From West by Northwest.org Voices of the Northwest Sadler's Sense: Enter Starret Stage Right -- Now a Four Way Race for Governor and Freeway Nation or Free Nation? By Russell Sadler May 24, 2006 The recent Rasmussen poll showing a near-dead heat between Gov. Ted Kulongoski and Republican nominee Ron Saxton (43-41 percent) raised more questions than it answered because 10 percent of those polled were undecided. Independent candidate Ben Westlund was not included in the poll because he has not qualified for the ballot yet, though seven percent of the respondents volunteered they were voting for someone other than Kulongoski or Saxton. But the Rasmussen poll was swept into the recycling bin by reports that veteran broadcast anchor Mary Starret will become the the U.S. Constitution Party’s candidate for governor. Starret, 51, spent more than a decade hosting Good Morning Northwest with Jim Bosley on KATU-TV in Portland. She was a popular talk show host on KPDQ, a Portland Christian radio station. As executive director of Oregonians For Life, a political action group, Starret retains substantial name familiarity in Portland and its suburbs where Oregon’s statewide elections are usually decided because that’s where two-thirds of all Oregonians live. Bright, articulate and enormously telegenic, with an internet site archive of occasional opinion pieces oozing sweet reason, Starret will be a formidable threat to Saxton’s bid and might even derail Westlund’s independent bid if her arrival on the scene discourages voters from signing Westlund’s nominating petitions -- unless intrigued voters look into the Constitution Party. Founded as the U.S. Taxpayers Party in 1992 by Howard Phillips, a former aide to Richard Nixon and once a rising star in the Republican firmament, it changed its name to the Constitution Party in 1999 and merged with many of the state affiliates of the American Independent Party, ostensibly because they all shared a common desire to fight legalized abortion. But deep inside the Constitution Party, people like Phillips embraced the seditious doctrine of Christian Nationalism. In her recently published book, “Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism,” Michelle Goldberg chronicles the development of a revisionist history of the United States now taught to home schoolers, Christian secondary school and college students and preached in fundamentalist churches describing an non-existent, mythical United States founded on “Biblical principles.” This “curriculum” outlines a theocratic government to “reestablish” Biblical rule to replace America’s pluralistic, secular form of government. There is no public record on Starret’s talk shows or in her archived columns that suggests she subscribes to any of this extremism. But Starret will discover she has acquired this baggage by running as a candidate of the Constitution Party. She will have to defend it or disown it. More seriously, there is the question whether the presence of a Constitution Party candidate will change the nature of the discussion over school finance. For more than a decade, the Christian Republicans who control the Oregon Republican Party avoided dealing with the deadly consequences of Don McIntire’s 1990 Ballot Measure 5 by ginning up a fake debate over the legitimacy of public schools that paralyzed the Legislature. The vast majority of Oregonians believe in the legitimacy of public schools. A race for governor among Saxton, Kulongoski and Westlund finally promised to discuss the state’s highest priority -- stabilizing Oregon’s crippled system of financing schools. So far there is no evidence in anything that Starret has written or said that suggests she would deliberately derail that debate. But the Constitution Party is part of a radical group that's asking the Southern Baptist Convention to lead a mass withdrawal of Christian children from the “godless” public schools. Will Starret’s candidacy bring this feckless debate to Oregon to further delay school finance reform, or will she wisely disown and condemn her party’s Christian nationalism? It is difficult to predict the effect of Starret's candidacy on the governor’s race. It is certainly a blow to Saxton. His handlers hoped that Kevin Mannix’s supporters would vote for Saxton rather than run the risk that not voting would allow Kulongoski to win reelection. But now the Christian Republicans have their own candidate and they can watch Saxton go down in flames feeling good about themselves for having stuck to their “principles.” Just ask the people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 how good that feeling can be. Kulongoski’s handlers, on the other hand, must be pinching themselves, wondering whether Starret’s candidacy is real. There is little chance now that the Democrats who thought the Governor isn’t liberal enough will dare take a walk in November for fear that either Saxton or Westlund, if he makes the ballot, might win with a plurality of the votes. What I thought might be a rerun of of the 1930 three-way election that elected Julius Meier, Oregon’s only independent governor, just may turn out to be a more dramatic modern