Q&A with Dennis Richardson, Candidate for Oregon Secretary of State

 

If elected secretary of State in November, you will be the first Republican to win statewide office in Oregon since 2002. What will your win mean for the state politically? What will it mean practically in terms of how the office of secretary of state is run?

 

This secretary of state election is not about party ? it?'s about which candidate is most qualified and determined to represent the people's interests in improving failing state agencies, ending wasteful tax spending, and standing up to abuses of power in bureaucratic management positions. It's about addressing real concerns about how our most vulnerable are being abused in the system. It's about taking actions needed to restore the people's trust in their state government. If I'm elected, I will use the opportunity to shine a light on issues that affect all Oregonians. This race is about making things better for Oregon families.

 

You were first elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 2002. How has the economic and political health of Oregon changed since then? What direction are the trend lines moving?

 

Our economy gives the appearance of moving forward, yet our people are being left behind. The gap in income between Oregon and Washington is larger now than it was in 2002. Oregon's lack of leadership and vision is taking a toll on Oregon families and workers across the state. The PERS crisis continues to grow, which will cut into needed public services. We need to take a hard look at state agencies that aren't delivering on their stated missions. The costs are too high and the promised benefits are failing to reach the citizens intended. Oregon has more money than we've ever had in our General Fund, but because we can't get a handle on controlling costs, there's never enough. We need a reset and it starts with financial and performance audits of state agencies.

 

Your opponent, Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, has earned a reputation as being partisan and vindictive in his conduct. What are some examples of this? How bad do you think Avakian's professional conduct has been while in office?

 

It's unfortunate that my opponent has used his time in power to promote himself and the special interests that fund his campaigns. This is the second time he's tried to use the BOLI office as a springboard to higher office. I am hopeful voters will see through his personal ambitions and focus on electing someone who wants to do the job of secretary of state because they care about the work that needs to be done, not because they're looking for a fast track to higher office. Newspapers across Oregon agree that Commissioner Avakian is ill-suited to be our secretary of state. Their rationale comes as a result of his using his power to assess large fines for first-offense violations of public accommodation laws and forcing businesses to close their doors. A real leader would use that opportunity to educate the business to the statutes and facilitate their success.

 

Prominent Democrat Sen. Betsy Johnson (Scappoose) and Democrat Rep. Brad Witt (Clatskanie) are both supporting you over Avakian. Why? 

 

I've had the honor of working with thoughtful, smart, Democratic leaders who, like me, work hard to represent the people they serve. Their support comes because they believe I'll follow a better path we can all agree upon. From years of personal relationships, they know me to be credible, hardworking, and willing to put the welfare of the people above personal aspirations. They understand we need integrity to handle our elections in a fair and transparent manner. It takes courage for an elected legislator to cross party lines to support a candidate outside one's party. I respect them for their courage and I will do my best to live up to the highest ethical standards we all want from our secretary of state. 

 

What assignments or experience in your six-term legislative career best prepared you to serve as Oregon's secretary of state?

 

Without a doubt, my experience as co-chair of Ways and Means Committee best prepared me for the Audits Division of this position. A well-run Audits Division will uncover fraud, waste and abuse of power that has continued unchecked in Oregon bureaucracies for far too long. Our audits will be thorough and include both fiscal and performance components. Helping the governor and Legislature address budget issues starts by ensuring they have the best information from which to make decisions. As a practicing attorney for more than 30 years and a legislator for 12 years, I've learned the importance of thorough research, the benefit of building coalitions, and the value of compromise to reach favorable and lasting resolutions to problems. Such traits and experience will help me serve in an effective and non-partisan manner, which I believe is crucial to restoring trust in state government with a skeptical electorate.

 

As secretary of state you will have a seat on the State Lands Board. You suggest that you will "bring a balanced voice to the State Lands Board." Explain the need for a more balanced voice? What other state boards will you serve on as secretary of state? And how important are these roles?

 

Being a member of the State Lands Board and co-managing the Common School Funds are two of the secretary of state duties. We do need a balanced voice in the management of our state lands and waterways. We need our natural resources to create family-wage jobs for Oregonians and fund public education, while ensuring that those resources are managed and conserved in a way that provides a legacy for generations yet to come.

