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 use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as 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.

A friend asked me the question in the headline after reading my recent blog about the upcoming governor’s race between Democrat Kate Brown and Republican Knute Buehler.

My sense, very early in a several-months-long election process, is that Brown will win the state’s top political job again or at least be favored to do so.

The Oregonian newspaper wrote this in a lead editorial on Sunday:

“Tuesday’s primary was a test not just of candidates, but of voters: Could Oregon Republicans detach themselves from social-issue litmus tests and support the one Republican candidate for governor who stands a chance of winning in November?

“The answer is yes. In a decisive victory, Republican voters chose Bend legislator Knute Buehler, a pro-choice doctor who favors reasonable gun control measures and has openly criticized President Donald Trump as their nominee to challenge Democratic Gov. Kate Brown. Voters wisely set aside any differences they may have with his moderate social stances and selected him over opponents toeing hyper-partisan positions that are out-of-touch with most Oregonians and sunk their chances of statewide office in recent years.

“While hardcore Democrats might disagree, Buehler’s win benefits Oregonians as a whole. His legislative background and understanding of Oregon’s most pressing problems gives him the credibility and fluency to force Brown into a higher-level discussion of issues than other candidates could have. And Oregonians deserve substantive, informed debate between our gubernatorial candidates on how to prop up Oregon’s K-12 educational system, pay down its daunting public pension debt, reform its foster-care system, identify long-term health-care funding and any number of such issues that need attention now.”

So, at least the Oregonian says there will be a race leading up to November. Part of the reason is that Buehler has sought to carve out a moderate reputation as a legislator in Salem, a reputation he hopes will give him a chance to appeal to metropolitan Portland voters.

The fact that he hails from Bend, not exactly rural Oregon, though also not urban Oregon, ends up to be a strike against him.

For me, two recent Republican predecessors – Ron Saxton and Chris Dudley came from the Portland metro area and tried to portray a moderate set of values. They succeeded, but at the polls, they failed.

The reason?

The political power in the metropolitan area rests with public employee unions, which do everything to promote the candidacy of any Democrat. That includes huge financial donations, as well as “political feet” – which means public employee union members walk around the metropolitan area to promote Democrats, then collect ballots in the last hours of the mail ballot cycle, getting them to ballot collection points just before the 8 p.m. deadline.

It has become almost impossible for a Republican – and I think that includes Buehler – to surmount that heavy D advantage.

My friend also asked me another thought-provoking question.

Why, he asked, can’t Republicans make connections with metropolitan area voters? Well, in some cases they can, but, in the past, not enough to offset the heavy D advantage.

Plus, any Republican this time around is likely to call for no increase in taxes, for adequate levels of school funding (who knows what “adequate” is?), and for actions to control the huge rise in public pension costs.

None of those propositions, as important as they are for any governor, will appeal to liberal voters in the metropolitan area, so the Democrat candidate will not campaign on them.

The last Republican governor in Oregon, the late Victor Atiyeh, for whom I worked in the 1980s, managed to connect with metropolitan voters, not just once, but twice, including a huge winning 62-35 margin in his re-election campaign, admittedly against a Democrat candidate, Ted Kulongoski, who should have fared better in the metropolitan area.

The trouble is that political discourse has become far more coarse since the Atiyeh terms. Those who vote often do so on the basis of single issues – abortion access is a main one — not the breadth of what any governor will have to face once in office.

That dynamic, too, argues for the Democrat incumbent this time around.

But, I hope I am selling Buehler short and that the governor’s race turns into one that will produce the best winner for all of Oregon.

As Oregonian editorial writers said:

“Oregonians should feel hopeful that Buehler and Brown will use these next few months to engage in real debate that reveals vision, ideas, priorities and character. They should listen for how each would address the precariousness of our fiscal, education, revenue, health care and housing systems. And they, like Republican voters in their primary, should recognize all a candidate has to offer rather than base support on only one issue or another. 

“True competition forces everyone to be better. Oregonians need Brown and Buehler to show them their best.”