history in the making. Pass the popcorn! Freeway Nation or Free Nation? The late Glenn Jackson was arguably the most influential un-elected official in shaping Oregon’s suburban development. As CEO of Pacific Power and Light, Jackson would have been an influential figure anyway. But he chaired the State Highway Commission for so long he determined the design of the highway infrastructure that shaped the state’s explosive post-World War II growth. Jackson died in June 1980. In the year before his death, I had one of the last interviews with him. With the memories of the Arab Oil Embargo and its soaring prices and long lines at the pumps still fresh in the public mind, I asked Jackson, “Do you think the suburban, automobile-dependent lifestyle we have built is sustainable?” “Probably,” Jackson responded after a long, thoughtful pause, “unless gas costs $3.00 a gallon.” We both chuckled and the interview ended. Nearly 26 years later, gasoline cost more than $3.00 a gallon nearly everywhere in the United States. Stories about the financial hardship people are enduring just to fill their gas tanks fill the news. Nor is it just a suburban problem. Cheap gas allowed many people to find inexpensive housing in rural areas and commute to jobs in towns and small cities. But gasoline is a necessity and the rising gas prices mean less disposable income. For the poor, the price of commuting can burn up most of what they earn. Public transit is an alternative in some urban areas, but travel time is longer. And even the middle class in their comfortable suburbs are spending much more of their disposable income commuting to jobs that support their suburban lifestyle. Americans are running harder just to stay in place. Jackson was shrewd enough to realize that energy transition problems would emerge when the world began to believe it was running out of oil, not when the oil actually ran out. There is a good argument that world oil production is at its peak or has just peaked. and is actually declining. The oil companies and oil producing nations know it or at least believe it. That’s why prices have climbed so rapidly. Since no one expects to see gasoline priced below $3.00 anytime soon, it’s probably a good idea for the rest of us to get busy dealing with the transition problems as we move from comparatively cheap petroleum to expensive petroleum. It becoming clear our present lifestyle is not sustainable for too many people. I dislike writing pessimistic columns as much as you, dislike reading them. I have a couple of former students who, because of deliberate choices that they made about five years ago, are only indirectly affected by the rising price of gasoline. I think there is a lesson in their choices. When the Oregon Highway Commission was renamed the Oregon Transportation Commission in 1968, it reflected a change in attitude toward freeways -- at least in the Portland metropolitan area. Gov. Bob Straub blocked the construction of the Mt. Hood Freeway and appointed commissioners sympathetic to light rail lines. Former Congressman Les Au Coin and former Sen. Mark Hatfield helped fund light rail from their positions on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. Widely mocked by Libertarians and the build-freeways-and-be-damned crowd, light rail commuting has been embraced by a younger generation. My two former students met and married at Southern Oregon University. They had a child. When they graduated, they deliberately moved to Portland to well-paying high-tech jobs at companies located along the light rail line. They deliberately bought a condo in one of the development nodes along the light rail line. They deliberately had a second child. They deliberately chose not to own a car. When they need a car they rent one. With the money they saved from not owning a car -- it’s thousands of dollars a year -- my former students paid off most of their student loans. They can afford two lovely children and children are not cheap. They do not think they have suffered or sacrificed by not owning a car and they have not felt the economic dislocation from rising gasoline prices like their fellow workers who commute by car. “But everyone can’t do that, Sadler,” you say. I couldn’t agree more. But thanks to some farsighted government planning, my former students had that choice to make. Instead of paying unwarranted “compensation” to landowners who want to perpetuate the unsustainable post-World War II suburban sprawl model, we ought to be revising the land use laws to encourage more light rail oriented development so more people have the choice of living that way in the rapidly emerging era of high-priced petroleum. Now there’s a platform plank that some candidates for governor and the Legislature can run on. Copyright @ 2006 by Russell Sadler West By Northwest.org regrets not posting Mr. Sadler's last few articles, due to personal considerations beyond editor's control. We will continue to bring our readers the best original writing from and about the Northwest, including Mr. Sadler's columns. Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. 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