Westlund walks up the middle
Governor's race - The independent state senator claims moderate ground, perhaps risky but novel for Oregon

Sunday, April 30, 2006
JEFF MAPES

Few of the people streaming past Ben Westlund's booth at the Earth Day celebration in Portland's Sellwood Park know anything about the independent candidate for governor.

But the loquacious state senator from Bend is quickly engaged in a flurry of conversations.

He assures a nursing student that, like her, he is pro-choice. He tells a library assistant how a sales tax will increase money for public services. And he brags to a Sierra Club volunteer about how his lifestyle leaves a relatively small "footprint" on the environment.

"I like people, and I can talk to anyone," Westlund says as he takes a break and sips bottled water. "Everyone has children, everyone has health care issues, everyone wants to feel safe in their homes and streets. There's just a great deal of commonality."

While other candidates for governor sweat out the upcoming May 16 primary, Westlund spends his time building the base for the most unusual challenge to the major political parties in modern Oregon political history.

Unlike other recent independent and third-party candidates, Westlund, a former Republican, is attempting to run right up the political center as he tries to connect with almost everyone he meets.

Westlund's campaign claims to be nearing the $500,000 mark in contributions, and one poll suggests he's already favored by at least 10 percent of voters.

As he gets his campaign off the ground -- to make the November ballot, he needs to collect 18,368 signatures from registered voters who don't participate in the Democratic or Republican primaries or help nominate any other candidate for governor -- Westlund is developing a political profile that seems a mixture of the pragmatic and principled.

For example, he didn't tell the pro-choice voter that he's often voted with the anti-abortion lobby. And he didn't mention to the Sierra Club volunteer that his voting record with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters only recently emerged from the cellar.

Still, Westlund also is going where most candidates fear to tread. He's promoting a plan to impose a sales tax and lower income taxes that's not much different from ones repeatedly rejected by Oregon voters.

In the governor's race, the Democratic candidates talk about raising business taxes to pay for public services. The Republican candidates talk about cutting taxes for the investor class to improve the business climate.

Westlund is trying to bridge that divide by telling liberals a sales tax will provide more money for what he calls "egregiously underfunded" schools and other public services. For conservatives, he says a sales tax will hit tourists and the underground economy while providing a major break for Oregonians who now pay one of the country's highest income taxes.

Whether it works politically is another question.

Sen. Charlie Ringo, D-Beaverton, a Westlund friend, says taking on the current system "is a thankless task, and it's full of political risk" for Westlund.

Charting his own path

Of course, Westlund's entire candidacy is a kind of high-wire act, the culmination of an unusual life story.

Westlund, 56, son of a well-to-do developer in Southern California, came to Lake Oswego as a teenager. He migrated east of the Cascades and eventually found success as a high-tech rancher selling bull sperm.

On a visit to Portland in 1982, he was arrested for drunken driving and possession of cocaine by a young police officer, John Minnis. Ironically, both would later serve together in the Legislature. Westlund says he went into rehab and straightened out his life.

After entering the House in 1997, Westlund seemed instantly comfortable in the Capitol, dispensing hugs, backslaps and loud wisecracks that echoed down the marble halls.

He played the rural rancher role to the hilt -- and still does. "Down the trail, big guy," he drawls as he parts with an acquaintance.

The joviality masks a shrewd negotiating style and hunger for information that made Westlund one of the Legislature's top budget experts.

"He's creative and he thinks outside the box, which makes some people nervous," says Paulette Pyle, an agriculture and pesticide lobbyist. "He gets in the middle and mixes it up."

He was in the middle of deals in 2002 and 2003 to temporarily raise the income tax during the recession to help preserve services. Both were defeated by voters.

Survival, then change

In 2003, Westlund was diagnosed with lung cancer. He returned from successful surgery and chemotherapy to deliver a passionate floor speech telling his colleagues they could no longer delay fixing the state's boom-and-bust tax system.

"When you're lying in a hospital ward, the real truth is hard to deny," Westlund says. "That was a real opportunity for me to take stock."

In 2005, having moved to the Senate, he emerged as the Legislature's most wayward Republican. He fought for civil unions for gays and tangled with the pharmaceutical industry about a state-run drug purchasing program.

He signed up for two health care ballot measures that might be on the November ballot, including one that would raise the cigarette tax by 60 cents a pack.

In February, he announced he was leaving his party to run for governor.

"After a decade in public service, laboring in a system dominated by the two major parties," he tells the Beaverton crowd, "I'm here to tell you that extreme partisan politics all too often trumps good public policy."

Westlund is cheered by the fact that centrists who are not Republicans or Democrats have won governorships in four states since 1990. But a favorite parlor game among political insiders is figuring out which party is most endangered by Westlund's presence in the race. A March poll by Zogby International suggested most of his support came from Democrat-leaning voters -- potentially making it easier for a Republican to win.

Lisa Grove, a pollster working for Gov. Ted Kulongoski's re-election campaign, argues that Westlund attracts mostly independent men who are more inclined to vote Republican.

Whatever the case, Westlund seems to be making his own political adjustments.

Just last year, he sponsored a bill requiring parental notification for minors seeking an abortion. Now, he says he's inclined to oppose a similar initiative from Oregon Right to Life.

Gayle Atteberry, the group's executive director, disputes Westlund's argument that there were important distinctions between the bill and initiative. "Where he is now is not where he has been," she says. "Now, he obviously sees it as good politics to take a pro-abortion stand."

Westlund's League of Conservation rating jumped to 42 percent last year, from 13 percent or less in his previous four sessions.

He says his changing environmental record is philosophical, not political. "I am much more aware of the seriousness of global warming, of the perils of burning of fossil fuel, of the environmental footprint we as Americans are leaving on this planet."

But Grove, the Kulongoski campaign pollster, says plenty of attention will be paid to Westlund's long legislative record if he makes the fall ballot.

"He's trying to make a very artful shift to the middle, and given his record, it's going to be hard to pull off," she says, but "we'll have to keep a close watch on him all the way through."