Sara Walker reaches across from her chair in The Buzz Coffeehouse on campus to brush at her mother Vicki Walker’s forehead.
“Hold on,” she said. “You’ve got a hair sticking up.”
Twenty-five-year-old Sara Walker’s gesture is both a sign of daughterly care for her mother and an act as her campaign manager, making sure the candidate is presentable to the photographer snapping pictures around them.
Vicki Walker, a 49-year-old Democratic state Senator from Eugene, is evaluating a run for governor but isn’t sure whether it will happen. She plans to decide by the end of next month. The uncertainty is a new thing for her, she said.
“It’s hard being in this maybe-candidate phase,” she said. “I’m a more decisive person than that.”
For the time being, though, she says she is acting like she will run.
“My thought process is: ‘I’m running for governor,’” Vicki Walker said.
She is looking into what kind of support she can drum up financially, hoping to raise at least $750,000 to stay in the race.
“Money, unfortunately, is a big key,” Vicki Walker said. “If you don’t have money to win, it doesn’t matter what you’re message is.”
Her daughter is in charge of the campaign, a position for which Vicki Walker saw no one more qualified.
“When I was thinking of running for governor, there wasn’t a thought in my mind of anyone running my campaign besides my daughter,” she said.
Sara Walker, a University graduate, has worked on her mother’s campaigns and political endeavors since she was young. Her mother used to pay her and her older brother, Adam, to distribute brochures door-to-door when they were younger, and Sara Walker volunteered in the office on Vicki Walker’s first legislative session in 1999.
Sara Walker was still thinking of working as a pilot when she interned for her mother in 2001.
“I had no interest in politics when I started interning for her,” Sara Walker said. “It was just work study so I could get some credit.”
The pair had had some problems when Sara Walker was younger, typical teenage mother-daughter drama, they both admit.
“There were times she wasn’t around a lot,” Sara Walker said. “It wasn’t until I started working for her that I found out why – that she was doing important things.”
Since Sara Walker returned to Eugene from her Las Vegas home to run the campaign, the two have changed their relationship to fit a work setting.
“We’ve had to adjust from mother-daughter to employer-employee,” Vicki Walker said. But a daughter has some advantages as a campaign manager, she said.
“She doesn’t hesitate to tell me what she thinks,” Vicki Walker said. “Sometimes campaign managers aren’t willing to be that blunt and honest.”
Growing up poor, Vicki Walker tells of having to put cardboard in her shoes and take out a loan in high school to go to the dentist, which she said took three years to pay off.
“I was tired of not smiling with my mouth open,” Vicki Walker said.
The experience stuck with her, and as a legislator she pushed to include dental in the Oregon Health Plan.
Vicki Walker was also a victim of sexual abuse as a child and tried to commit suicide as teenager, she said. It wasn’t until a high school teacher persuaded her that she could go to college that she turned her life around.
But she hasn’t hidden her troubles; she has spoken on the floor of the Oregon Legislature about being raped as a child by a neighbor. Sharing her experiences can force people to confront important issues such as child abuse, she said.
“Those were important issues to talk about,” Vicki Walker said.
Vicki Walker’s experience with abuse has fueled her political fire.
“It’s an abuse of power,” she said of child abuse. “I’ve never been one to support the abuse of power.”
Colleagues say Vicki Walker has a reputation for her attention to detail and extensive research.
State Sen. Bill Morrisette, D-Springfield, remembers his first meeting with her. She was working as a candidate’s campaign manager and quit because the candidate wasn’t following campaign guidelines.
“That’s typical of her,” Morrisette said. “She’s a fanatic for details.”
But even with her careful preparation, she knows how to take action immediately, Morrisette said.
“She doesn’t wait; she gets involved at the beginning,” Morrisette said. “If she sees something that needs fixing, she will do the background, initiate it and get it fixed.”
Morrisette is still supporting Gov. Ted Kulongoski, but he said he believes Vicki Walker would be a qualified governor.
“You’ve got to have some visibility and some knowledge of the (legislative) process,” Morrisette said. “She has an extremely good understanding of the process.”
Vicki Walker has been an outspoken critic of Kulongoski, her most visible battle being over the State Accident Insurance Fund (SAIF). She sees the current government as a network of “Good Ol’ Boys,” politicians who reward friends and contributors with appointments and government perks while shutting out regular Oregonians.
“That’s what turns people off of government and makes them cynical,” Vicki Walker said. She believes that the governor has the ability to change that.
“The governor has a unique opportunity for leadership,” she said.
She looks at her candidacy as a way of rejuvenating Oregonians who feel left out of politics, in the same way she was energized as a child by John F. Kennedy.
Walker sees many problems in Oregon that Kulongoski has not fixed, including education funding, health care and taxation.
During the legislative session this summer, some called Kulongoski “Waldo,” as in “Where’s Waldo?” for his lack of attendance, she said.
Walker pushed through 59 of the 139 bills she introduced this summer, in a split Oregon Legislature. That’s a sign that as governor, she can bring together both Democrats and Republicans, Walker said.
“It’s all about creating, building and maintaining relationships,” Walker said. “It’s recognizing that we’re Oregonians first and whatever political party you identify with second.”
Despite her ability to compromise, Walker says she still has core values – such as being in favor of abortion rights and protecting the environment – that she won’t change.
Some Democrats are worried that her run for governor could jeopardize her Senate seat, possibly giving it to former Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey, who is running for the seat as a Republican. But she says she’s not worried.
“There’s a lot of reassuring people about the candidacy,” Vicki Walker said. “If we do lose (the Senate seat), it’s better off to have a governor who can do the job.”

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