with governing, much less good governance.

That's really the kind of electoral behavior we need right now as we try to save our country, and our state, from the right-wing attack on the middle class and our core American values.

And finally to the comment that The candidates the parties choose are simply not acceptable to unaffiliated voters who make up the growing portion of the electorate. Let's be clear about two things:

1) The party candidates are chosen by the voters who care enough to organize themselves politically to articulate, debate, and defend a coherent set of governing values as our founders intended.

2) If unaffiliated voters to show they are incapable of participating like adults in our system, and themselves chose to render themselves impotent, that says more about them and how they are incapable of being responsible citizens in our representative democracy. Remember, no one is arguing they have to join either of the two major parties, rather that they can and should care enough to organize new parties.

The party candidates are chosen by the voters who care enough to organize themselves politically to articulate, debate, and defend a coherent set of governing values as our founders intended.

Where in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers or any founding documents of Oregon are parties mentioned?

"voters who care enough to organize themselves politically to articulate, debate, and defend a coherent set of governing values as our founders intended" sounds like no NAV cares about a "coherent set of governing values". Seems to me that there were lots of people who signed the Westlund petitions who think this election is stale and that they were hearing more coherence from Westlund than from the major parties(although Ted will spice it up if he does more speeches like the one to State Central Comm. this weekend).

People have the right to vote split ticket, to vote for the person rather than the party. They have the right to decide that if the parties (to use an ice cream analogy) only offer chocolate and vanilla, that voters can still talk to their friends about blueberry ripple, or maple nut, or mint chocolate chip without taking time away from work and family just because someone tells them if they don't like the parties they have to organize their own.

And I hope everyone who thinks as you do is happy Lamont won in Conn. In our free system of government, people are allowed to register with a different party than they are registered in up to the filing deadline. Apparently there were significant NAV who registered Dem. in Conn. just before the filing deadline in order to vote for Lamont. In our system, that registration does not require that they attend Dem. party meetings, or even that they contribute money or time to the Democratic party before or after November.

Ask, were you at the state central comm. meeting this weekend? Are you active in your county party? Exactly how do you fit into your definition of a "responsible citizen" " voters who care enough to organize themselves politically to articulate, debate, and defend a coherent set of governing values as our founders intended. " ?

Do you have a role in party organization, or in debate within a party structure?

LT -

You and several others continue to argue some alternate reality of the history of the country for reasons that only you who do that can possibly understand. I'm just going to give a couple bottom line facts in arguments that have been made elsewhere on Blue Oregon about the demonstrated intent and practice of the founders with regard to political parties: Jefferson founded the political party that is the direct ancestor of our modern Democratic Party. Every President, and all but just a few Representatives and Senators, were elected as nominees of an organized political party.

All -

Here's a simple mathematical fact that I think bears noting: We are told that in Oregon and in several other states unaffiliated voters are starting to equal or exceed the number of voters who register for any particular political party. This means that we are at one of those relatively unique times in our history that if non-affialiated voters really shared any coherent governing values, they most certainly have the numbers to form a winning political party.

With that unavoidable fact, for the good of our representative democracy shouldn't we want those folks to pass the test of proving they can organize themselves sufficiently to actually win political power before handing over governance to them?

And there is good chance that if enough folks do organize a competent party around those values I mentioned, I'll be voting for their candidates. But candidates who can only triumph if we make the structural changes to our representative system called for by apparently fuzzy thinkers like Russell seem unlikely to be the kind of competent and principled leaders needed to successfully advocate for the core values I support.

And by the way, I am not yet convinced Democrats will take the U.S. House or Senate in November precisely because we have failed so completely to live up to our values. If that happens, the stage could be set for the emergence of a viable third party that I would embrace.

torridjoe -

I've got no problem giving up the "where's Ted" riff now, having never been a particularly strong adherent of that view.

I think the more honest riff now is "why should we believe anything he says", because he has proven in the past to have never demonstrated any significant integrity or commitment to core Democratic Party values? This includes his support for the war in Iraq, and his recent slimy triangulation that he now opposes the war because it has been run poorly. He doesn't have much time before the election to swallow his ego, admit his mistakes, and ask for forgiveness for not defending core Democratic values if he hopes to get the vote of solid Democratic values voters.

Like that better?

Ask, Would you like Saxton's views on the war better?

Give the guy a break on that--he attends all those funerals and the job of Gov. is not primarily to express views on foreign policy.

What I have spoken to Ted's campaign people about, though, is the broader question. Normally I am lukewarm on all the "motivate the base" rhetoric. But in this case I think Ted's campaign would benefit from his doing more Q & A in front of a live audience. And I told someone from Ted's campaign why I think that is important. If there are those who say "Yeah, I'll vote for Ted but my state legislative races and defeating those idiot ballot measures are better uses of time", Ted's failure to do more dialogue with voters might make for a closer election than need be. It seems they have finally gotten off the "we know what's best for Oregon and why should anyone question Ted?" attitude. But here we are in Sept. and they need to do more interactive events if they want to turn weak support into actual advocacy for his re-election.

