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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, FEbRuARy 22, 2022
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
WRITER’S NOTEBOOK
The journalist-politician has worked well for Oregon
I
t is unfortunate that Nicholas Kris-
tof won’t be on the Oregon Demo-
cratic primary ballot for governor.
Kristof and former state Sen. Betsy
Johnson were the two candidates who
did not neatly fit into the tradition of
electing Democrats beholden to public
employee unions. As the former Repub-
lican Secretary of State Dennis Richard-
son once said during conversation at The
Astorian, “The public employees unions
run the statehouse.”
In different ways,
Kristof and Johnson
would have brought
fresh ideas to this race
for governor. Johnson
has yet to flesh out her
message, but Kristof’s
STEVE
was clearly about human
FORRESTER
welfare – the vast swath
of displaced and dam-
aged Oregonians. His nationally pub-
lished articles and books are about the
travail of common people in turbulent
times. One of those books is about drug
addiction among Oregonians whom
Kristof knew while growing up in this
state.
Some referred to Kristof’s national
and international journalism as though
that made him a novelty candidate. But
Oregon has enjoyed good luck with
journalist-politicians. Three of our
prominent officeholders have been jour-
nalists. One of those was Oregon’s most
consequential governor of the 20th
century.
Mark Graves/The Oregonian
The Oregon Supreme Court upheld a determination by the secretary of state that Nicholas
Kristof, a former New York Times columnist, does not meet the residency requirement to
run for governor.
Charles Sprague owned the Oregon
Statesman newspaper in Salem. As edi-
tor, he wrote editorials and a widely read
front-page column, “It Seems to Me.”
He became Oregon governor in 1939
and served through 1943. Sprague was
a Republican in the Theodore Roos-
evelt Progressive tradition. His defense
of civil liberties put him at odds with the
GOP’s right wing.
Today’s Oregon Republican Party
would turn their backs on the man. To
learn more about Sprague, read Floyd
McKay’s biography, “An Editor for Ore-
gon: Charles A. Sprague and the Politics
of Change.”
Tom McCall and Richard Neu-
berger were journalists of a different
sort, but they had a symbiotic relation-
ship. McCall began as a sportswriter
in Idaho and became one of Oregon’s
most prominent television journalists,
as a news analyst for KGW-TV. Neu-
berger’s prodigious output appeared in
The Oregonian, from the time he was
18, and subsequently in national maga-
zines that collectively reached a broad
demographic.
Conservation was a paramount value
– a theme in many of Neuberger’s arti-
cles. By the time he was elected to the
U.S. Senate as a Democrat, Neuberger
had built a national constituency among
conservationists, and they were elated
at his victory. Brent Walth in “Fire at
Eden’s Gate” describes Neuberger as
McCall’s “role model.” When Neu-
berger died at the age of 47 in 1960,
McCall took up the cause of conserva-
tion and became Oregon’s most promi-
nent conservationist.
In other words, Oregon’s three promi-
nent journalist officeholders carried pos-
itive, inspirational values into the arena
and left their mark.
The important distinction between
Neuberger and Kristof is that Neuberger
served in the Oregon House of Repre-
sentatives and the state Senate prior to
the U.S. Senate. Neuberger had done a
legislative apprenticeship – all of which
he wrote about.
Nonetheless, it would have been use-
ful to have an injection of Kristof’s per-
spective in the race that lies ahead.
Steve Forrester, the former editor and
publisher of The Astorian, is the presi-
dent and CEO of EO Media Group.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Impeachment
T
he Oregon Constitution is the only one
lacking an impeachment provision.
House Joint Resolution 203 is designed to
correct this error. It provides impeachment
of elected executive branch officials.
The resolution is in state Rep. Barbara
Smith Warner’s House Rules Committee.
She is reluctant to give the bill a hearing,
and needs encouragement to do so. It has a
bipartisan group of senators and represen-
tatives sponsoring it.
Having two bad governors in succession
underscores the need for this law.
ERIN BRUCE THURBER
Sweet Home
Inappropriate development
P
ermit me to add my voice to Ed Over-
bay’s call (“One and only location,”
The Astorian, Feb. 17) for the city to back
off plans to turn Heritage Square over to
commercial developers instead of honor-
ing a long-held promise to make it a much-
needed public square.
I agree we need more affordable hous-
ing, but there are many other locations for
this purpose, some of which even have
adequate parking.
As for the planned mental health facil-
ity at the same site, aren’t there already
enough troubled individuals haunting the
downtown district?
Housing and treatment are wor-
thy goals, but surely there are sites more
appropriate than shoehorning them into
what should be a commemorative, peace-
ful community space.
One has to wonder why the big push for
this inappropriate development, and what
part the almighty dollar is playing.
I concede the city will never be the
same as it was when I settled here 50 years
ago, but I urge Astorians to push back
against this slow but steady march into
unrecognizability.
JOHN F. CROWLEY
Astoria
Near hysterical
I
t’s easy to miss Astoria, until one reads
the many near hysterical responses to
the proposed development of Heritage
Square into lower-income housing, and a
better space, and for many mental health
clients.
It seems that while Astoria is quickly
removing or renaming the obvious visual
evidence to Astoria’s prejudicial past,
many of its citizens are repurposing the
same irrational fears and slanders that
fueled those prejudices.
I remember an anecdote a friend told
me. A haggard, disheveled man was sit-
ting on a bench along Astoria’s River-
walk. A woman stopped and said to him,
“We don’t like your kind around here.”
His “kind” was third-generation Columbia
River worker. He was one of my friend’s
deckhands.
It’s as if Astoria’s white ancestors were
mostly proper middle-class citizens, and
not people driven from their home coun-
tries because of things like poverty and
prejudice.
The U.S. treatment of those with men-
tal divergences from the present norms, or
emotional and mental challenges, is argu-
ably the greatest moral failing of our
time.
While people are enjoying their right
to speak out against a proposed develop-
ment, so many others are being deprived of
their right to quality mental health care and
affordable housing.
MICHAEL A. MILLER
Salem
Seeing forests and trees
I
n his Feb. 12 letter to the editor in The
Astorian, “Time and money,” Chris
Connaway, of the International Longshore
and Warehouse Union Local 50, demon-
strates his leadership, loyalty to union
members and concern for the community.
Naturally he wants the best for his
union members and the timber indus-
try that has provided them with years
of employment. However, his call for
another log export facility in Astoria is out
of touch with the direction the city and
county are headed.
It is generally agreed by analysts that
the economic future of Astoria will be
driven by tourism, recreation and livabil-
ity. The notion that a log export facility
would lead to an economic boon for the
city seems dubious and self-serving.
Exporting raw logs to China in recent
years has closed numerous Oregon mills,
forcing mill workers onto unemploy-
ment and has driven up the cost of finished
lumber.
Connaway’s characterization of Clat-
sop County as a “Third World, colonial,
plantation” without its own log exporting
misses the mark. That epithet belongs to
the state of Oregon, which is allowing the
sale of our natural resources to China, an
insatiable country that long ago deforested
its own lands. Log exports on the Colum-
bia River are literally selling our state
down the river.
Rather than not being able to “see the
forest for the trees,” as Connaway sug-
gests, the Port administration, our county
and city representatives, and the majority
of the citizens, are collectively sending the
message that we want to see more forests
and fewer fallen trees.
ROGER DORBAND
Astoria