PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

In a piece that ran in the Oregonian this week, the Republican candidate for governor, Salem physician Bud Pierce, tries to make a case that he would do better than the Democrat incumbent, Kate Brown.

He makes a few good points about Brown’s first year in office, but Pierce stands little chance of unseating Brown.

If he somehow managed to do so, he would be the first Republican governor since the late Vic Atiyeh more than 30 years ago.

For her part, Brown appears to like the governor’s job, as well as meeting citizens. Both are direct contracts to her predecessor, John Kitzhaber, who gave up the office in response to ethical challenges and remains under federal investigation. During his long tenure, he did not appear to like the trappings of the office, including the “task” of meeting Oregonians, preferring, instead, to focus on the details of policies.

To be sure, Brown, if she wins a full term on her own, will face numerous public policy challenges, including:

• Implementing higher minimum wage standards, which promises to be especially difficult for businesses in rural Oregon. [Today, Governor Brown endorsed the Senate-passed version of the minimum wage increase, saying in blunt terms that the priority should be pulling people out of poverty rather than worrying about small businesses.]

• Deciding how to deal with transportation funding issues as congestion, even gridlock, continues to vex urban residents.

• Dealing with the reality of unfunded obligations in the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS), which will demand new money from local and state governments, perhaps at the risk of political priorities, such as money for K-12 education, higher education and health care.

• Fixing problems in Oregon’s public records system, which, while rooted in the precept that all government records are public, fails to live up to that standard.

• Finding a balance, if there is one, in a pending business tax increase heading to the polls next November – an increase that holds the potential for a huge fight pitting businesses against unions. And be sure of this – no one will emerge unscathed.

• Finding a way to prod innovation in Oregon’s higher education system beyond just, as Brown has already done, hire a new position, an “education innovation officer” on the theory, it would appear, that a new state government position is the answer to the challenge.

In his Oregonian piece, Pierce names all these challenges and others, then says he will be better able to handle them than Brown. Beyond naming them? Nothing.

He enunciates no plan to deal with any of them, perhaps hewing to conventional wisdom which says that voters want summary statements, not position papers. Still, there will be a long distance between advocating a position and achieving it.

Pierce’s political experience is limited. He was one of two physicians in Salem that the Oregon Medical Association (OMA) often summoned to the Capitol to testify on OMA bills. Beyond that, he has operated what appears to be a successful oncology practice (if the word “successful” can be applied to any cancer treatment center, which, of course is not Pierce’s fault).

He plans to spend a lot of his own money to run and, if money is the grease in politics, he will come up far short of Brown, who will be able to count on huge contributions from public employee unions and other typical Democrat interests.

So, expect Brown to win and to move on to her first full term in office. Then, she can be measured more fully on her tenure, instead of her assignment to fill out a portion of Kitzhaber’s term.