Count me among those Dems who did not vote for Gov. K in the primary. But I am not embarrassed to say that I wholeheartedly support him now. I think the primary challenge was a good thing for both the party and the governor. He had to reconnect to his base and it seems pretty obvious to me he has done that. I usually agree with most of what Sadler writes but this time I think he is way off base. As far as Saddler's point about Swartz... and being elected without a primary it wouldn't have happened without his favorable press, name recognition and lot's of money donated by who knows who. Is that so different than with a primary? Let's leave California politics in California.

Personally I think we ought to do away with the governor's race and have a parliamentary form of government. That might solve this constant back biting that the public has to deal with. M.H.W.

Some Libertarians seek signatures in recall of chief Tuesday, September 12, 2006 Several Oregon Libertarians are trying to recall the state chairman, alleging misuse of party money and violation of bylaws. Roughly 200 dues-paying members will receive petitions in the mail this week, said party member Mark Vetanen. They need 15 percent -- or 30 signatures -- to launch a formal recall vote.

Apparently forming a 3rd party is not the answer to everything. Parties can have internal fights if there are not safeguards in place to make sure things are done on the up and up.

Ask, you said "This means that we are at one of those relatively unique times in our history that if non-affialiated voters really shared any coherent governing values, they most certainly have the numbers to form a winning political party. "

But the problem is that our system of government was not set up with the requirement that everyone belong to a party. The 6 years I was NAV, I explained it to people by saying "The I in Independent stands for "I think for myself, thank you very much!".

Nothing in the Oregon or US Constitution says that the only way citizens are allowed to participate in politics is as active members of a party. One does not need to be registered with a party to go door to door for a favored candidate, to particpate in a phone bank, to have a neighborhood coffee, to attend a fundraiser. There have been years when people who were more attracted to individual candidates than to party organization did volunteer work for a Democrat and a Republican. You may not like that attitude, but in our system of government, we are allowed to vote split ticket, to register outside parties if we so choose (or to change parties to vote in primaries if we so choose) and to live our lives without some activist coming up to us demanding to know what our "coherent governing philosophy" is.

BTW, I read something this morning implying Rhode Island has an open primary. The National Sen. Republicans have said if Chaffee (not a loyal Republican by any measure) loses the primary, they will concede the state to Democrats because they know the Club For Growth/ GOP challenger candidate will get beaten badly. So how's that for party loyalty? Maybe they realize voters see themselves as individuals, not party members?

Russ's assessment of the Oregon primary situation hits the mark... on most points. If the party primary was to be dissolved, a large number of 'serious' candidates could end up running for the office in November, which then could make it overly difficult for us as citizens (and the media) to compare and fully vet the backgounds of each (as much as that is possible, even today, with only a few candidates on the ballot we often don't learn of some of the nominees past activities, professed opinions and behaviors, until after the election, or a week before the elction, when too late).

This scenario seems to applies to many nations which do not have the controlling two-party system which exists here. So how do the democracies of these nations fare?

Here's an idea but I'm not certain what the Oregon Constitution or the Supreme Court would say about it. I suggest that to be placed on the November ballot, a candidate should be required obtain enough votes (percentage or number) in the May election (which no longer needs to be referred to as 'party' primary) to be listed on the November general election ballot. Anyone can run on the May ballot.

After all, is it not already required that a candidate collect signatures to be on the ballot in the first place (or a gathering of enough people...), correct? So why not require a number of votes from the May election to be able to appear on the November ballot?

So the May "primary" would be an all-comer's event. And the general election ballot would then only include a subset of top vote recipient in the primary.

I've been a D, but am now quite an indy, meaning I don't vote the party, I vote the issues. And I'm from the south valley so I'm quite familiar with TK's operando. Walk the fence, except only at the last minute when forced to declare a 'view'. And if it can be helped, declare a position on non-controversial issues only. Try to keep mum on the large issues or only speak in generalities. This is NOT leadership.

I voted for TK for a number of other local and state offices, usually because I deemed him the worst of two evils. But now I admit I might have been less than informed as I sould have been... for that I take full responsibility. And then four years ago I voted for TK for Governor. Shame on me. So now, with the two 'primary' choices I am left with, there is one I absolutely cannot vote for, and another which I did not vote for in the primary and will be ashamed to vote for in the general election, but probably will (blame that on survival instinct).

Here's to a more attractive subset of nominees to choose from in the 2010 election.

Oops... next to last paragraph edit. Should be:

<h2>"In previous general elections I voted for TK for a number of other local and state offices, usually because I deemed him NOT the lesser of the two candidates. But now I admit I might have been less than informed as I should have been... for that I take full responsibility."</h2>