Tom Cox, with fine-rimmed glasses and a goatee, looks like he could be a graduate student at the University. But the 38-year-old from Hillsboro has set his sights on the governor’s seat in Salem.
In a telephone question-and-answer session with the Emerald, Cox sounded off on issues from taxation to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. And while no Libertarian has ever won a
governor’s race in Oregon, that hasn’t stopped him from trying.
Cox said even though he hasn’t visited the University, he thinks he identifies closely with people on campus.
“I find that students in particular are more receptive to new ideas,” he said. “They’re more receptive to the idea that a third party might have the answers that the other two major parties don’t.”
He said as a 38-year-old, he still finds things in common with students because he treats everyone equally.
“I think that I’m able to relate to students because students are human beings,” he said. “I don’t talk down to them, I talk to them, as peers.”
He stressed that students should be able to choose where they go to school and how the state spends higher education money.
“If you add up the entire budget for higher education … you’ll find that we are spending, as a state, $25,000 per student, per year,” he said. “In my plan in that case, we convert all of those subsidies into portable scholarships for the students.
“That means as an Oregon resident, you would get $25,000 per year to pay for tuition anywhere in the United States.”
Cox said he would reduce expenditures in the state budget in almost every department to rid Oregon of “wasteful” spending.
He referred to a plan he’s published that would glean more than $1.7 billion out of the current budget, by privatizing some government departments and taking money from jobs positions that aren’t being filled.
As one example of a way to cut spending, Cox said he’d stop the OLCC from running liquor
warehouses.
“Seagrams is more than happy to deliver a case of liquor directly to a bar instead of an Oregon City warehouse,” he said. “You can’t tell me we need a tax increase if there’s that much waste that even I, a third-party candidate without a huge staff, without millions of dollars, without full-time accountants and lawyers on staff to pour over these issues, I can still find these things.”
As a Libertarian, Cox said as Governor he’d stimulate Oregon’s economy by issuing tax cuts, money that would be free to use once the budget had been trimmed
under his plan.
Cox slammed his opponents in the gubernatorial race, chastising Republican Kevin Mannix for his social intolerance and Democrat Ted Kulongoski for being tax-happy.
“I’m the only fiscal conservative in this race, and I’m socially tolerant,” he said. “We don’t want somebody who’s going to tax and spend or borrow and spend, and we also don’t want somebody who’s going to try and use the power of state government to tell us how to live our lives or what values to have.”
The Libertarian, who mentions Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington as his role models, said by fixing the state’s budget and instigating reforms, he can conquer issues problems with higher education spending.
“We absolutely have to get state spending under control,” he said. “I am the right guy with the right plan at the right time.”

Tom Cox’s Q & A:

