The News-Review - Kitzhaber, Dudley Court Votes

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By John Sowell

John Kitzhaber hopes to accomplish what even legendary Oregon Gov. Tom McCall could not pull off: win election to a second tenure as governor after serving for two terms and leaving office because of term limits.

Former Portland Trail Blazer Chris Dudley would like to become the first Republican governor in Oregon since Vic Atiyeh, the man who defeated McCall in the 1978 primary and who went on to serve two terms.

Kitzhaber, once an emergency room doctor at the now-shuttered Douglas Community Hospital in Roseburg, touts his 14 years as an Oregon legislator and his eight years as governor. The Democrat says he has plans to deal with Oregon's poor economy and to bring jobs to the state while continuing to provide critical public services.

"At 63, I've got a lot of runway behind me, a lot of experience," Kitzhaber said during a recent conversation with the editorial board of The News-Review. "Chris has not had any direct experience in managing a budget, doing a payroll or creating private-sector jobs."

Dudley, a Yale University graduate with degrees in economics and political science who went to work for the Portland wealth management firm M Financial following his 17-year professional basketball career, casts himself as a political outsider and tells voters that's exactly what this state needs. The Republican nominee says he isn't bound by politicians' limited view of the world and would be able to bring a fresh approach to the governor's office.

"You don't have to have 60 to 30 years of experience to be an effective leader," Dudley said in a separate visit with the editorial board. "In fact, I'd make the counter argument that our past two governors, between the two of them, had over 60 years of experience and here we sit: 42nd in employment, 47th in job growth, 43rd in education."

Kitzhaber was a popular governor during his two terms from 1995 to 2002. He was well known for his uniform of blue jeans, cowboy boots and a belt with a large buckle.

Dudley, 45, has traded in his basketball shorts for a business suit that fits his role in the financial world.

With the tightness of the race, each man is confident he will win. Recent polls have shown Kitzhaber with a slight lead, and he hopes he will gain votes from this week's appearance in Portland by President Barack Obama, whom Kitzhaber had not met before.

"I've got a record and that's good and it's bad. You can find some stuff that I've done that a lot of people aren't going to like. At the end of the day, Oregonians actually want someone who loves the state, who has been working in the state, who has fallen down a few times and actually has a plan to move us ahead. I think that's what is going to make a difference with the undecided voters," Kitzhaber said.

Dudley has spent the past week touring rural Oregon in a campaign bus. He is trying to appeal to voters who want new blood in the governor's office. He also hopes he will benefit from voter dissatisfaction with Democrats, who control the Oregon Legislature and dominate the state's congressional delegation.

"This is a critical election. I believe, personally, we cannot afford to go another four to eight years down the same path we're on. We have to make some dramatic changes, and we have to do so now," Dudley said.

Whoever is elected will have to deal with a $3 billion deficit in the next two-year budget cycle.

With his past experience, Kitzhaber said he's poised to attack the deficit his first day in office. Dudley says the state's budget system needs to be overhauled.

"I think there's an acceptance that we have to do things differently," Dudley said.

Kitzhaber said he wants to develop a 10-year spending plan that would provide reliable funding from year to year. He said his spending priorities would be to fund programs to improve student achievement, improve individual health and reduce drug addiction among parents whose children are taken away and placed in foster care.

Dudley said he wants the state to adopt a budget system in which agencies must justify the amount of money they seek rather than taking the previous biennium's appropriation and adding to it. He said he would also like to see efficiency increased and to limit increases in public employee compensation.

Dudley said he's not happy with the way enterprise zones have been used to lure big companies to Oregon with tax incentives, only to have the companies pull up stakes and leave later. Dell, Bayliner and Alcan came to Douglas County after being offered tax breaks and are either gone or, in Alcan's case, in the process of shutting down.

"The incentives have to be structured in a certain way that if a company comes in and takes those incentives and then leaves, that there's a (payback) so the county's not left high and dry," Dudley said.

Kitzhaber said he wants to boost the economy by retrofitting schools throughout Oregon to become more energy efficient. Under his plan, the projects would be financed through loans repaid by energy savings. It would increase jobs in the trade industries, where unemployment currently is about 30 percent, Kitzhaber said.

"If you used Oregon products like Jeld-Wen windows, you'd create a bigger ripple effect," he said.

He said he wants to develop a biomass industry to utilize slash and wood waste from forest thinning to power small energy plants. Douglas County could supply some of the highest amounts of biomass material in the state.

Dudley said if elected, he will make job expansion his top priority. It's an area, he said, that's been ignored by previous administrations.

"I don't think we're here by accident. I think job creation has been more of an afterthought than a top priority for a number of years from the Capitol," Dudley said.

Dudley said he would work to bring Oregon's unemployment rate below the national average. Since January, Oregon's unemployment has fluctuated between a low of 9.9 percent in September to a high of 11.6 percent in January and March. Over that same period, the national rate has gone from a low of 9.2 percent in September to a high of 10.6 percent in January.

Douglas County's unemployment rate this year has been as low as 13.5 percent in May and as high as 15.7 percent in January.

"I'm a believer that government doesn't necessarily create jobs, but it creates an environment in which jobs are created," Dudley said. Kitzhaber is "talking about borrowing $100 million to weatherize schools. And that's going to make a better environment for job creation in our state? He believes in government-created jobs. I believe in the private sector."

Dudley has called for cutting the capital gains tax from 11 percent to 3 percent to spawn business investment. Kitzhaber would also like to lower the rate, but would target the savings for those who make investments within Oregon.

Kitzhaber said would like to see Oregon combine funding for K-12 education, community colleges and higher education. He said that would provide a better system than having each area fight the others for increased funding.

"In taking K-12, we need to provide the school districts an amount of money that they can count on going forward every year through 2020. It's not going to be adequate, by our current definition, but it's going to be stable," Kitzhaber said.

Dudley has advocated providing a free college education for Oregon high school graduates who get good grades. He has not proposed how to pay for that plan.

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