Why can't we get leaders like this anymore?

Hermiston hog farmer Stafford Hansell was a flinty conservative Republican and one of the most effective, respected Oregon legislators of modern times

Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Oregonian

Leaders: Hansell's independence set him apart

If you're new to Oregon, you might already be sick of hearing about the state's good old days of visionary lawmaking. You've likely heard the litany: open government, the Bottle Bill, public beaches, cleaned-up rivers, protected farmland, curbs on sprawl, blabbity-blab, blah, blah, blah.

Those achievements were big, bold ideas and justifiably cherished by many. But Oregon's fixation on its brief Camelot era has become tiresome and self-defeating. The late 1960s and early 1970s have transmogrified into such a misty, mystical time in state lore that frustrated Oregonians today waste too much time longing for a new Tom McCall to lead us from this dismal swamp of mediocrity.

Oregon's problem isn't an inability to elect governors like McCall. It's an inability to elect legislators like Stafford Hansell -- or at least enough of them.

Hansell was a flinty conservative Republican hog farmer from Hermiston, and one of the most important Oregonians you've probably never heard of. Don't apologize for not knowing. Some of today's newer lawmakers have never heard of him either.

That's a disgrace. "Staff," as friends called him, has been dead 10 years and gone from the Oregon House for three decades. But he still stands for everything that was praiseworthy about the Legislature a generation ago and against everything that's petty and pernicious now.

Ask anyone who was around Salem in the McCall era, and you'll find Stafford Hansell on the short list of most-respected, most-effective legislators. McCall reaped the glory for his legendary -- some would say overhyped -- ability to lead the public. The story you seldom hear, though, is that none of Oregon's groundbreaking laws would be on the books without extraordinary legislators such as Hansell.

Yet Hansell probably couldn't get elected today. That's a sobering prospect for the commission meeting this month to draft proposals for fixing the Legislature.

And it does need fixing. The 2005 Legislature scored a few noteworthy achievements -- a mental-health insurance parity law and a good transportation bill. But the overall performance was flaccid, continuing a long string of legislative dodge-ball on big issues that matter most to Oregonians: a fairer tax system, dependable money for schools and consensus on property rights vs. protecting Oregon's land.

Early ideas floated before the reform commission include increased pay for legislators and laptops on the chamber floors. That's laughable when you frame the challenge the way it should be: "What would it take to get more Stafford Hansells in the Legislature?"

Laptops won't cut it. Nor will increased pay. (Hansell did quite well for himself, thank you very much, on his hog farm, once the largest in the nation.)

What needs fixing is the process.

"It would be hard to design a system more effective at keeping Oregonians like Stafford Hansell not only off the ballot but also from even considering running," says former Secretary of State Phil Keisling.

Keisling, a Democrat who calls Hansell one of his all-time heroes, is working on a grass-roots project aimed at improving who gets on your ballot, but more on that later. First you need to know more about Hansell.

A citizen legislator

He was exactly what early Oregonians had in mind when they wrote the state constitution and created a citizen Legislature. Born in Umatilla County, he ran the hog farm with his brother, Bill, until 1956, when the operation's success made it possible for him to go to Salem and represent his rural district. He won nine elections and served 17 years in the Oregon House, eventually becoming co-chairman of the budget-setting Joint Ways and Means Committee and building a reputation as a crusty fiscal conservative.

But there ends any similarity to many contemporary Oregon legislators. Hansell was so independent he would never sign on with his political party's present-day mission of blocking new taxes and balancing the budget -- then going home. Though Democrats jokingly accused him of rubbing every nickel of public money a hundred times before agreeing to spend it, he understood it takes money to keep up the services Oregonians needed.

Hansell wasn't towering like McCall, but he was nonetheless an imposing figure in his prime, with thick graying hair and a rancher's ruddy features. When shaking hands, he had an endearing way of sometimes using his left arm to lift his right, which was partially paralyzed from childhood polio.

