Register Guard: OEA Slimes Measure 65

Oct 31, 2008 // by Joshua Kagi // 2008 Campaign // No Comments

The following is an editorial of interest from the Register-Guard.

OEA slimes Measure 65
Open-primary proposal falsely linked to Sizemore

The Oregon Education Association has every right to oppose Measure 65, the open primary initiative supported by a bipartisan lineup of political luminaries, including former Oregon secretaries of state Phil Keisling and Norma Paulus and former governors John Kitzhaber and Vic Atiyeh.

But the state’s largest teachers’ union does not have a right to lie, and that is precisely what it has done in its campaign to defeat the proposal to change Oregon’s current partisan primary system to allow universal participation.

In a recent mass mailing, the OEA knowingly and falsely linked Measure 65 to controversial initiative petitioner Bill Sizemore, who had nothing to do with the measure. It did so by urging its members to “Vote No on Bill Sizemore’s Measures. No on 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65.”

Sizemore is the author of Measures 58, 59, 60, 63 and 64 — all five of them, true to Sizemore form, poorly worded, ill-advised and loaded with unintended consequences. But “Bad Penny Bill,” as the OEA mailing calls him, had absolutely no involvement in Measure 65. Nor, for that matter, did Sizemore have a hand in Measures 61 and 62, which were sponsored by former state legislator Kevin Mannix, although both Mannix and Sizemore do share the financial backing of Nevada millionaire Loren Parks.

It’s no secret why the OEA wants its members to believe Measure 65 is authored by Sizemore, who is to teachers and public employees what Hannibal was to ancient Romans. By smearing Measure 65 with Sizemore’s name, the union hopes to persuade members who don’t know better to regard the open-primary proposal as automatically suspect and deserving of a “no” vote. To put it another way, the union is engaging in guilt by false association.

It’s also no secret why the OEA doesn’t like Measure 65, which would create an all-comers May primary that would be open to all registered voters and would send the two top vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, for all legislative, state and congressional offices to the general election. Under the measure, Democrats and Republicans would no longer get to pick their respective candidates, leaving nonaffiliated voters shut out of the electoral process until November.

It would be fundamental change that would diminish the control of the major parties over the nominating process — and, by extension, diminish the control of interest groups that heavily influence those parties. Measure 65 would empower voters, especially independents, and would reduce the powerful influence that the OEA and other major labor unions have on a Democratic Party that in recent years has dominated Oregon politics.

The OEA has violated the trust of its members by resorting to deception instead of engaging them in a straightforward discussion of the issues.

Perhaps that is because they know they are unlikely to prevail in arguing against a measure that promises to reduce partisan polarization in Oregon politics and to draw more than 400,000 independent voters — including, yes, members of the Oregon Education Association — into the primary elections from which they are now unfairly and unwisely excluded.