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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, JuNE 23, 2022
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
Founded in 1873
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
SHANNON ARLINT
Circulation Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
WRITER’S NOTEBOOK
Which Johnson would govern?
etsy Johnson entered my office at
The Astorian in 2000 as a candi-
date for the state House of Rep-
resentatives. Decades prior, our fam-
ily histories intersected when my father
and Johnson’s mother were colleagues
on the state Board of Higher Education.
They had a simpatico relationship. So I
was inclined to like this legislative can-
didate. And I did.
Not being a pollster, I
will leave it to others to
speculate on the viability
of Johnson’s strategy for
winning the three-way
race she has with Dem-
ocrat Tina Kotek and
STEVE
Republican Christine
FORRESTER
Drazan. What interests
me much more is what
kind of governor she would be.
Oregon has not had a governor with
business ownership in their background
since Victor Atiyeh, our last Republican
governor, who led the state from 1979
to 1987. Atiyeh grasped the concept of
being the state’s CEO.
Our state government has grown con-
siderably since the 1980s, but some of
the same challenges beg for oversight.
With government’s growth, the state’s
dependence on computer systems and
software platforms has grown markedly.
And Oregon has lacked a governor who
grasped that particular challenge and
dealt with it.
Oregon’s state government’s com-
puter system disasters are no secret.
Refreshing my memory about those
malfunctions, I consulted a man with
some 30 years of watching the state-
house – Dick Hughes, our newspa-
per’s Salem columnist. “They’re awful,”
Hughes said.
On the one hand, computer systems
have become the nervous systems of
most businesses and governments. On
the other hand, no candidate for state
B
Dave Killen/The Oregonian
Betsy Johnson, a former state senator, is running for governor as an independent.
I WAS SORRy TO HEAR JOHNSON’S
RESPONSE TO THE SCHOOL SHOOTING IN
uVALdE, TEXAS, BuT IT WAS THE BETSy I
LISTENEd TO SOME 20 yEARS AGO.
office will run on a platform of improv-
ing them. This is not sexy stuff.
Based on what Hughes tells me and
what I know of Johnson, she would have
the moxie to ask the tough questions of
systems and software providers who are
contracted to serve the divisions of state
government – which are equivalent to
large companies – in terms of their pay-
roll, budget and the size of the customer
base they serve.
Guns, however, are a sexy issue – a
highly visible flashpoint. When John-
son told me, more than a decade ago,
about the machine gun that she pur-
chased at an auction, I was startled. In
U.S. Marine Corps infantry training, I
had fired the M60 machine gun. Why, I
wondered, would anyone not in uniform
want that killing machine?
When Johnson and I had this con-
versation, a national community of pub-
lic health physicians was gathering
numbers on the scale of gun wound-
ings, deaths and suicides. They argued
that America should recognize this as
a public health issue. A calamity. An
epidemic.
An example of this public health per-
spective was “The Medical Costs of
Gunshot Injuries in the United States,”
published in the Journal of the Ameri-
can Medical Association. Its conclusions
were: “Gunshot injury costs represent a
substantial burden to the medical care
system. Nearly half this cost is borne by
the US taxpayers,” (Aug. 4, 1999).
David Hemenway, of the Harvard
School of Public Health, was a leading
explorer of the intersection of firearm
woundings and deaths and public health.
“Private Guns, Public Health” was his
2004 book. The virtue of Hemenway’s
work and other public health physicians
is that it moved the gun issue away from
politics and emotion into the world of
medicine, healing and prevention. In an
attempt to have a fruitful dialogue with
Johnson, I gave her one of Hemenway’s
papers. At that point, this very articulate
woman said nothing in response.
I was sorry to hear Johnson’s
response to the school shooting in
Uvalde, Texas, but it was the Betsy I lis-
tened to some 20 years ago.
I know that her independent cam-
paign for governor demands that she
cultivate a hard-line stance for the sin-
gle-issue voter – to cut into the Repub-
lican electorate. That’s fine for short-
term thinking. But it is not leadership for
what has become a mortal concern.
Put simply, Johnson is on the wrong
side of history. And if Oregon has
another Umpqua Community College
shooting (2015), Clackamas Town Cen-
ter incident (2012) or Thurston High
School shooting (Kip Kinkel, 1998),
most Oregonians will want much more
than a clichéd response from their
governor.
Steve Forrester, the former editor and
publisher of The Astorian, is the presi-
dent and CEO of EO Media Group.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Exclusion
M
y family has lived in Cove Beach for
over 12 years. It’s been truly heart-
breaking to see our community become so
divided. What was once a restorative place
that my family dreamed of spending every
weekend at is now a place we only occa-
sionally go to these last few years, prefer-
ring places that bring us joy.
