Unelected, with a big stick
The behind-the-scenes powers in Salem
By Oakley Brooks
Oregonians hear a lot about the activities of the governor, the
Senate president and the House speaker in the Oregon
Legislature, but rarely do we hear much about those working
behind the scenes. Here’s a short list of those
little-seen power players who command respect in Salem and will
figure prominently in the upcoming session.
Who’s holding the purse strings?
The top business contributors to political races in
2004 and 2006 (contributions to ballot measures
excluded), from the Money in Politics Research Action
Project:
-
Loren
Parks, owner, Parks Medical
Electronics, $1.09 million
Top recipient: Citizens for (Kevin)
Mannix— $766,000 (2006)
-
Norman
Brenden, CFO, Holiday Retirement Group,
$145,000
Top recipient: Friends of Ron Saxton —
$100,000 (2006)
-
Win
McCormack, publisher, $127,200*
Top recipient: Planned Parenthood PAC —
$35,000 (2006)
-
Rod
Wendt, CEO, JELD-WEN, $125,000
Top recipient: Friends of Ron Saxton —
$125,000 (2006)
-
Richard
Withnell, chairman, Withnell Motor,
$107,000
Top recipient: Citizens for Mannix —
$101,000 (2006)
* McCormack is an owner of MEDIAmerica, the parent
company of Oregon
Business.
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Mark
Nelson — Lobbyist
As Oregon’s most powerful lobbyist, Nelson’s
big-ticket clients are RJ Reynolds and Anheuser-Busch, for whom
he wards off increases in cigarette and beer taxes. He defends
them by deftly turning the focus away from the mega
conglomerates that pay him to the little guy who drinks beer
and smokes. “Tobacco and beer companies don’t pay
taxes. Oregonians pay taxes,” Nelson said of drinkers and
smokers during the 2002 special legislative sessions, when
tobacco taxes were threatened. “That’s what this is
all about.” A clear sign of his clout, however, is the
range of organizations that have tapped him to carry water,
from the Industrial Customers of Northwest Utilities (ICNU) to
Oregon Head Start Association and Association of Oregon
Faculties. Nelson’s long list of customers nearly doubled
back and bit him during those acrimonious special sessions in
2002, when several college professors argued for tobacco tax
money to go toward education. But luckily for Nelson, the
faculty association’s board didn’t agree that
Nelson should lobby for that specific funding. A staff member
for the state treasurer and attorney general before turning to
lobbying in 1980, Nelson, 59, says his biggest recent win came
in the 2005 session, when, working for ICNU, he went up against
the giants of Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp and
argued in favor of a law that barred utilities from collecting
money for taxes they didn’t pay. (It passed and other
business lobbies also claim that victory.) This fall, Nelson is
taking on a new challenge. He’s organizing a fight
against ballot Measure 45, which imposes term limits on
legislators. The knee-jerk response is that Nelson is merely
protecting the status quo in which he reigns supreme. But many
Salem-watchers of all political persuasions have said fewer
seasoned, independent-minded lawmakers (resulting from an
experiment with term limits from 1992- 2002) have turned the
Legislature into the partisan slugfest it is today. New term
limits would only make it worse. In this case, Nelson may be
doing the state, in addition to his clients, a favor.
Mike McCallum — President, Oregon Restaurant Association
McCallum, 49, is a different sort of lobbyist. He’s at
the head of a powerful organization that was one of only eight
groups to contribute more than $300,000 to candidates in
legislative and statewide races in 2004 (ORA spreads its
contributions to both parties). With 3,000 members, the
restaurant association spends about half a million dollars a
year on a four-person lobby led by McCallum and his right-hand
man Bill Perry. Backed by that substantial cash flow, McCallum,
a 20-year veteran in Salem, has the ear of Legislative
leadership on crucial issues of minimum wage and lottery
receipts for restaurateurs. In last year’s session, the
Oregonian reported
that McCallum convinced House majority leader Wayne Scott
(R-Canby) and House speaker Karen Minnis (R-Wood Village) to
sign a letter authored by McCallum and send it on to the
lottery chief on the eve of a crucial lottery commission vote.
