At first glance, Peter DeFazio and Liz VanLeeuwen are very similar. They’ve both been active in politics. They’ve lived in Oregon longer than most current University students have been alive. And both are running for a seat in the House of Representatives for Oregon’s Fourth District.
But the similarities end there. Democratic incumbent candidate DeFazio, a University graduate, jumped right into politics and has served as a U.S. Congressman since 1986, while Republican candidate VanLeeuwen, a small-business owner and teacher, spent years working on a family farm before serving 18 years in the Oregon Legislature.
In question and answer sessions with the Emerald, DeFazio stressed his political experience and “grassroots background,” while VanLeeuwen focused on her integrity and “real-world” experience.
“I represent some of the most progressive areas in the state and also the most conservative areas in the state,” DeFazio said. “It’s always an interesting challenge to bridge the gap.”
VanLeeuwen spoke of her personal character and life experience.
“I’m not going to say something different here at home than how I vote in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “I understand natural resources, I understand the need for people to have jobs.”
Both candidates said they have role models that have inspired them politically.
VanLeeuwen looks up to Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth Dole, but remembers Abraham Lincoln’s words most of all.
“I’ve quoted him time and time again that ‘You do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong,’” she said.
DeFazio, who holds the late U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon in highest regard, said he has always admired how Morse stood up for his beliefs and cast an unpopular vote against the Vietnam War.
“In essence, it says in making his decisions, he’ll listen to everybody and keep an open mind, but he’ll make decisions free of threats of loss of political support,” he said. “And that’s how I always try to represent my district in the same way he represented our state.”
The two opponents disagree on almost every issue. The Republican supports President George W. Bush’s policies in the Middle East, while the Democrat joined a congressional minority in voting against Bush’s resolutions on Iraq last week. VanLeeuwen said she thinks almost anyone can go to college if they try, while DeFazio said more support is needed to stop the University from turning into something resembling a corporate entity.
DeFazio outlined specific policies he’d enact to restore funding to Oregon universities, while VanLeeuwen said she’d allow logging on 20 percent of what Oregon has harvested of its forests in the past 20 years to fund state programs such as higher education.
DeFazio said some students need state help.
“We should be looking at some targeted taxes on the business community that would fund higher education more adequately at the state level,” DeFazio said. “I’m a big supporter of always funding Pell Grants and otherwise increasing the education fund.”
VanLeeuwen said she thinks that money earmarked for education often doesn’t end up in the school system, and she added that funding could be secured by enacting forest-thinning plans.
“If we had even that 20 percent (logging) going now, the Oregon Legislature would not have had to go back into session … you’d have the additional money of the direct sale of the forest land into funds to schools and the roads and the other services we have come to expect government to provide for us,” she said.
Scroll below to see the full transcript of the interviews with the two candidates
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1. Peter DeFazio Q&A
2. Liz VanLeeuwen Q&A
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Peter DeFazio Q&A
Q) What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the University of Oregon?
Well I was just walking down the sidewalk down to the emu thinking about when I was a grad student at the UO and I had hair.
My youth, I guess is the first thing that comes to mind. More seriously, a great institution that’s suffering budget cuts. The UO is at this point much more dependent on foundation, private money and tuition than on support from the state and I think that’s a mistake and a problem. It’s a problem given the burden students have to carry, students graduating with an extraordinary amount of student debt, I think it’s also a problem for the integrity and independence of the institutions. Public funds without strings certainly lead in my mind to an institution that’s a little bit more independent than a corporation with an agenda
Q) But at the same time, why do you think students are so apathetic about politics in general, and what have you done to involve students in your campaign?
Well, I spent a lot of time talking to students … yesterday was a middle school and a high school and I’ve spoken to grade school classes. I’ve spent a lot of time with young people making them understand the relevance of government. In terms of students I’ve been over here at rallies a few years ago with GTFs who were being screwed by peculiarities in the tax, law, you know I’ve come here for other political rallies and events, worked with and used students in my office as interns, used students in my campaign as volunteers and interns, and the apathy is puzzling to me. There is a certain group of students who are very energized and following politics and look to me to be great new generational leaders on the way up. But the vast majority of students reflect the vast majority of society. When you look at a country where the control of congress is determined by about 36 percent of the eligible voters in the country, it’s probably comparable at the UO and other institutions of higher learning. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of people reflect their parents and the values they got from their parents, as in gee, it doesn’t matter if you vote or get involved because they don’t care and what I say to people is exactly the opposite: If you’re not involved, and you don’t care, then the special interests win, and that’s exactly what they want, they don’t want you to be involved because they have a very narrow agenda that benefits a very few people and the broader the involvement of the people in this country, the less likely they are to succeed. So I just think we’re going around with that message, trying to motivate people and make government relevant to people.
