Westlund petitioners find support
By David Steves
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Forest Leonard is standing his skeptical ground when he encounters a visitor who's out promoting a political candidate.

It's Sunday afternoon, and Leonard is on Neighborhood Watch duty, patrolling the streets of Santa Clara. He's just approached a pair of men walking door to door.

One of them, a campaign worker, explains that he's collecting signatures to qualify Republican-turned-independent Ben Westlund for the ballot as a candidate for governor.

Leonard says he'd need to know more about the would-be candidate before signing anything.

The campaign worker explains that Westlund is for gun rights. And that he's taken a stand for gay rights.

"Actually, then he sounds like the perfect candidate," says Leonard, his intense gaze softening as he reaches out to sign Westlund's petition.

So far, Westlund's supporters have found no shortage of people willing to sign his petition. The Central Oregon resident must come up with 18,368 valid signatures by an Aug. 29 deadline in order to appear on the November ballot alongside Democratic incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Republican challenger Ron Saxton and three minor-party candidates.

On Friday, the Westlund campaign announced it had passed the required number of signatures. It's an important milestone, but far from the end of his petition drive. Westlund and his campaign staff figure that thousands of additional signatures are still needed to offset the number likely to be ruled invalid by elections officials.

That's typical for any election petition, which must be screened for duplicates or signatures from people who aren't registered to vote or filled out petition sheets incorrectly.

Westlund faces an additional hurdle, though. He is the first independent to seek ballot access since a 2005 law was passed barring the use of signatures from voters who cast ballots in the Democratic or Republican primaries in May. Previously, any registered voter could sign such an independent candidate's petition.

Despite the higher threshold, Westlund said broad dissatisfaction with conventional Democrats-vs.-Republicans politics has ordinary Oregonians of all political stripes ready to back an independent candidate willing to offer bold leadership and big ideas.

"This reservoir of discontent directed at both major parties is much broader and deeper than any of us, certainly myself included, fully appreciate."

Jonathan Manton, the Westlund campaign's finance director, is one of a dozen paid and volunteer staff members who have been circulating petitions on Westlund's behalf in the Eugene area.

On Sunday, Manton allowed an observer to follow along as he canvassed door-to-door for signatures west of River Road in the Santa Clara area. Except for an occasional nonvoter or "I'm-not-interested" brush-off, Manton encountered plenty of people who were willing, if not legally able, to help Westlund make it on the ballot.

One such encounter with a well-meaning resident came on Oak Drive, where Diana Francis was ready to sign the petition after listening to Manton's 15-second pitch about West- lund's commitment to health care and renewable energy.

Asked first if she was a voter, Francis said she was a registered Republican. Asked if she'd voted in her party's primary in May, she said she was certain she had, prompting Manton to apologize that this meant she was ineligible to sign the candidacy petition.

He left an information sheet on Westlund with Francis, who said she'd consider him when time came to vote.

A few doors away, Brad Julian answered Manton's questions identically, except that he was a Democrat. When Manton told him that meant he was ineligible to sign the petition, Julian thought it through and recalled that while he'd intended to vote, he'd actually been too busy.

Despite his party affiliation, Julian said he was more interested in a candidate's ability to break through partisan gridlock than a commitment to political ideologies.

"That's what everyone needs to do - get off their damn high horses and come up with a compromise that's right down the middle," he said.

Westlund and his supporters may be hearing such sentiments from voters willing to ditch party affiliations to back an independent. But if documented voter behavior prevails in the Oregon election for governor, then voters such as Francis and Julian will end up voting for their respective parties' nominees - not an independent - for governor, according to Bill Lunch, chairman of the Political Science Department at Oregon State University.

Lunch cited research that has found registered Democrats and Republicans almost always vote for their parties' nominees and that most independent voters tend to regard themselves as Democrats or Republicans when filling out their ballots.

"The reality is that partisan identity is much more deeply rooted than the numbers would suggest," he said. "So it's not as if there's no potential for Westlund. There is.

"But he's got a very steep mountain to climb."