Restaurateurs’ take of earnings on lottery games in their
establishments was diminished but with added games their
revenue has remained steady. While the Oregon minimum wage rose
to $7.25, McCallum and the ORA convinced legislators to carve
out exceptions in minimum wage bills for tipped employees to
lower the food industry’s payroll. But the exception has
never made it into law. This year, they hired a Washington
lobbyist and succeeded in getting tipped employees exemptions
into the federal minimum wage bill that would have trumped
Oregon law. It, too, stalled out this summer. Look for McCallum
and ORA to again push the issue in
2007.
Pat Egan
— The governor’s chief of staff
The governor’s point person is such a crucial role that
you’d have to substitute Republican Ron Saxton’s
chief as a power player if he can pull off a win as the
challenger. In Egan, 37, the Kulongoski camp says they have a
bright, young political mind that can once again steer the
Legislature in their favor. They have seen what an ineffective
point person can mean to a governor’s agenda. Kulongoski
shook up his staff just before the 2005 Legislative session,
putting budget guru Teresa McHugh in as chief of staff and Team
K had a hard time passing much in their agenda. Many Salem
experts chided the governor’s team for being too insular.
Egan spent several years as the Port of Portland’s
lobbyist after serving as the legislative adviser for Gov. John
Kitzhaber and then Kulongoski briefly in 2003. Many say he
knows the ins and outs of the Salem scene. He wrote the $100
million Connect Oregon transportation program early in the
Kulongoski administration and then lobbied on the part of the
Port of Portland to get it passed — $16.8 million of the
grants went to the port. Kulongoski is promising an energy
package and a children’s health care initiative funded by
tobacco taxes in ’07. Those will go nowhere without the
deft maneuvering of Egan.
Paul
Warner — Legislative revenue officer
Few individuals have the ability to turn ideas into numbers
like Warner, an economist who explains the impact of new
legislation on state revenue as bills come forward in the
Legislature. Legislators also turn to him for his sense of how
the economy is doing and how close he thinks revenue
projections (which come first from the governor’s office)
will be to reality. “When he talks, we all listen,”
says one legislator of Warner, 52, who served as the state
economist for 10 years before moving over to the Legislature in
1999. Warner will be central, as always, in the upcoming
legislative session for the added reason that he’ll
assist lawmakers in coping with the “kicker,”
Oregon’s tax rebate system that this year will be
returning $1.3 billion to businesses and individuals. Recession
is also when Warner becomes critical as legislators search for
ways to raise more money. He was often turned to during the
hellish budget balancing in 2001-03, when state revenue
suffered its most precipitous decline since the Great
Depression. As crucial as Warner’s information is, he
takes pains to make sure it’s consistent no matter who
requests it. “Those who get it can go and couch it in how
they view the world,” Warner says. “You just want
to make sure that if people with different philosophies ask one
question you give them the same answer.”
Also in the mix…
Dave Barrows, a
lobbyist whose heavy-hitting clients — Nike and the Grand
Ronde Tribes — speak volumes about his
influence…Connie
Seeley, senate president Peter Courtney’s chief of
staff, puts the endgame budget together for the
Democrat-dominated senate…Gary Wilhelms, a veteran staffer
whose daughter is helping run Ron Saxton’s campaign,
returns to head House speaker Karen Minnis’ office
(provided she wins re-election)…Associated Oregon Industries may
have a new face with Jay Clemens from Oklahoma replacing
Richard Butrick as its chief, but its small army of lobbyists
still commands a lot of attention in Salem…Ken Rocco, legislative fiscal
officer, breaks down the state budget for legislators: What
does each program cost and how are well are state agencies
spending and managing their money?
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