Q) How would you say you can add to that group of students that really care? How can you make that grow, specifically?
Well I think the potential of war is already raising the level of awareness in a lot of students. If there’s another series of big funding cuts in education in the state, I’d assume that would also motivate students to get involved. We saw a pretty good student activity during the last legislature and I think the legislative sessions with students advocating or protesting against cuts or further cuts. I wish it could be a more positive agenda, but I think some of the negative things coming up will motivate more students to get involved.
Q) Tell me about the experience that has prepared you for another congressional session?
Well, you know I come from a background of grassroots activism. When I really kind of started I worked for the former representative Jim Weaver and I was a senior citizen advocate, and my own individual involvement came as a rate-payer advocate as a resident of Springfield, and so I’ve really come from a grassroots organizing background. When I both ran for county commission and first ran for Congress, I was pretty dramatically outspent by my opponents but I put together organized grassroots campaigns, and that’s w
hat I reflect in Congress. These days, there’s a lot more people in Congress these days who reflect the values of the big donors, and I reflect the values of working people and students and average Oregonians. That’s who I care about and that’s who I’m there to fight for. I think it’s a good grounding and a good preparation for the job plus my expertise is important to this job in a number of areas. Electricity, energy, I’m an expert on Social Security, Medicare, I also know a good deal about natural resource policy and environmental issues. So there’s a pretty broad range of things where I bring expertise to the job, and also getting, I hate it, but seniority matters in Washington and I’m getting to the point where even if they don’t like my viewpoint being different than theirs, I’m not easily ignored.
Q) As a follow-up to that, what’s the biggest challenge you face in representing one-fifth of Oregon?
Well, it’s a very challenging district to represent. If you remember, it’s a fifth of the population but it’s probably a third or more of the state, it goes from Sweet Home in the north down to Brookings on the California border down to Josephine County around Grants Pass. So I represent some of the most progressive areas in the state and also the most conservative areas in the state. It’s always an interesting challenge to bridge the gap. But particularly with my concern about pocketbook issues, trade, taxes, amazingly enough I find that conservatives in my district do not seem to be particularly supportive of the war or the infringement of civil liberties as well as the progressives. There are ways to bridge those gaps, it’s a challenge, but I manage to do it. Plus the distance, it’s as far away, my district, the furthest point of my district is further away than any district except for Alaska or Hawaii. So the distance is always the challenge, I spend a lot of time, 600 to 800 hours a year traveling back and forth.
Q) Now, as a follow-up to that, tell me what steps we should be taking in our war against terrorism?
Well, we should be doing everything we can to foster a international coalition and I fear that the rush to war in Iraq is going to break off some of the more fragile parts of that coalition. There are some countries where it’s very risky for the political leaders to crack down on terrorists. Indonesia, of course, being the most recent example where they fear for tenuous hold on power as opposed to the street force of terrorists in their country as well as the radical groups that are affiliated with the terrorists. So it really requires a long-term, determined international effort, and I think the Bush Administration is at risk of breaking apart that coalition and impeding that effort.
Q) Let’s switch topics for a minute: What’s the most generous thing you’ve ever done?
I give back salary. I’ve given back over $200,000 in salary now and I dedicate the money now, originally I gave it to a fund to reduce the debt, then when our economy got way in the tank and there were cutbacks and stuff I began giving the money to scholarships. So I give eight community college scholarships and one UO scholarship every year out of pay raises that I’ve turned down.
Q) Why did you decide to turn down the pay raises?
Well when I was first elected I said I wouldn’t take a pay raise until the budget was balanced. I thought people should lead by example. I still now, I still fund those scholarships because it’s one of the most gratifying things I’ve done. We had a theoretically balanced budget for a while and I decided to continue to fund scholarships.
Q) Who’s your role model in politics?
Historic figure Wayne Morse.
Q) Why?