 

You are currently running a campaign commercial discussing Oregon's failing schools and suggesting that there is a role for the secretary of state's office in discovering how and why Oregon has such a low high school graduation rate. Would this be a new role of the secretary of state's office?

 

The statutes currently allow for audits of our schools and other governing agencies. Since the state provides approximately 70 percent of the cost of public education, it makes good sense for the SOS auditors to team up with the Department of Education and local school districts and use the audits in a meaningful way. Fiscal and performance audits can determine why, even with more education dollars, Oregon continues to languish as the third worst state in the nation for graduation performance. As a father, a quality public education was something I wanted for my children. As an elected leader, it's something I want for everyone's children. Addressing poor performance outcomes are a moral, civil rights and an equity issue. 

 

As a former co-chair of the Oregon Legislature's Ways and Means Committee, you understand a lot about state budget issues and the PERS issue and shortfall. How can the secretary of state's office help in the PERS crisis?

 

There are two immediate steps I can take to help navigate the challenges with PERS. One will be to conduct an independent review of PERS to make sure we have the facts about the health of the PERS fund and the actual costs of administration. The other is to help work on streamlining other government spending and ensure that any new mega-projects the legislature enacts are audited along the way, so we can identify problems early and stop the repeated failures of large, expensive projects. Had we caught the scams in the Business Energy Tax Credit Program sooner, we might have saved hundreds of millions that could have been used to help us meet our PERS obligations.

 

What one thing should voters know about you that they may not already know and that would inform their decision about your capability and suitability for this office?

 

Voters should know I'm going to keep an open door and an open mind in this role. My opponent simply cannot say the same. I believe the most underutilized asset we have in confronting issues of waste, fraud and abuse lies with our front-line public employees. I want them to know this office will be a safe place where they can bring their concerns and know we'll address them. We need a culture change in state government, and it can be done outside of party lines. At the end of the day, we're all Oregonians first, and it's going to take all of us working together to solve our most pressing problems.

 

Power: The Narcotic of Choice for Politicians
By John A. Charles, Jr.

 

Oregon's free-market research center, Cascade Policy Institute, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a gala dinner party on October 20 at the Tualatin County Club. Since its founding in 1991, Cascade has emerged as a leading voice for individual liberty and economic opportunity. Building coalitions with others, Cascade has helped develop innovative policies, such as Oregon's charter school law and the more recently enacted Right-to-Try statute. 

 

Cascade helped Ethiopian immigrants break the Portland taxi cartel and secure a license to operate a new company. The institute also helped a young black woman start her hair braiding business by persuading the Legislature to repeal onerous licensing regulations.

 

And a paper, first published by Cascade in 1996, suggesting that 84,000 acres of the Elliott State Forest be sold off helped persuade the State Land Board to do just that; a sale will be approved by the board in December of this year.

 

However, such advancements will be tougher to come by in the years ahead, because the culture of Oregon has changed. The permanent political class that now rules the state has little respect for the entrepreneurial spirit.

 

The 2016 legislative session served as Exhibit A for this change. In the short space of 30 days, the majority party rammed through two major pieces of legislation: (1) a dramatic increase in the minimum wage; and (2) a mandate forcing electric utilities to provide 50 percent of their retail load from designated "renewable energy" sources.

 

Each bill only received a few hearings. Vast areas of complexity were brushed aside as unimportant. When hundreds of witnesses showed up pleading for a more incremental approach, they were dismissed. In 35 years of lobbying, I had never seen anything like it.

 

This was in contrast to Cascade's early years, when the organization sponsored "Better Government Competitions" in 1994, 1996, 1998 and 2000. These events solicited good ideas from citizens about how to make government work better. Top officials, including Gov. John Kitzhaber and Portland Mayor Vera Katz, enthusiastically endorsed Cascade's "citizens' suggestion box."

 

Today, many elected officials openly disdain the public they serve. They don't want your ideas, just your obedience and your tax dollars. Moreover, if you compromise and give them half of what they want today, they'll be back for the rest tomorrow. 

 

Nowhere was that more evident than with the so-called "coal to clean" bill in 2016. Why was this topic even being discussed when only nine years ago the legislature passed SB-838, which mandated that large electric utilities procure 25 percent of their power needs from specified "renewable energy" sources by 2025? 

