3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2018
Merkley eyes White House, Starnes drops bid for
visits early primary states governor, endorses Brown
A decision after
the midterms
Independent
candidate
makes switch
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
PORTLAND — He’s a
Democrat, a liberal senator
who wants to make Medicare
available for all Americans, has
pushed bills to stem climate
change and is a sharp critic of
President Donald Trump. And
he’s seriously considering a run
for the White House.
It’s not Vermont’s Bernie
Sanders. It’s Jeff Merkley, the
senator from Oregon whose
national profile rose this year
when he led opposition to the
Trump administration’s immi-
gration policy that saw parents
forcibly separated from their
children.
Merkley, in trying to gauge
voter interest in a run for the
presidency, has already visited
Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina and Nevada, states
that have early primaries and
caucuses in the presidential
sweepstakes.
He didn’t have much name
recognition nationally until last
June, when he tried to enter a
federal facility in Texas where
immigrant children were being
held. An aide videotaped the
scene as he was refused entry
and police were called. The
video quickly went viral with
over 1 million views in a day,
and was repeated in newscasts
across the country.
In October, Merkley intro-
duced legislation to prevent
the Trump administration from
forcing asylum seekers into
internment camps.
“It’s just a simple question
of human decency and justice,”
Merkley said in an interview
with The Associated Press.
“We’re a nation of immigrants.
The vast bulk of us have, some-
where in our ancestry, people
who fled religious persecution,
or famine, or war.”
Merkley said immigrants
fleeing persecution were
being treated as criminals and
are being traumatized. He
described the forced separa-
tion of children from their par-
ents as “an obscenely dark and
evil act.”
The administration says the
crackdown is necessary to stop
illegal immigration.
In his trips to other states,
Merkley has spoken with peo-
ple “in their living rooms, their
porches their backyards, nearby
parks.”
“You get together with a
bunch of people and you talk
about the state of the world,”
he explained. He discussed
with them issues he has led
on, including ending preda-
tory home mortgages; battling
“climate chaos” — as he calls
climate change; fighting for
equality for the LGBT commu-
nity; and opposing trade agree-
ments that ship Americans’ jobs
overseas.
“The feedback’s been very
positive,” Merkley said, though
a beat later he added that maybe
the people were just being
polite.
Blue-collar background
AP Photo/Andrew Selsky
U.S. Sen Jeff Merkley poses for a photo in his office in Portland.
that the blue-collar kid could
keep up with the kids from prep
schools, so I had to work a little
harder,” he said.
His first exposure to national
politics began when he interned
in Washington, D.C., for U.S.
Sen. Mark Hatfield, a moder-
ate Republican. He was elected
to the state Legislature and then
won Hatfield’s former Senate
seat, in 2008, narrowly defeat-
ing the Republican incumbent.
He handily won re-election six
years later.
Merkley is busy these days
boosting, with appearances
and donations, 18 Democratic
candidates in key states via
his Blue Wave political action
committee. He’s also hiring
field staff in states like Iowa and
New Hampshire to back some
of those candidates, workers
who could assist in laying the
groundwork for his presiden-
tial run.
If he decides to run, Merk-
ley must find a niche in a poten-
tially crowded field, said Tra-
vis Ridout, a professor of
government and public policy
at Washington State Univer-
sity. The key is finding appeal
from at least one segment of the
party, whether liberal progres-
sives, racial and ethnic minori-
ties, labor unions or others, Rid-
out said.
“Trying to distinguish your-
self with so many potential can-
didates is a difficult task,” Rid-
out said. However, Democrats
seem to be looking for some-
one new who they feel can win,
a potential plus for Merkley,
Ridout said.
Comparisons
with Sanders
Merkley has been compared
to Sanders, who lost the Dem-
ocratic nomination in 2016 to
Hillary Clinton. Politico Maga-
zine said Merkley, the only sen-
ator to endorse Sanders in 2016,
“could inherit Bernie Sanders’
progressive mantle in 2020.”
Sanders’ supporters com-
plained that the party machin-
ery was skewed against his can-
didacy, but Merkley believes
the machinery isn’t going to be
that important in 2018.
“I think it’s going to be
people in these states who get
excited about one candidate or
another,” Merkley said. “And
you know, some kind of magic
happens along the way, but you
don’t really know how that’s
going to unfold.”
Merkley said he’ll decide
whether to run after next week’s
midterm elections.
Patrick Starnes, the Inde-
pendent Party of Oregon’s
candidate for governor,
dropped an interesting new
campaign message a week
from election day: Vote for
Kate Brown.
In a surprise move,
Starnes announced Tuesday
he was suspending his cam-
paign, and asking support-
ers to instead back Brown’s
re-election.
“I just proposed it this
morning to (Brown’s cam-
paign),” Starnes, a cabi-
netmaker from Browns-
ville, told Oregon Public
Broadcasting.
The decision came down
to the central campaign
plank of Starnes’ long-shot
bid for governor: campaign
finance reform. The candi-
date said he’s grown con-
vinced that Brown is com-
mitted to pushing a state
constitutional amendment
that would pave the way
for tight limits on campaign
donations. Oregon currently
co-chair Rob Harris about the
move.
Starnes announcement also
comes, presumably, after some
of his supporters have already
voted. According to the secre-
tary of state’s office, more than
one-fifth of ballots have been
returned.
Polls suggested Starnes
might attract 4 percent of the
vote.
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His father was a millwright
maintaining machines in a ply-
wood mill and in the forest then
did other jobs. Merkley lives in
a one-story house in the same
blue-collar neighborhood of
Portland where he grew up,
giving him a humble Jimmy
Carter quality.
Carter lives in the same
house in Plains, Georgia, he
built in 1961. He too was a lit-
tle-known Democrat on the
national stage before being
elected president in 1976.
Merkley, 62, attributed his
success to “serendipity.”
“If I lived a thousand life-
times I would probably never
have been in the U.S. Senate,”
he said.
As a kid, Merkley excelled
in math and science. He applied
for college at almost the last
minute, being unfamiliar with
the process, and was accepted
at Stanford and Yale. He chose
Stanford for the financial aid.
He was shocked to learn
that all the other students in his
dorm had visited the campus
before. It had never occurred
to his family to do so, and they
lacked the money anyway.
“It was a stressful couple of
years (but) I wanted to prove
By DIRK
VANDERHART
Oregon Public
Broadcasting
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Starnes also said the move
was influenced by Republi-
can candidate Knute Buehler’s
decision to accept $2.5 mil-
lion from Nike co-founder Phil
Knight.
The move to withdraw
apparently came as a surprise
to Starnes’ own party. Accord-
ing to The Oregonian, he hadn’t
informed Independent Party
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