He was a gutsy guy. He was one of two people in the United States senate to oppose the Vietnam War, ultimately lost his senate seat mostly because of the opposition to the war. But he thought the war was wrong and ultimately was proved in the right. He was the leader early on in civil rights issues. He was very outspoken, and there’s this thing called the Wayne Morse pledge which I have posted in my office and I have memorized. In essence it says in making his decisions, he’ll listen to everybody and keep an open mind, but he’ll make decisions free of threats of loss of political support. And that’s how I always try to represent my district in the same way he represented our state.
Q) Nationally, how would you shape our forest policy to prevent disasters like the burn in Oregon?
Well we’ve mismanaged our forests for a hundred years. No one denies that it was well-intentioned mismanagement, fire suppression, the whole Smoky the Bear campaign which started 80 years ago. But in the end it’s proving to be disastrous for our forests. Some of it has to do with past harvest practices; replace fire-resistant trees with young tree plantations and some of it has to do with suppressing fires. So what we need to do is manage the forests back toward what the scientists call a pre-settlement fire exclusion condition. What you want to manage back to is more widely-spaced, larger trees and reduce the fuel loads to the point that small, low intensity fires can run through there that won’t jeopardize communities, that won’t endanger the natural resources. But it’s going to be incredibly expensive and take a very long time. It’s going to be labor-intensive, which means it can provide jobs in rural communities, but you can’t pretend, like the president did, that you’re somehow going to pay for it by cutting down trees, because then you’re going to cut down the very trees you need to restore the ecosystem. So I’ve been involved in an effort that’s not yet concluded, that’s to appropriate an additional $400 million a year to conduct these activities, provide for protection for old growth and make certain that the activities that are undertaken to target the underbrush under trees, which are called ladder fuels and cause the fire to climb up the old growth trees. It’s very contentious and a difficult thing. There are industry people who want to use it as an excuse to go back to widespread accelerated clear-cutting, and there are some in the environmental movement who want to say that fires are natural and they’re not understanding that the current fires aren’t natural. Fires are natural but if you suppress them for 100 years, the fire you get at the end of that 100 years of suppression aren’t natural and they’re burning at intensities that were not seen in nature before the western settlement.
Q) And one on funding, how will poor students go to school in Oregon?
Well, you know I think there should be more state support for higher education. I think we should be looking at some targeted taxes on the business community that would fund higher education more adequately at the state level. I also think at a federal level we’ll support an increase in less expensive student loans, as opposed to the bank-sponsored ones, and federal scholarships. I’m a big supporter of always funding Pell Grants and otherwise increasing the education fund.
Q) What makes you the best choice for Oregon?
I believe I’ve led, at times, in contradiction to the polls. The polls say I should be supporting the war in Iraq. I’m not, I don’t think it’s prudent and a disastrous policy for the U.S. I’ve shown on that and other issues that I will try and represent my district, my state as I see best as I was elected to and not lick a finger and stick it into the wind and figure out which way it’s blowing today. I also pay a lot of attention to my district, spend a tremendous amount of time here, I just commute to Washington to work, do more than 30 round trip a year, travel my district, pay a lot of attention to local needs. My position on the transportation committee, that’s infrastructure — roads, bridges, highways, sewers, water systems — things like that that are really bread and butter and really essential to a lot of smaller communities in my district. I’ve been fighting against deregulation, corporate scams, in the interests
of average people before it became popular to decry Enron, I had been calling Enron a villain and a scam artist since the mid 1990s. I represent consumers, small business and others. I’ve got a proven record, I’ll stand on it and we’ll see what the voters say.
Liz VanLeeuwen Q&A
Q) What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the University of Oregon?
I think of Eugene, how about that? I think of it in the context of the universities in the state of Oregon, and of course we consider all the universities during the 18 years I served in the Oregon Legislature. At one time I was on a committee — I did not get assigned either to Corvallis or the UO — to do an assessment of how well they were working, how well they were spending their money. We did a pretty in-depth study.
Q) But at the same time, why do you think students are so apathetic about politics in general?
Some students aren’t apathetic about politics. After we gave a younger group of people the right to vote, then a lot of them didn’t vote. Probably they’re too wound up in their own personal affairs, perhaps they’re not that interested in politics, I don’t know. Maybe our society has been too prosperous in the past, and they just haven’t seen any need to be really involved. Or it could relate to their teachers in higher school or the courses they take. The families and the schools, I’d say, are pretty important. In my household, we were pretty interested in politics, because that’s the way it happened.