 

SB-838, passed in 2007, was seen as a visionary achievement. The leading legislative advocates, Sen. Brad Avakian and Rep. Jackie Dingfelder, were exultant. Oregon was now on a path to renewable energy nirvana!

 

Yet, by 2016, the "25 by 25" banner was seen as wimpy and out of date. Oregon's perceived reputation as an international environmental leader had been undercut by legislation elsewhere. So the new (arbitrary) standard became "50 percent by 2040." 

 

We can do better than this. Perhaps if Measure 97 fails, legislators will stop looking for quick fixes and work together on tax reform. There are officials in both parties willing to tackle PERS reform and transportation finance, if the majority party allows it.

 

Replacing hubris with humility would be a good first step.

 

"I'm not a presidential candidate, but I play one on TV."
By Philip J. Romero

 

Our depressing Alice-in-Wonderland presidential campaign brings to mind ? of all things ? a notorious television commercial in tn the mid 1980s. In it, a soap opera actor in a white coat hawked Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup with the line, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."

 

Although the line is ludicrous ? how does playing a doctor quualify you to give medical advice? ? it was apparently required by rregulators.

 

If only someone could require the equivalent for each of Donald Trump's campaign appearances. For it is increasingly obvious that his true goal in this campaign isn't to govern the country, but to build his personal brand. "I'm not a presidential candidate, but I play one on TV."

 

Increasingly frequent dribbles and leaks from Trumpland suggest that The Donald's Plan B is to build a TV network. It will have a sizeable built-in audience of millions of viewers primed to buy whatever aspirational products are pitched to them: fragrances, golf apparel, even Trump Air tickets.

 

Branding involves creating an emotional attachment between your target buyer and your product. Trump has used working class anger to cement his brand. This is a quixotic electoral strategy ? it's hard too swing more than 30 or 40 percent of the electorate your way ? but achieving a majority isn't the real goal. A large minority of voters is still 50 or 70 million customers. 

 

Students of Trump's business career will not be surprised. He has consistently leveraged (and sometimes squandered) other peoples' money on nominal real estate projects whose main purpose has been to glorify the name of Trump. What is hijacking the GOP nomination if not the ultimate OPM deal? Leverage millions of party activists and donors; spend very little of your personal wealth. Trump's brand campaign did no real advertising until the summer, surfing an avalanche of free media.

 

Seizing a major party's nomination clearly corrupts our politics, but it might be forgivable if it also elevated the party. But the particular vein Trump has exploited ? white victimhood ? has do done the opposite. In the past, voters accepted insincerity from candidates who presented themselves as embodying our greatest virtues. With Trump they get only authenticity, which includes all of his enormous personal flaws. 

 

Several times in recent political history we have elected long-shot candidates who were manifestly not prepared to govern. Bill Clinton in 1992 and Barack Obama in 2008 each embarked on campaigns that were also brand builders, but their real aim was the next election. Arguably, Jimmy Carter in 1976 or John F. Kennedy in 1960 were also surprised to have actually won. Nominal presidential candidacies that were actually aimed at a more prosaic goal have existed for as long as "favorite sons" have existed. So, in one sense, the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP has plenty of precedent.

 

But each of these past examples, even the surprise winners, shared an ambition to govern. Their main goal may have been a pundit gig or the speaking circuit, but they recognized a responsibility to govern if lightning struck and they actually won. Trump's ambition seems to be to maximize his TV Q rating. And most of the pecuniary candidates did not seize the power of a major party in a coup.

 

At this late stage in the race, Trump wants to win, but only as a matter of ego. His abundant character flaws seem to be making that less and less likely. But his existential effect on our politics is deeply corrosive. Not only has it devolved debate to the level of 4-year-old playground tantrums, but it has tarnished the legitimacy of the likely winner. This is his clear goal in his frequent petulant claims that the election will be "rigged." It will be, insofar as many Republican voters will hold their noses and vote for Hillary Clinton out of a profound Trump revulsion. Clinton's presidency will begin with a deep wound. Our political degradation is far too high a price to pay to build another brand empire.

 

Vote your conscience on Election Day, so that the outcome is an honest mandate. But if you like Trump the mogul and not Trump the president, subscribe to the TV network, fly the airline, gamble in the casino, or buy the cologne. Just realize that he seeks your wallet, not your vote.