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As candidates for the November election cycle through WW’s office, many of the positions they advance neatly follow party lines.
But first-time candidate Brian Pierson, a former Army officer and high-level corporate executive running as a Republican in Washington County’s Senate District 18, is using his own playbook.
During their interview last week, Pierson and the incumbent state Sen. Wlnsvey Campos (D-Aloha) predictably disagreed on some things. But when Campos asked Pierson about his position on the state budget as expressed on his campaign website, Pierson’s answer was surprising.
Campos wanted to make a point about the state not legally being able to engage in “deficit spending,” a term Pierson uses on his website. But Pierson’s answer went in a different direction.
Not only did he say the state needs to fully fund the Quality Education Model (a calculation of ideal K–12 funding), which currently has a gap of $2.25 billion for the 2025–27 budget, but even more unusually, Pierson said he would sacrifice the kicker. That only-in-Oregon provision, passed into law by the 1979 Legislature, will return $5.62 billion to Oregonians for the 2021–23 biennium.
Taxpayers, of course, love getting a partial refund on their state income taxes. Protecting that cash flow from Democrats has long been a top Republican priority, expressed again earlier this year by then-Senate minority leader Tim Knopp (R-Bend).
But Pierson said the practice of trying to predict state revenue over the coming two years, and then “kicking” anything above 2% over that prediction back to taxpayers, is bad policy and stops the state from doing things such as fully funding the Quality Education Model.
“It doesn’t make sense to me as a businessman,” Pierson told Campos. “And it doesn’t make sense to me as a taxpayer.”