Inside
MEETING NO TICES
See
Page 6
V olume 107
Number 19
October 6, 2006
P ortland
The Bus Driver
TriMet retiree Ben
Fain gets behind
the wheel again
for the cause
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
In 26 years driving buses at
TriMet, Ben Fain was a loyal if not
particularly active member of Amal-
gamated Transit Union (ATU) Divi-
sion 757.
Since his 2002 retirement, how-
ever, he’s become a bus-borne ac-
tivist — chauffeuring the mostly
young progressives of the Bus Pro-
ject to political happenings and door-
to-door canvasses.
The Bus Project is best-known for
mobilizing busloads of volunteers to
do a day’s work for progressive can-
didates in close electoral races. Since
2002, the group’s volunteers have
knocked on 200,000 doors and con-
tributed to the election of over a
dozen state legislators, said Bus Pro-
ject managing director Garrett Dow-
nen. And the group has close ties to
several politically-active unions. The
American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees,
the American Federation of Teach-
ers-Oregon, and the Carpenters
Union have sponsored bus trips;
other unions have made donations.
Bus Project co-founder Joe Baessler
became Oregon AFSCME’s political
coordinator.
Fain climbed aboard the Bus Pro-
ject when it was still an idea. At a
Christmas holiday family reunion in
2001, his sister’s grandson, Aaron
Imlah, asked him if he would drive a
bus for a group he was helping form.
“They had a bus without a driver,
and I was a driver without a bus,”
Fain recalls.
Fain, 67, said he had always voted
for progressive politicians and issues,
but retirement would open up much
more time to get involved.
He decided to keep his commer-
cial driver’s license active and drive
the bus, a 1978 MCI Crusader con-
verted to biodiesel.
Fain thinks he’s done probably 95
percent of the driving since the proj-
ect began. Volunteering sparked a po-
litical awakening for him. It strength-
ened his belief in the importance of
unions and the power of individuals
to make change by coming together.
Fain, the son of a bricklayer,
worked in union jobs all his life, start-
ing in the early 1950s with the Brick-
layers Union, continuing as a Boeing
(Turn to Page 8)
In Oregon
New Yorker pours $2.8 million into ballot measures
Out-of-state money has made itself felt in Oregon politics be-
fore, but a pair of ballot measures up for a vote this November
has Oregonians wondering about how thoroughly their citizen
initiative process can be hijacked to serve a private agenda.
As detailed in three sets of mandatory campaign finance dis-
closures, every phase of Ballot measures 45 and 48 has been al-
most entirely financed by one individual — conservative New
York real estate millionaire Howard Rich. Measure 45 would set
term limits for state elected officials, and Measure 48 would set
an inflexible limit on state spending; both are opposed by the
Oregon AFL-CIO and other labor organizations.
Rich is founder and financier of the group Americans For
Limited Government, which contends that government is doing
too much, and is charging excessive taxes. But rather than focus
on the federal government, which has been spending more than
it takes in since President Clinton left office, Rich’s group is tar-
geting state governments, which by law must live within their
means.
Oregon is one of a number of states where Rich’s millions
have financed paid petitioners and political consultants to put
identical questions before voters.
Such a top-down campaign is a far cry from the citizen upris-
ings Oregonians imagined when they set up the initiative sys-
tem. It was supposed to be a way to get around the Oregon Leg-
islature in cases where legislators were truly unresponsive to the
popular will: If citizens gather signatures from enough fellow
citizens, statutes and constitutional amendments go directly to
the electorate for approval or rejection.
But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1988 that states couldn’t
ban the use of paid petitioners, and that opened up the initiative
process for political experiments by deep-pocket ideologues and
special favors for moneyed interests. Some initiatives still come
about with grassroots citizen support, but almost every election
also has measures that were bought and paid for by big money.
That’s why New Yorker Howard Rich may be the most im-
portant man in Oregon this year. His proposals — Measures 45
and 48 — don't carry his name on them, but they come with his
money.
Entities controlled by Rich have given $2 million to a Mis-
souri group pushing a spending cap, $1 million to an Arizona
group pushing a spending cap, and $100,000 to an Oklahoma
group.
Rich’s contributions to Oregon ballot measure campaigns to-
talled $2.8 million, the Oregonian reported Sept. 12. The most
(Turn to Page 5)