Is Wehby the Last, Best Hope for Oregon GOP?

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

In politics, Margaret Thatcher remarked, there are “no final victories, no final defeats.”

Perhaps.

But for Oregon Republicans, the ongoing era of big-ticket smack-downs must feel permanent. Those heady days of Atiyeh, Hatfield and Packwood are ancient memories. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 1982.

Even the GOP’s most recent electoral outlier, Gordon Smith, has now been gone six years – a victim of the anti-Bush wave that swept the nation in 2008, and lingers in Oregon still.

Yet every two years, the Oregon GOP still finds a few qualified candidates for higher office. Political ambition often requires the suspension of disbelief, after all. And for a time during these campaigns, one or two of the top GOP candidates – usually successful businessmen or lawyers with no political experience other than access to sizeable political contributions – seem like they might just be the ones to break the cycle of loss.

Voters and donors alike are told why a particular Republican candidate is the one who will, finally, surmount both the huge voter registration disadvantage and the Democrats’ sophisticated get-out-the-vote machine.

The political graveyard in Oregon is filled with these sure-bet GOP candidates.

As history’s trend has not been kind to GOP candidates, the question must then be asked: Can a Republican ever win in Oregon again?

The 2014 U.S. senate contest between Monica Wehby and Jeff Merkley will provide the answer.

Wehby has challenges

Wehby has her challenges for sure. She’s hired the best political fundraiser on the west coast, but her campaign team has been dismal. Team Wehby mismanaged debates from the start. They failed to prepare or trust their candidate, and therefore made her learning curve much steeper as she heads toward one of this year’s most hotly contested races nationwide.

And the handling of revelations concerning Wehby’s domestic challenges? Well, let’s just say that her campaign’s hide-and-go-seek response ought to be used as a campaign school case study of what not to do.

Alas, such are the risks for a novice candidate and neophyte campaign team. They don’t know what they don’t know.

And yet, Monica Wehby provides the best hope for victory that Oregon Republicans have seen in a generation. She’s talented, accomplished, appealing. Nice. The kind of person you would want to help care for your ailing child. Perhaps the kind of person you would send to help care for an ailing country.

Wehby will raise the funds necessary to trumpet her virtues. And because she is whip smart, she may very well acquire political acumen in time for autumn’s slugfest.

Her opponent, Jeff Merkley, is an accidental senator. In office because he picked the right moment to run against a guy who happened to be in the same party as George W. Bush.

Sure, Merkley has made himself a hero of the far left. He’s done this primarily through his fervent efforts to limit debating rights for the minority party. But this is exactly why he will always be a fringe voice. Regardless of how long he serves, Merkley’s stature will remain that of a junior senator.

He may make his mark with certain narrow interests, but the odds of Merkley ever achieving significant political influence or crossover appeal are long at best.

So here we are. In one corner, an unaccomplished first-term senator with all the advantages of statewide party registration and machine politics. In the other, a political novice pediatric brain surgeon who looks and sounds a lot different than any recent Republican candidate in Oregon.

For my money, these variables make this match an even bet come Nov. 4 - perhaps the best odds Oregon Republicans have seen in decades.

Monica Wehby may not be Oregon’s Iron Lady. Not yet at least. But given the tide of history, she’s the last, best hope for Republicans.

If she can’t do it, it can’t be done.

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 on the fifth floor of Big Pink.