Q) How would you involve more students?
When I was in the legislature, I got high school students involved from every school in the district. Because what I did was invited the school administration in the high schools in Linn County, where I’d served before, to pick out four or five or six of the students who were not necessarily the top leaders in the school but had leadership potential and then I invited them to come to the Capitol in group sessions, and we did a full day of getting acquainted to the Capitol in the process, then I invited them to come back and spend a day as if they were one of my staff. It was one of the best things and the most fun things I ever did. I called them my youth advisory committee, and I’ll bet every one of those students who spent time with me at the Capitol keep a close eye on politics, even today.
Q) What have you done to involve students in your campaign?
I’ve been working with a few of the students who are involved at OSU, I’ve had two interns working in the campaign, and I had another intern this summer actually doing it for college credit.
Q) Tell us about the experience that has prepared you to become a congresswoman.
Needless to say, my nine terms in the Oregon Legislature as a house member certainly gave me some qualifications for that. Another qualification is I’m very involved in natural resources, we moved to a farm on the Willamette River fairly early in my marriage I guess. My husband could not take the time to attend meetings. In the days before women went to meetings, I got sent to meetings that involved agriculture. I got involved, and somebody got me involved in the central committee and started getting me involved in candidate fairs and helping me put on candidate fairs. And eventually, well I spent a lot of time at the legislature. OK, I know why: I worked with some of the farm organizations and helped some of their — we didn’t call them lobbyists then, let’s see, I think they called themselves government representatives — lobbyists, when I first got involved lobbyists were kind of a naughty word, but anyway, helping them and then I learned with quite a shock that the farms that my husbands and kids and I were working on for all we were worth, trying to bring a neglected farm back into productive agriculture, that there was a group of people in the state of Oregon who wanted to turn our farm into a park. They wanted to pay us $300 an acre for the land that we’d worked on, and I was already involved enough, I had been following water legislation and I was involved enough to know that they weren’t supposed to take active farmland to take and put into the Willamette River Greenway or Willamette River Park System, I think they called it then. So I began to put things together because it wasn’t going to be very advantageous, all of my work, all of my husband’s work and all of my children’s work was going to go down the drain if they took our place and turned it into one of the major parks they were planning for the Greenway. We got the land exchanged for Mount Pisgah land. That took years. Anyway, I just osmosised into the process, not intending to, and then I’d served as an area rep. for the Republican Party and one time when there was no Republican candidate to run against the conservative Democrat who represented my district. In a committee meeting, they decided to ask me to run as a write-in, there was a leak in the system, the conservative Democrat learned about it before I did, and he went out and got the key Republicans to say they’d sign on to his committee, and anyway, on one postcard, I won the Republican primary nomination, and I did not defeat him. In that race I had not the slightest idea how to run a campaign.
Q) What’s the biggest challenge you face in representing one-fifth of Oregon?
Getting acquainted with everybody in the district! Well, you’ll never get acquainted with everybody, but getting acquainted with as many of the people as possible in the district, and that’s what I’ve been working on for the past several months. I know the issues pretty well, I’m a pretty good reader, and I’ve been following them mighty close. It’s a natural resource district, which is very similar to what I represented before. There’s absolutely no place you can go outside in District Four where you can go outside and not see a forest.
Q) What’s the most generous thing you’ve ever done?
Probably run for office, I don’t know. I’ve been a volunteer in organizations all of my life, we have taken in, as a family, a parolee from the juvenile center, we’ve taken them into our homes when our children were young, I’m not sure I’d advise it again when your children are younger than the parolee. We’ve done that, we’ve spent lots of time, lots of time with the foreign visitors and students who have come to Oregon State University. As a volunteer, I’ve arranged for hundreds and hundreds of visitors to be hosted in American family homes in the area. I’ve taken in a young woman who was kicked out of her school when she was 16, I tried to make that work but basically didn’t. We’ve done all sorts of things that I think are generous.
Q) What steps we should be taking in our war against terrorism?