Q) What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the University of Oregon?
Ducks of course. I think about driving past it as I go through town, looking at the campus. But because I haven’t been on campus, I don’t have a visual of what it’s like to be a student there or that sort of thing.
Q) What excites students about your campaign?
The fact I’m talking about things they understand. The fact that I’m specific about problems they’re starting to tune in to and realize that are issues. I’m finding that the politics-as-usual approach of my respective opponents is one that frankly leaves people cold, especially students who are fairly idealistic in expecting politics to be what they’re supposed to be all about — that is, tackling the issues in each of their own way and trying to persuade voters they have the better answer. And here the whole race has been nothing but hot air and platitudes with the other two guys, and I’m out there, pitching more detailed plans and covering more and more of the problems of the state. It makes for shocking contrast. I find that students in particular are more receptive to new ideas. They’re more receptive to the idea that a third party might have the answers that the other two major parties don’t.
Q) Do you support the January income tax package?
No, I do not, in fact I wrote an editorial in The Oregonian explaining exactly why I oppose it.
Q) Tell us why.
I oppose it’s because it’s the wrong answer. The right answer is to control state spending. Our state government spends more and more and more every budget cycle. And that cannot continue. And if we don’t get control over state spending now, no budget, no tax increase is going to be enough. Even if we vote it up in January, they’ll be back in February, March, April for more tax increases. Because they can’t control spending. And if you can control spending, the tax increase won’t be necessary.
Q) If the January income tax package is not passed, what will you tell students who have to pay higher tuition?
Well I would question if they would have to pay higher tuition. I put out a packet in June with a detailed list of over $1.7 billion in savings that we would put into the current budget that would more than cover the gap. And not any of it would come from public education. It would all come from areas of the budget. Areas that are surprisingly wasteful. I’ll give you just three examples. There’s $20 million we could get right away by privatizing the state motor pool. There are companies that can run motor pools very efficiently, like Hertz and Budget and Avis and Alamo. We need to contract out the management of that motor pool and save some money. And the state hasn’t done that yet because they don’t want to. They like running out of money when it comes to education because it panics the voters, and the voters are willing to vote on a tax increase when it’s for education. And I say no, let’s find the savings. So the motor pool is one. Here’s another for you: We’ve got 3,500 approved staff positions in bureaucracies where the position has been approved, the salary has been set aside, but there’s nobody even hired yet. If we simply say “There’s nobody here! Let’s free up the salary because it isn’t going to anybody working for those divisions,” that would free up $200 million. I’ll give you a third example: the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. It does three things: It issues licenses for alcohol retail establishments, it collects revenue and it operates a liquor-distribution monopoly, including ownership of warehouses. And that third function is stupid. It’s not something the government should be doing. The private sector would do that for free. Seagrams is more than happy to deliver a case of liquor directly to a bar instead of an Oregon City warehouse. It won’t cost them any more, and then we won’t have to have these warehouses operating, and that’s $40 million a year, $80 million out of the budget. And all the revenue they talk about getting in their hidden mark-up would just come from the tax. There’s taxes on beer and wine right now. So there’s three examples where we can find tens of millions of dollars just for the asking. We have to do it; we’ve got the money. And I’ve gone through the entire state budget for the current biennium and the next biennium, and I have found more than a billion dollars in each case. Nearly $2 billion in the general fund with savings like that. You can’t tell me we need a tax increase if there’s that much waste that even I, a third-party candidate without a huge staff, without m
illions of dollars, without full-time accountants and lawyers on staff to pore over these issues, I can still find these things.
Q) What’s the biggest challenge in governing Oregon?
I would say that our biggest challenge is we have a culture in Salem of taxing and spending and being unaccountable for their actions to the voter. And that’s been coupled with 12 years of pretty weak leadership in the governor’s office. And that has a certain inertia to it, we’ve got to turn it around, we’ve got to explain to people and educate the voters and the citizens that we have spent ourselves and taxed ourselves into a hole, and we have got to get out.
Q) What will you do to make higher education more affordable?
Well my goal with higher education is to make explicit and transparent the various hidden subsidies that are currently going into higher education. If you add up the entire budget for higher education and take the tax dollars that are going into it and the number of students being served, you’ll find that we are spending, as a state, $25,000 per student, per year. Now $24,000 would pay for Stanford, and $16,000 would pay for Rice, and I have to ask you, with all honesty, do you feel you’re getting a $25,000 a year education at the University of Oregon? Because that’s what we’re paying for. So we have got to ask some very hard questions about why this is such an expensive system. And one of the ways to make this conversation happen is make the subsidies explicit. In my plan in that case, we convert all of those subsidies into portable scholarships for the students. That means as an Oregon resident, you would get $25,000 per year to pay for tuition anywhere in the United States.
Q) How do you stimulate Oregon’s poor economy?
Tax cuts. Tax cuts are the only way. And we can’t do a tax cut until we do spending cuts and that brings us back to the opening part of our conversation.
Q) What’s the most generous thing you’ve ever done?
Let’s come back to that one, I usually don’t think of myself. I have a hard time praising myself, you know, how generous I am? I am — just the way I am. So ask me that again later.
Q) As another way of looking at that, what have you done that you can look back at and say you’ve really given something to somebody?
Good God. I’ve afraid I’ve stuck my head so deep in the budget I haven’t thought about very much else. Keep going, we’ll have to loop back to it.
Q) Does money talk?
In politics it certainly does, especially with the major parties. Kevin Mannix just decided to blow off a public debate, showed up an hour late because he had to go down on his knees in front of a bunch of high-roller timber executives trying to get money out of them.
Q) So what do you think money says?
I would say that political donation money in Oregon says that whoever has the big contributions today can purchase the ear of the government and get favorable treatment at the expense of taxpayers, and I think that’s absolutely wrong.
Q) Who’s your political role model?
I have a couple. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington.
Q) Why?
It seems to me that they were highly successful. They were men of character, they transcended what a normal politician would do in a normal way. I mean, George Washington was the most popular man in the United States, and they would have elected him king or God or whatever he asked them to. But instead he did two terms in office then walked away. As a matter of fact, when the war was over, when the Revolutionary War was over and the civilians and government was still in complete disarray, Washington had in his staff numbers more people than the entire government had. He could easily have stepped in and did the Third-World generalissimo thing, and run the government himself. And he didn’t, because he was not after power — he was after a legacy of freedom for his own country. He put himself last and put his country first.
Q) How do you think you relate to students when you’re so much older than them?
Hey there! I’m not that much older! I’m 38. That’s less than twice as old, I’m quite a bit younger than the other two. I think that I’m able to relate to students because students are human beings. I treat everyone as a human being. I think we all have a lot of the same hopes and fears and the same values, regardless of our age or what we’re doing with our lives. Whether we’re students or whether we’re working full-time. Whatever. I think I interact strangely in some people’s eyes with their children because I treat their children as human beings. I don’t talk down to them, I talk to them, as peers. I talk to everybody that way.
Q) What’s the most generous thing you’ve ever done?
I had an inheritance from my mother’s death. $100,000. I had some friends who were doing an Internet start-up that I thought was pretty risky. But, I invested it in their company and did not then, and still do not today, ever expect to see it again. But I thought it was worth it — giving them a shot at their dream was important.
Q) What do you think you learned from that?
That as long as you can pay your bills and look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, that you’re rich. That you’re rich enough.
Q) What makes you the best choice for Oregon?
I am the right guy with the right plan at the right time. We absolutely have to get state spending under control. Every single other problem we have is tied to that. And if we do not get state spending under control, things are going to go from bad to worse. And I’m the only candidate who’s even talking about reducing the size and scope and cost of state government. I’ve got a Democrat that wants to increase taxes and keep on spending more and more, and I’ve got a Republican, a former Democrat, who’s still campaigning like a Democrat, frankly. Who wants to spend a billion dollars more in this biennium than the last one. And he wants to borrow to pay for it. Now either one of these courses of action is just going to put Oregon deeper and deeper in the hole we’re in. The only way out is to, number one, stop digging, and number two, start climbing. I’m the only one who’s advocating this. And I’m the only one with specific plans to solve the other problems we’re facing. Like specific K-12 funding, or fixing PERS, or reforming the (Oregon) Department of Transportation.
Q) Is there anything you would like to add?
I’m the only fiscal conservative in this race. And I’m socially tolerant. And that is a combination that’s uniquely appealing to Oregon because I believe that Oregonians are at heart fiscally conservative and socially tolerant. We don’t want somebody who’s going to tax and spend or borrow and spend, and we also don’t want somebody who’s going to try and use the power of state government to tell us how to live our lives or what values to have. Which at least one of my opponents would do.
http://tom4gov.blogspot.com

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