Six years later, it is clear that Kitzhaber is not the heir apparent to Tom
McCall. The governor says there is no reason he should be.
In two interviews with WW during the past few weeks, Kitzhaber spoke
of his accomplishments as governor: the Oregon Health Plan, the Oregon Plan
for Salmon, Ballot Measure 1--which the governor hopes will bring rationality
to the debate over education funding--and finally, defeating the November election's
revenue-slashing measures.
The normally reserved governor also let some of his frustration show, arguing
that he should be judged on his own merits, not those of a long-dead political
superhero.
"I am not Tom McCall," he says. "There are some significant differences."
He's right. The differences between McCall and Kitzhaber--the state's most
visible mystery man--are both meaningful and instructive. Still, the fact that
Kitzhaber finds it necessary to defend himself against McCall is surprising,
and forces a close look both at Kitzhaber himself and the standards of leadership
in Oregon he has failed to meet.
The greatest difference between Tom McCall and John Kitzhaber is that McCall
had a common touch and knew how to work the media. It may have been his single
most important skill as a politician, allowing him to communicate with the public
and rally the support of editorial boards and television stations.
"Tom came from the media, and he liked that, and he was good at it and was
very eloquent," says Kitzhaber. "I don't have that background, and I don't have
that skill."
McCall was a print reporter who moved into television, then politics. As governor,
he would hang out in the Capitol basement, shooting the breeze with the boys
in the pressroom, bouncing ideas off them or priming the pump for future stories.
He was glib and quotable, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. He wasn't afraid
to get choked up in front of the cameras or to pull outrageous publicity stunts.
The single moment that has come to define McCall occurred in 1967. A motel
owner had put up a fence on the beach, infuriating McCall, who believed the
beaches were public property.
Ted Hallock was a Democratic senator from Portland when the Republican governor
asked for his help in moving Senate Bill 100, the legislation that established
Oregon's vaunted land-use laws, through the 1973 Legislature.
Back then, Hallock says, "You had a bunch of young and progressive Democrats
along with a group of senior members who had been there long enough that they
had mellowed and said the sun would still come up tomorrow if we support McCall."
McCall's charm, combined with the regular parties he held at his house to entertain
both Democrats and Republicans, contributed to his ability to work both sides
of the aisle.
In fairness, however, Kitzhaber was forced during much of his tenure to work
with a different breed of opposition party.
McCall would have awakened in a cold sweat if he had ever dreamed of the nightmare
lawmakers Kitzhaber has faced.
"How do I battle someone like Sen. Larry George, or Sen. Eileen Qutub?," he
says. "I mean, these people were off the deep end."
For the hyper-rational Kitzhaber, dealing with the Senate Republicans was like
trying to negotiate with toddlers, particularly when it came to revenue proposals.
In Kitzhaber's inaugural address, he promised to deliver a transportation package
that would fund the state's ailing roads. He has repeatedly failed to do so,
most spectacularly in 1997. That year, after months of public meetings around
the state, Kitzhaber thought he had a package that would make it through the
Legislature. There were plenty of things to attack about the plan--critics at
the time called it tax-heavy and muddled--but it passed through the House of
Representatives. It got hung up, however, in the Senate transportation committee,
chaired by Marylin Shannon, a leader of the right-wing anti-government and anti-governor
clique. "Did you ever go to Marylin Shannon's committee?" Kitzhaber asks incredulously.
"She talked about black helicopters."
"They would never go for any tax," he says. "The Senate president was clear
on that point."
Sen. Tony Corcoran, one of the governor's most outspoken critics within his
own party, agrees that the bipartisanship that McCall enjoyed was not an option
for Kitzhaber. "Jesus Christ himself couldn't have gotten anything through those
legislators," says Corcoran.
McCall also never faced an enemy that has bedeviled Kitzhaber throughout his
two terms: Bill Sizemore and the ballot initiative.
During McCall's eight years as governor, there were, in total, eight citizen
initiatives, and they were relatively benign. During Kitzhaber's six years so
far, there have been 43. He has had to spend a considerable amount of his time
as governor fighting off Bill Sizemore, Lon Mabon and Don McIntire.
And though Kitzhaber may have won the battle of his career by beating back
the last election's revenue-squeezing measures, it has been a time-sucking demand
on the governor's time and energy.
Kitzhaber was so busy fighting Sizemore last November that one ballot measure
fell through the cracks and passed: Ballot Measure 7, which undermines Tom McCall's
land-use planning laws. In his final session, Kitzhaber will be working to protect
McCall's legacy while trying to leave one of his own.
A third difference between Kitzhaber and McCall, says the current governor,
is that McCall operated in less complicated times.
Gail Achterman, now the executive director of a water resource group in Deschutes,
has worked in one capacity or another for every governor since McCall. Kitzhaber
recently appointed her to his transportation commission.