I’m thankful Congress took the steps that they did, and you’ll find in my literature news articles that pretty well reflect what I said. I’m thankful that the Democrats in the House in the Senate joined with President Bush in supporting that and I’m a little bit frustrated when I read the papers when they say all the president is going to do is run out and attack — that is not what he intends to do. I don’t want us to go to war, and I’m old enough to remember a major war, and I have friends who did not come back from that war. So I don’t want war at all. But how do you handle the international threat, do we want another plane or something else to destroy our citizens or kill thousands of them, do we want to put up with this kind of thing? Probably your next question is what’s the relationship between Iraq and that. I think they were trained there with Saddam’s support.
Q) Who’s your role model in politics?
If you want to go way back, I certainly appreciated Abraham Lincoln, and I’ve quoted him time and time again that “You do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.” I’ve quoted many things he said, but the one I’ve had on my refrigerator for many years is “You do not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.” E
lizabeth Dole isn’t too bad, Margaret Thatcher probably gets in there someplace. In fact I think Margaret Thatcher tops it all in what she was able to accomplish in her country. President Reagan, whom I had the opportunity to meet and be his luncheon guest at one time, is pretty high on my list. I felt that Gov. Vic Atiyeh was one of the best governors Oregon could have ever asked for and I so admired him, in the many years he spent in the Legislature, he was the one committee member who sat there, through all of the hearings, almost never got up and left, listening to everybody who came in and testified. He played the game absolutely fair. And I still communicate with him today. I have an endorsement card from him. In fact, when I called him up and asked him if he’d endorse me for the campaign, if he’d let me use his name, he said sure, and I said, when you think about it, you might write something you’d say about me? He said “Liz, I’ve already thought about it,” and that’s what’s on that card.
Q) Nationally, how would you shape our forest policy to prevent disasters like the burn in Oregon?
I support President Bush’s healthy forest initiative. We need it, coupled with the timber plans that are already in place that were put in place and promised to us by the former President Clinton when he came to us in 1993, he promised us he’d set up a timber plan to harvest about 20 percent of what we’d been harvesting in the previous 20 or so years, coupling the health forest project and thinning plans with that harvest plan. If we were doing that, we certainly wouldn’t be in the financial straights we’re in right now. Money would be flowing in to the harvest. Going back to the trees I referred to earlier, in Congressional District Four, you have forest from the north all the way down to the California border to Brookings, you’ve got forest all the way. And the majority of that forest is under federal government agency control. And when you harvest some of that timber, the money, that money can go directly to the schools, and to the county, that’s what built your roads, your government buildings. If we had even that 20 percent going now, the Oregon Legislature would not have had to go back into session because unemployed people in the rural areas would have jobs, not all the mills would have closed, working in jobs where they paid income taxes, and you’d have the additional money of the direct sale of the forest land into funds to schools and the roads and the other services we have come to expect government to provide for us.
Q) How will poor students go to school in Oregon?
Probably pretty much the same way they do now. I don’t know quite what you mean by that remark. Almost anybody, if they work it well enough, can manage to go to school, maybe not to the university but to the community college.
Q) Even all the grant money that was cut this year?
What grant money was cut this year? I mean the budget, I’ve always supported the budget, maybe not the full budget, but people come in with a budget with probably an inflation factor of up to 25 percent of what the previous biennium’s budget was. So actually, I don’t even think the figures they have now that are supposedly in the budget, I don’t think it’s cut lower than what the previous year’s budget was. There’s real question for how much of the money gets siphoned off for education and the Education Service Districts. That’s the question: How much of the money is going into schools and how much into administration?
Q) What makes you the best choice for Oregon?
My integrity, number one. I’m not going to say something different here at home than how I vote in Washington D.C. I understand natural resources, I understand the need for people to have jobs. And I understand how that works in the economy. And I spent a lot of my time in the human resource issue. The last time I was there I chaired the children and families committee. I’m the person who started court-appointed special advocates, so every child who’s been removed from their home on charges of neglect or abuse can have a representative who goes to the court with that child and tries to make decisions in the best interest of that child. Even Lane County, though they’ve taken a long time to get it. In fact, I had a woman call me today. People still think I’m their representative, even though I haven’t been in a long time. What makes me the best? I think my experience: My opponent has never worked in the real world, he started out as an aide to a congressman who had his spot. He spent I think a term as a county commissioner then got elected to office. He has not had to meet a payroll like I have, he has not made … I just think, well I know I represent small business better than he does. He has a dismal record for small business, and nearly all of Oregon’s business is small business.
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