Of Cabbages and Kings

The Oregon vot-er’s burden is trying to understand the array of ballot measures. It’s like homework to grasp the meaning of these initiatives that often are not what they appear to be.

One of the smartest things our newspapers have done is to pool our editorial resources to interview the proponents and opponents of the ballot measures in a single location.

We renewed our enterprise last Wednesday and Thursday at the Portland Airport Sheraton Hotel. On Wednesday, we did the initiatives. On Thursday, we interviewed candidates for statewide office.

In addition to sharing the load, I liken the benefit of our ballot measure immersion to how I took a year’s course of college statistics in six weeks of summer school at Portland State University. Mathematics is not my métier. Thus doing statistics for five hours per day, four days a week left me with a more coherent grasp of the topic.

We’ll publish a special tabloid on the ballot measures Oct. 17.

Most of my colleagues were new to this exercise. But the perennial ballot measure proponents – Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix – were like old vaudeville performers hauling out their old routines.

It is possible to look at Sizemore on more than one level. He took Oregon’s initiative and referendum in a new direction, by converting it to an industry. He has lived off it. A Multnomah County jury awarded $2.5 million to two unions after they filed an anti-raketeering lawsuit against Sizemore, claiming that he used forgery and fraud to qualify two anti-union ballot measures in 2000. Sizemore has not paid damages to plaintiffs. At the same time, Sizemore seems to believe in the causes that he promotes. And he doesn’t mind taking a punch and coming back for more.

Mannix has failed in several attempts at statewide, and recently congressional office. But the ballot measure thing has worked for him and his law firm.

The most curious character of all wasn’t in the room. Loren Parks is the millionaire who funds Mannix’ and Sizemore’s schemes. Parks once lived in Oregon. Now he lives in Nevada. But he still sends six-figure checks to fund these ballot measure campaigns. Go figure.

We saw all the state-wide candidates except Gordon Smith. Our biggest collective surprise was Allen Alley, the Republican candidate for state Treasurer. The guy has a lot of depth.

You can judge a candidate’s viability by the look in his eye. I observed this in two disparate players in 1980 – the Democrat Ron Wyden and the Republican Denny Smith.

When Sen. Gordon Smith’s challenger, Jeff Merkley, walked into our conference room Thursday he had the look of a winner for the first time in this long campaign. Merkley spoke on a host of topics and in a depth that Gordon Smith does not exhibit.

The Smith-Merkley race is close, and there is an assumption that Barack Obama will have coattails in Oregon. Smith continues to cooperate in his own defeat by running a cynical television campaign. The inevitable conclusion is that Smith has nothing else to talk about.

I love a good meatloaf sandwich. After the closing of Rosemary Baking Co., I’ve been bereft. On a recent Saturday, my wife and I dropped into the Tide Point cafe for lunch. I can report that its meat loaf sandwich is just the ticket.