Every two years in Oregon voters are faced with a number of ballot measures that are nine times out of ten sponsored by conservatives. Since the governorship has been held by Democrats for nearly two decades, conservatives have resorted to the initiative process to advance their agenda. This route serves a number of goals: It forces liberal and progressive groups in the state to spend money fighting the initiatives, it brings out the conservative base and it helps in framing the conservative message.

This begs the question, where are the progressive ballot measures? It’s not that there aren’t enough issues out there. In fact, in the last legislative session Senate Democrats introduced and passed twelve bills that were blocked or left to rot in a committee in the Republican held House.

A few bills dealt with health care such as expanding the state’s drug purchasing pool by allowing private business and individuals to participate, helping them save money on drug costs. This bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support, a 19-11 vote. Other bills dealt with funding for education, advancing consumer protection and ending abusive tax shelters.

Progressives need to seriously consider ballot initiatives as part of our strategy to move Oregon forward and to counter the simplistic, shortsighted measures that have been coming from the right for over 15 years. We don’t need to flood the ballot with initiatives that might end up confusing voters, but we need to put a few key measures on the ballot that will help frame the progressive agenda and attempt to ensure social, environmental and economic progress in the state.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 10:51 am and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.