KTVZ 21 News - Central Oregon
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Westlund quits GOP, launches bid for governor
Independent status will shake things up

February 14, 2005
By Barney Lerten and Dana Walters

Tuesday was not only Valentine's Day, and Oregon's 147th birthday: It was a momentous day for state Sen. Ben Westlund, as the Tumalo lawmaker drop-kicked the "R" off his suffix, ending his Republican Party affiliation and launching an independent run for governor.

Westlund, accompanied by his wife and children, visited the office of Deschutes County Clerk Nancy Blankenship to file a new voter registration card. After meeting with reporters, he traveled to Salem to file for the governor's race.

"I am not a member of a party - not because I think Republicans or Democrats are bad, but because I feel that extreme partisanship is keeping us from solving Oregon's most pressing problem, and the party label was keeping me from truly being able to provide leadership on the issues Oregonians care about," he said in his campaign-launching announcement.

Westlund, first elected to the Oregon House in 1997, was appointed to fill a Senate vancy in the final days of the 2004 session, after surviving a bout of lung cancer that required chemotherapy.

He has been testing the waters for months, traveling all over the state while saying it was time to "stop putting ideology before ideas" and critical of the "paralyzing partisanship and a lack of leadership" preventing big things from getting done in Salem. But the moderate legislator who has drawn extensive Demcratic and independent support in the past - including the group "Dems for Ben" - repeatedly said he wouldn't actually enter the race unless he saw "a plausible path to victory."

“Happy birthday, Oregon,” Westlund said, flanked by his family and with the applause of supporters. “Happy birthday, honey,” he told wife Libby before giving her a more public kiss than usual.

“It is time to put Oregon first,” the casually dressed Westlund said before traveling over the mountains to file for the governor’s race. “It is time to declare our independence. It is time for an independent governor for Oregon.”

Westlund said he’s seen what extreme partisanship can do, and he wants to change that, if elected governor.

“We have got to break through that wall,” he said. “This is a little bit like a submarine or an airplane: You’re either moving forward or you’re going down, and right now, Oregon is going down.”

Westlund said health care and tax reform are two other key issues he’ll focus on, in hopes of getting Oregon back on its feet.

“I’m concerned we’re absolutely going down the wrong path,” he said. “We need to change direction to reinvigorate this state, to bring it back to her former self – a state of so many innovative firsts.”

Westlund's pragmatic, moderate role drew praise from many quarters, but it clearly rankled many Republicans back home when he, for example, supported allowing same-sex civil unions and continued to suggest some form of sales tax as a piece of the solution to Oregon's fiscal woes. There were even rumbles, never materialized, of a bid to recall him from office for his sponsorship of Senate Bill 1000, which would have made it illegal to discriminate against gays and lesbians and allowed same-sex couples.

"Ask any Oregonian to describe themselves, and very few will list party first, second or even third," Westlund said in his announcement. "We register to vote as Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Libertarians or no party at all - but that does not define us. We are all Oregonians first, and we all should be working together to make Oregon a better place."

Westlund, who will need 18,000 valid signatures by late August to make the November ballot, also has helped create an initiative that aims to open Oregon's primaries to all voters. "It's time we return to the Oregon way of getting things done: putting ideas before ideology and people."

Westlund's extensive Web site (www.benwestlund.com) transformed Tuesday into the online arm of his new gubernatorial campaign, complete with a host of video segments, such as his participation in Bend's Christmas Parade, and the ability to contribute, volunteer or "invite Ben" - he prefers the informality and first-name relationships - to an event.

It's not exactly a small field of candidates that Westlund joins, seeking to head off Democrat Ted Kulongoski's bid for a second term as governor. The incumbent has drawn not only several Republican challengers, but two within his own party, ex-state Treasurer Jim Hill and Lane County Commissioner Peter Sorenson.

Westlund knows full well what skeptics will say about his bid to be the second independent governor in Oregon history (Julius Meier was the first, during the Great Depression). His press packet includes a Q&A about independent candidates, noting, for example, that a new state law says registered Democrats and Republicans who vote in their party's primary can't be valid signatures on his petition to make the ballot.

But he said research has shown that "successful independent races are won by candidates who tap into the broad middle of the electorate. Success is possible in states with high non-affiliated voter registration, high voter turnout" and "deep dissatisfaction" with the choices in a race, or the general state of affairs.

He also said Meier, the independent governor of the '30s, proved to be quite effective, as he "worked with both Republicans and Democrats to wipe out the state debt, draw 'New Deal' projects to Oregon to put people to work, lower taxes and establish the Oregon State Police."