GOP Tries Moderation on Oregon Trail

In January, it was Oregon businessman Gordon Smith playing to farm implement stores and small-town coffee shops in eastern Oregon, stumping for the U.S. Senate with a message of federal belt-tightening and an endorsement by the ultraconservative Oregon Citizens Alliance.

Fast forward four months and Smith, a state senator, is back again. But this time, having narrowly lost to Democrat Ron Wyden in the special election to replace former Sen. Bob Packwood, Smith is campaigning for Oregon’s other Senate seat, which opened when Mark O. Hatfield decided not to seek reelection this November. It’s a new campaign with a new strategy in a race that could have national implications.

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This time, Smith, 43, is playing to the moderate Republicans in Portland and its suburbs, voters who dumped him last time for Wyden. Smith himself has dumped the citizens alliance--which became highly controversial when it pushed two failed anti-gay-rights initiatives--and is playing down such hot-button conservative issues as abortion and gay rights. In response, the group’s chief, Lon Mabon, decided to run against him for the GOP nomination in today’s primary.

If it sounds like Smith is trying to tap into the old tradition of moderate Republicanism that Packwood and Hatfield evolved into a three-decade-long reign in the U.S. Senate--a tradition most thought had died with Smith’s nomination last fall--his campaign isn’t doing anything to discourage the notion.

“Gordon’s business and political career has been based on bringing people together to solve problems. Gordon’s approach to issues is not divisive, but inclusive, and Republicans in this state, and conservatives in particular, want their views defined in an inclusive manner,” said Smith’s campaign manager, Dan Lavey.

Mabon counters that Oregon Republicans will be making “a major miscalculation” if they reject him for Smith.

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The Democrats, fresh from Wyden’s victory in January, would like to pick off Hatfield’s seat as well. Indeed, a victory in Oregon likely would be a key ingredient in any Democratic recipe for regaining control of the Senate.

But Oregon Democrats worry that Smith, who leads in public opinion surveys going into today’s vote, may have built up enough name recognition in the last go-round that his more moderate approach could provide a GOP win in November.

Four Democrats are the leading contenders for their party’s nod in the primary, for which voters will be trooping to the polls (the state experimented with mail balloting to fill Packwood’s seat).

Potentially the most formidable Democrat--and the one ahead in the final polling--is multimillionaire Portland software entrepreneur Tom Bruggere, who could bankroll a tough campaign in the fall against Smith. (Smith poured $2 million of his own substantial assets as owner of a frozen foods company into the campaign against Wyden; he has vowed not to spend any more of his own money.)

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Bruggere, 50, backed by most of the Democratic establishment, faces disgruntled adversaries who say the party is leaning on wealthy candidates who can finance their own campaigns. Bruggere responds by noting that his father dropped out of junior high school and went on to sell candy bars in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley to support his family.

“I grew up in Berkeley in the ‘60s with a picture of Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy on my wall, and next to that a crucifix. What I tell people is I knew if I grew up to be a priest I’d have to take a vow of poverty, but I didn’t know if I became a Democrat I’d have to do the same thing,” Bruggere said.

Bruggere has picked up endorsements from the National Abortion Rights Action League--though all four Democrats have pro-choice positions--and the Oregon Natural Resources Council, which snubbed two candidates with more stridently pro-environment views, Bend businessman Harry Lonsdale and Lane County commissioner Jerry Rust, founder of a tree-growing cooperative.

Lonsdale, 64, nonetheless believes he’s become enough of a household name from Senate runs in 1990 and 1992 that he will prevail today.

“I’ve run twice before and people know me. . . . People know that I’m an environmentalist, they know I’m good on social issues, but right now we’re being outspent 8 to 1 by Bruggere,” said Lonsdale, a millionaire himself who has refused out-of-state contributions and vowed to spend no more than $25,000 of his own money.

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Rust, 53, a county commissioner from Eugene for the past two decades, is a longtime friend of writer Ken Kesey and a former carpenter and Peace Corps volunteer. He helped found the nation’s first worker-owned tree planting cooperative in 1971 and has been one of the state’s most outspoken political environmentalists, advocating an end to clear-cutting on public lands, a ban on agricultural pesticides near rivers and streams and toughening the federal Endangered Species Act.

The fourth major Democratic candidate, Bill Dwyer, a state senator and former union organizer, is endorsed by most of Oregon’s union establishment and stresses his blue-collar roots as a sometime house painter, shoe shiner, truck driver and cable TV installer. Dwyer, 61, also has been a vociferous critic of the bank accounts of Bruggere and Smith.