Scott Bruun: Kitzhaber - A Smoking Gun Four Decades in the Making

Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

In politics, there is usually a small distinction between healthy scrutiny, healthy skepticism, and shameless piling-on. During the early months of 2015, the media scrutiny applied to then-Governor John Kitzhaber was warranted. Kitzhaber’s colossal errors in judgement justified the public pressures leading to his resignation.

But as months passed, especially as Oregonians watched a legislature dominated by unelected special interests, there was some sense that Kitzhaber’s punishment may have outweighed his sins. After all, Kitzhaber (it was believed) was a victim of love and loyalty rather than greed or corruption. His fall was not a tale of narcissism like it was for other fallen governors, like Eliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich or even Neil Goldschmidt. Instead, Kitzhaber’s faults were closer to the blind loyalty that Prince Edward displayed toward Wallis Simpson. In other words, a genuine but misguided loyalty that put love interests ahead of responsibilities to govern.

Even Willamette Week, the paper most responsible for bringing-down Kitzhaber, seemed later to lament his resignation. Willy-Week’s piece in May, “Feed the Beast,” was a several-thousand word expose on the union-fueled disaster of public education in Oregon. The piece concluded by stating that Kitzhaber’s resignation “cost him – and the state – the opportunity to tackle the school-funding disconnect he’d diagnosed and begun to address.”

Some good folks even began to genuinely feel sorry for Kitzhaber, a man who dedicated his entire adult life to service - first in medicine then elected office. In Kitzhaber, people saw a slightly sad, graying older-man who had now lost the chance to be Oregon’s elder statesman. Lost the opportunity to serve on those prestigious boards or earn the honorarium which would have set him up for his sunset years.

A little sad. Sad, that is, until last week when The Oregonian reported on directives Kitzhaber sent to senior staffers as early as 2011. Kitzhaber, as The O said, “gave the order.” Gave the order that state environmental policies would march in lock-step with the agenda of third-party environmental groups, largely funded by California hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer, that were paying Cylvia Hayes’ salary.

Oops. There’s that damn smoking gun.

Evan Thomas, former Newsweek editor, has just published an excellent new biography titled “Being Nixon.” Thomas’ slightly sympathetic book discusses the toxic White House environment enabled by Nixon’s difficult personality – part brilliant, part paranoid. With Watergate, Thomas affirms that Nixon, once he was made aware of it, conspired to cover-up the break-in. While he did not order the break-in, it was Nixon’s take-no-prisoners, do-what-it-takes attitude toward elections that inspired the lesser-angels of his staff to commit felonies. In the final analysis, Nixon enabled corruption.

In Oregon, what enables corruption is not entirely the individual. Corruption happens in Oregon because of the collective. Collective thought, collective temperament, and collective niceties that have kept one group of people in charge for the last four decades.

Kitzhaber felt comfortable ordering his staff to facilitate Hayes because, well, no one said “boo.” No one challenged the “we’re-all-on-the-same-side” mindset which has dominated Oregon politics since the 1980s. As I’ve written before, none of Oregon’s liberal establishment wants to offend each other. After all, they all run in the same wine-sipping circles. They all attend the same parties and philanthropic events.

They don’t want to look rude, and they certainly don’t want to damage their own ambitions or business interests. So the hard questions don’t get asked.

It’s no surprise then that after decades of single-party rule and insider “Oregon Nice,” our state is degraded and weak. The Oregon Nice that somehow prohibits “friends” in power from asking hard questions until it’s too late, has left us adrift. We are subject to special-interest control and moral-relativism. 

Think this is overstated? Well, there remain moneyed-individuals within elite Portland circles that still make excuses for Neil Goldschmidt. Goldschmidt’s merry apologists, followed soon by the same for Kitzhaber. And yet we still wonder how the culture of complicit-corruption grows in Oregon.

Oregon’s culture of corruption is systemic, not individualistic. Kitzhaber could only do what he did because those around him quietly looked the other way. It’s not Kitzhaber’s smoking gun, at least not his alone. It’s Oregon’s. A smoking gun built by quiet complicity and decades of single-party rule.

In 2016, we will see Oregon’s liberal establishment well-represented on ballots. We’ll see Kate Brown or Ted Wheeler for governor, Val Hoyle or Richard Devlin for secretary of state, Tina Kotek as speaker, and Tobias Read for treasurer.  All admirable people. And all, without exception, part of the decades-old insider ruling class that has served Oregonians so poorly.

So what to do?

The only remedy for our cancer of complicity is for Oregonians – Republicans, Democrats and independents - to finally follow a different path. To understand that four decades of one party rule is not only a recipe for mediocrity, as we saw with the 2015 legislature, it’s also the gateway toward corruption.

We can stand by as yet another campaign year comes-and-goes and ensures more of the same. Or Oregonians, with eyes wide open, can finally “stand athwart history and yell ‘stop!’”

The choice is ours.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs', yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living in public affairs with Hubbell Communications.