Brown Finds Receptive Crowd at Oregon Rally

On the eve of this state’s primary, Democratic presidential candidate Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. warned supporters here Monday that America’s future is increasingly threatened by the export of jobs to cheap labor markets, environmental devastation and the erosion of civil liberties.

The former California governor appeared re-energized by his largest crowd in recent days as several thousand people turned out at a downtown rally. But, by most accounts, the Democratic presidential campaign--all but locked up by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton--has taken a back seat in Oregon to the party’s spirited U.S. Senate race.

In the Senate primary, nine-term Rep. Les AuCoin is vying with millionaire businessman Harry Lonsdale for the Democratic nomination against veteran Republican Sen. Bob Packwood. The most recent poll taken here shows AuCoin leading narrowly.

Brown, meanwhile, is running against a perception that the presidential primary race is over, campaign volunteers lamented to the candidate.

Scott Spaan, Brown’s statewide coordinator, said in an interview that he would be pleased to win 40% of the state’s 47 delegates at stake in today’s vote. A recent poll showed Clinton pulling away from Brown here.

Brown has focused heavily on Oregon, a state considered fertile terrain for his insurgent campaign because of its concern with environmental and quality-of-life issues, a widespread distrust of government and its proximity to California. The tension between conservation and jobs--as exemplified by the conflict over saving the spotted owl versus continued logging in old growth forests--is particularly acute here.

Brown told the responsive lunchtime crowd at Pioneer Square that Oregonians could still “send a message to this party and this country” today by voting against “a governing elite that is increasingly separated from the consequences of (its) decisions.”

Earlier Monday, Brown visited the controversial Trojan nuclear power plant along the Columbia River in Rainer, about 45 miles outside Portland. There, the candidate threw his support behind plant opponents who are seeking to get two initiatives on the November ballot to close the 17-year-old facility.

The Oregon Democratic Senate race has turned into one of the fiercest insider versus outsider battles in the country. Lonsdale has attacked AuCoin for the 80 bad checks, worth more than $60,000, that AuCoin wrote on his House bank account. AuCoin also voted for the congressional pay raise and Common Cause says AuCoin took $2.2 million in political action committee contributions during his 17 years in Congress.

AuCoin has responded by reminding voters of some of Lonsdale’s earlier political missteps--including a defense of the constitutional rights of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune rattled an eastern Oregon town in the mid-1980s--in an effort to portray Lonsdale as a fringe candidate of dubious judgment.