"I knew Tom McCall," she says. "He was an amazing governor for Oregon. Today,
when you hear the old speeches and watch the videos, it gives you chills."
But, she points out, that was a different Oregon.
"People always harken back to the old days, wanting some sort of charismatic
leader," she says. "You have to remember that Oregon in those days was homogenous,
lily-white and easier to understand. The notion that Tom McCall's leadership
style would work today and people would rally in the same way today around him
is wrong."
The governor points to the Willamette River as an example of the difference
between then and now.
Today, the 1972 National Geographic photograph of McCall standing next
to the river, proudly recounting how he had gone against corporate polluters
who had been spewing industrial waste into the water, is almost a state cliché.
McCall actually started his quest to clean up the river before he was governor.
In 1962, while working at KGW news, he filmed a half-hour documentary that showed
oxygen-sapping pollution spewing out of paper mills directly into the Willamette
River. The film created the momentum necessary for Hallock to move a bill through
a Legislature that, until then, had balked at giving the state power to shut
down polluters.
Kitzhaber, too, has been preoccupied with the Willamette River, but has gone
about things differently.
Three years ago the governor convened a board made up of environmentalists,
city officials, industry representatives, farmers and timber owners to form
the Willamette Restoration Initiative. Since 1998, the 23 members have been
meeting and discussing the problems on the river and trying to reach a consensus
on what should be done to clean it up.
"McCall's problems were much less complicated," Kitzhaber says. "He was dealing
with point source pollution on the Willamette River. It was just different times."
It's true. Back then, the fish in the Willamette were drowning from lack of
oxygen, and the federal government didn't care. Today, the fish are mutating,
changing sex, and have been put on the federal endangered species list. A complex,
toxic and untraceable mix of runoff from automobiles in the cities, farms in
the country and timberland in the hills creeps into the river. Fixing the problem
is far more difficult than capping industrial discharge pipes.
It is against both his nature as a governor and the reality of the situation
for him to stand alongside the river pointing fingers, as McCall did 30 years
ago.
Still, there are those who say Kitzhaber's consensus-building leadership has
done nothing to clean up the river. The WRI is largely irrelevant in the policy
debate over the Willamette, and its future is unsure. To date, the group has
given the governor no river-cleaning or salmon-recovery legislation.
Throughout the board's existence, members have been frustrated both with the
slow pace and with the governor's lack of leadership.
"We need something to rally around," says Portland City Commissioner Erik Sten,
who has served on the board from the beginning. "This could be a starting point
for a big step forward. I don't think I wasted my time on it if I stop now,
but I feel like it was a missed opportunity to do more."
In some ways, things look good for the governor's last legislative session.
Shannon and Qutub are gone from the state Senate. And although the GOP has
control of the Legislature, there is less Republican muscle flexing in the Governor's
face. On top of that, new Senate President Gene Derfler seems more willing to
put aside past hostility and work with the governor than was his predecessor,
Brady Adams.
Yet the governor's agenda as he enters his last session is humble.
He plans to continue the battle to save the Oregon Health Plan against the
crushing weight of pharmaceutical costs and federal inflexibility. He will continue
to seek a regional plan to save Columbia River Salmon. He has proposed an economic
development package for rural Oregon. And he will seek money for his Oregon
Children's Plan to provide health and well-being screening for all of the state's
first-born children.
Whether this session's budget shortfall or the governor's own temperament is
more responsible for the modesty of the agenda, Kitzhaber is unapologetic.
There is no reason to believe Kitzhaber's popularity with voters will wane.
He is, in some ways, the only kind of politician who could be popular with a
cynical electorate in 2001--one who shuns the political game-playing that voters
claim they hate and avoids the media the public says it doesn't trust.
Kitzhaber believes it will be years, even decades, before the results of his
governorship will be apparent. All of his policies, from the health plan and
salmon recovery to the children's initiative and rural development proposal,
are long-term investments, not flashy instant gratifications.
It says something about the state of Oregon politics when the worst thing anyone
can say about the governor is that he's skilled, but he doesn't do enough with
those skills.
Kitzhaber continues to puzzle over what people want from a leader. At a presidential
level, he says, Ronald Reagan played it well. He points out, however, that playing
a role is less important than doing the right thing.
"What they got from Ronald Reagan made them feel real good. He played the role
of being a president. He was good at it," he says. "Yet he did a lot of damage.
I think, for whatever reason, I don't play the role of governor as well as I
should. I think that probably means different things to different people."
When the governor calls a staff meeting, he's among
friends. Some aides have been with Kitzhaber more than 20 years.
Two down, one to go: State Sens. Eileen Qutub (top) and Marylin Shannon
(center) are gone from the Statehouse, but Bill Sizemore's initiatives
continue to loom large in Salem.
In 1972, National Geographic portrayed McCall as the environmental governor who cleaned up
the Willamette and saved the salmon.