In many ways, Cove Beach has become
a microcosm of what is wrong with the
world. Division, unkindness, misuse of
power.
We must ask ourselves, do we live in a
gated community? No. Did the visionary
governor, Oswald West, want just a few
people to have the exclusive use of Cove
Beach? No. Did he want to keep Oregon’s
beaches accessible to all, not just the privi-
leged few? Yes.
Let’s consider how short-term rental
policies impact access for all Oregonians.
Prioritizing a small number of full-time
residents’ nuisance complaints, versus
keeping the Oregon Coast accessible to
all of the state’s inhabitants is, by its very
nature, exclusion.
Issues like noise, garbage, fires on
beaches, parking, water use, conservation,
are all things that we, as a community, can
fix together, but let’s not use those as a rea-
son to exclude “others” and limit access.
My continued hope is that we can all
come together as a community, open our
hearts and see the responsibility of the
privilege we have as property owners in
this amazing place, and work together —
keeping in mind both our smaller neigh-
borhood communities and access for our
greater community of Oregonians.
AMBER GEIGER
Portland
My hope
I
would hope that Congress can do some-
thing about mass shootings.
There is a myth circulating that Thomas
Jefferson stated that the Second Amend-
ment was written to keep government
tyranny in check. The quote, falsely
attributed to Jefferson, is being used to jus-
tify the myth that we have the right to bear
arms to keep our government in check.
Garrett Epps wrote: “If good govern-
ment actually came from a violent armed
population, then Afghanistan and Soma-
lia would be the two best-governed places
on Earth.”
Our founders would not have passed a
constitutional amendment to liquidate a
government that they worked and fought
to create. Our founders, who fought in
the Revolutionary War, had few illusions
about the virtues of violence.
LETTERS WELCOME
Letters should be exclusive to The
Astorian. Letters should be fewer
than 250 words and must include the
writer’s name, address and phone
number. You will be contacted to
confirm authorship. All letters are
subject to editing for space, gram-
mar and factual accuracy. Only two
letters per writer are allowed each
month. Letters written in response
In 1787, the writers of our Constitution
were aware of Shays’ Rebellion. This was
a tax revolt against their state government.
George Washington was so upset by this
rebellion that he came out of retirement to
help frame a new national charter to pre-
vent this from happening again.
President Washington, himself, led a
national army into western Pennsylva-
nia to put down what has been called the
Whiskey Rebellion. Washington, in a mes-
sage to Congress, showed no sympathy for
Second Amendment remedies.
The myth that the Second Amendment
was passed to allow for the violent over-
throw of our government is total nonsense.
to other letter writers should address
the issue at hand and should refer to
the headline and date the letter was
published. Discourse should be civil.
Send via email to editor@dailyasto-
rian.com, online at bit.ly/astorianlet-
ters, in person at 949 Exchange St.
in Astoria or mail to Letters to the
Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR.,
97103.
My hope is that other people will realize
this, as well.
BILL EAGLE
St. Helens
So what?
A
catch-up reading of The Astorian back
issues disclosed the June 2 front-page
bash of gubernatorial candidate Betsy
Johnson — a reprint of Hillary Borrud’s
article in The Oregonian.
Betsy is a Class 3 owner of a fully auto-
matic machine gun. The firearm is safely
secured. More to the point, Betsy is lev-
el-headed, responsible, emotionally secure
and law-abiding, and worked hard for
many years representing our district as our
senator in Salem. I would trust her with an
operational Abrams tank!
The issue is not guns. It is deranged
people accessing AR platform-type
semi-automatic rifles. Betsy, a former
search-and-rescue helicopter pilot, did not
deserve the clearly political right hook
reprinted in The Astorian. We have suffi-
cient, common sense firearms laws in Ore-
gon. Period. Betsy is lawfully exercising
her right in accordance with the law and,
like most reasonable Oregonians, appreci-
ates Second Amendment rights and protec-
tions under our U.S. Constitution.
Do we clamor for punishing people
who own large automotive vehicles by out-
lawing them because a few nutbars have
driven them into crowds of people? Do we
politicize SUVs and four-wheel drive vehi-
cles, along with smearing political candi-
dates because he or she owns one?
Incivility is running amok in our
nation, and we need to be grateful that lev-
el-headed people with common sense, like
Betsy, are standing up to lead us. She owns
a machine gun. So what? They’re fun to
shoot in the hands of responsible people!
MAURIE HENDRICKSON
Astoria