Hansell was a practicing Catholic; he neither drank nor smoked. But he never sought to impose his personal values on others. Never was this more apparent than in the 1973 Legislature, when he tipped the scales on the hotly contested bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Standing before the House, Hansell held up a plastic bag containing a few specks of green -- he later said it was oregano -- and declared it made no sense to saddle young people with criminal records "for trying pot."

In that same 1973 session, he voted with fellow conservatives against Senate Bill 100, the heralded land-use planning bill that became so much a part of the Oregon story. Over the next few years Hansell changed his mind, convinced that tough land-use laws were essential. When the program was challenged by a ballot measure in 1982, he helped lead the successful campaign to save it.

That was the thing about Stafford Hansell. Whether he was right or wrong about marijuana or frugal spending or land-use planning is beside the point. He was a completely independent thinker, a citizen legislator who went to Salem in the true Jeffersonian tradition to do his best for the general good -- and no other reason -- before returning to the ranch to raise hogs.

Here was a man so committed to that idea, the general good, that he and his wife took an apartment in Multnomah County in 1968 so he could get a feel for the needs of urban Oregonians. With little fanfare, he rode the bus, explored Portland and developed firsthand knowledge about metropolitan issues. Instead of exploiting the urban/rural divide like many of today's lawmakers, he bridged it.

A landmark session

Hansell had good company at the Capitol. In that watershed 1973 session, which also produced Oregon's pioneering open records and open meetings laws, he was accompanied by outstanding Republicans and Democrats.

They fought among themselves, you bet. Partisan bickering has been part of the Legislature since statehood. Today we've got too many people of the wrong caliber doing the bickering, and it's far too extreme.

Unlike Hansell, too many of them go to Salem with narrow ideological agendas fueled by money from special interests. And too many go because they don't have a hog ranch or a good job to return to. Best recent example: former Rep. Dan Doyle, R-Salem. He's heading for prison after pleading guilty to 11 felonies involving $150,000 in campaign money he's accused of using for personal expenses.

At the same time, capable legislators who dare to act on their principles, Hansell-style, are being run out of office. Best recent examples: Republican Reps. Lane Shetterly of Dallas and Max Williams of Tigard, who left the Legislature for high-level state posts last year after supporting a tax increase for schools and getting targeted by the anti-tax lobby.

Blame it on the way money has corrupted Oregon's system. It didn't take a ton of cash to run for the Legislature in Hansell's era. Last election the average cost of a race for the Oregon Senate exceeded $150,000. Six candidates spent more than $400,000 each. Most of that loot comes from special interests trying to influence who gets elected and how they vote.

That in turn enflames extreme partisanship, with lawmakers fighting not for what's best for all of Oregon but what's best for their contributors and re-election. That's turned off hundreds of thousands of voters, many re-registered in disgust as independents.

Today fully one-fourth of Oregon's registered voters are independent and can't vote in the Republican and Democratic primaries. That gives candidates on the hard right and hard left a huge advantage, while moderates have trouble getting nominated.

That's why Hansell, at heart a moderate, probably wouldn't even consider running if he were alive today. If he did, he'd be targeted by his own party as too independent and get picked off by a primary opponent bankrolled by special interests.

The open primary

Which brings us to Keisling's pet project: an open primary. As signature-gatherers head to the streets this fall, Oregonians will have a healthy debate of his initiative -- let everyone vote on all candidates for all offices in primary elections. In each race, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, would advance to the November general election. That's similar to systems adopted in Washington and California.

Predictably, critics are lining up to take their shots. The most vigorous claim an open primary would emasculate political parties and give even more of an edge to those with money.

Now consider that Stafford Hansell, the Hermiston hog farmer, joined the national board of Common Cause during his later years. The good-government lobbying group's Oregon chapter hasn't taken a stand yet on Keisling's initiative. Instead, it wants "clean-money" elections -- publicly financed, the way Arizona does it. Hansell would undoubtedly support a clean-money campaign.

Clean money and maybe even an open primary too.

Hog heaven for Oregon government.

Reach Associate Editor Doug Bates at 503-221-8174 or by e-mail at dougbates@news.oregonian.com