News Tastier Than A Chocolate Shake

[October 22nd, 2008]

Overheard by two reliable sources: U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio telling an Oct. 16 lunch meeting of the Democratic Party of Oregon’s Presidents Club: “Assuming we get Obama elected and a good highway bill [out of the House Transportation Committee, on which DeFazio sits], I’m coming back and I’m running [for governor] in 2010,” said DeFazio (D-Springfield). DeFazio was traveling Tuesday but a staffer acknowledged he’s “been thinking out loud about his options.” One other piece of speculation about the 2010 race has U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) interested in the GOP gubernatorial nomination if he loses his re-election to the Senate. 

Trouble in the ’Couv : Two weeks ago, Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard requested a federal investigation of his city’s police department after the city paid ex-officer Navin Sharma $1.65 million to settle his wrongful termination case (see “Good Cop, Mad Cop,” WW, July 30, 2008). Now Officer Ryan Martin, president of the 293-member Fraternal Order of Police, Lower Columbia Order, is broadening the mayor’s call. “Mismanagement and the possibility of corruption not only exists within the Administration of the Police Department but also exists within the City Attorney’s Office and the City Manager’s Office,” Martin wrote the Seattle U.S. Attorney’s Office in an Oct. 16 letter. 

If voters in the Riverdale School District approve a new $21.5 million construction bond in this election, elementary school children from that ritzy Southwest Portland enclave will probably attend one of nine Portland Public Schools buildings shuttered under former PPS Superintendent Vicki Phillips. In case the bond doesn’t pass, no lease agreement for Riverdale to use now-vacant Smith Elementary in the 2009-2010 school year has been inked. But PPS’s tentative OK represents an about-face on its policy regarding vacant buildings, which was to let them sit empty for PPS’s own later use.

Tin ear alert : With Oregon facing a 2009-2011 deficit pegged at $524 million and rising, it might not be the best time to propose upping public employee pay. But here’s an excerpt from an Oct. 14 email to legislative leaders from Scott Harra, director of the state’s Department of Administrative Services: “Our present classification and compensation plan has done the job it was designed to do originally, we recognize that it is no longer meeting all of our needs,” Harra wrote. “Currently, there is the need to evaluate and redesign the classification and compensation plans.” DAS spokesman Lonn Hoklin says Harra is just gauging interest in changes and there is “no predetermined outcome.”

He’s back. Ralph Nader became the first presidential candidate to visit Oregon this fall (you’ll be forgiven if you haven’t noticed; he complains he’s been subjected to what he calls “a national media blackout”) when he held a rally Monday night at the Bagdad Theater. Nader, running in Oregon as the Peace Party candidate, packed the Southeast Portland venue past its seating capacity of 600 people. To see Nader’s choice words for Barack Obama (“the ultimate coward” were three of them), his solution to the bailout, and the reason he plans to “never take a vacation,” go to WWire.

This year’s Harold Stassen award? It’s a tie: Over the years, John Sweeney, a retired parks worker, has run unsuccessfully for the Portland School Board, city auditor, County Commission, state Senate and, most recently, Congress in the Third Congressional District’s May Democratic primary. Sweeney has recalibrated his ambitions in this election. He’s running against two other people for a director’s seat on the East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. He’s not the only perennial also-ran seeking a seat on the low-profile district’s five-person board. Joining him is Ron McCarty, a regular in county commission races who’s unopposed in his bid for the soil and water district.