Elections watchers find themselves puzzled by several aspects of the Robert Wolfe (Progressive Party) candidacy for November’s Secretary of State race. Wolfe’s depth of interest in the actual Secretary of State position is difficult to verify. His funding is perplexing; the vast majority of the money comes from The Foundation for Constitutional Protection (FCP,) which is represented by a Texas lobbyist who works for conservative interests such as Shell Oil and the Koch Brothers. Wolfe is also a client of conservative political activist, attorney Ross Day.
Earlier this year, Wolfe led a failed effort to get a measure legalizing adult marijuana use on the November Oregon ballot. His petition, IP-24, failed to qualify for the election when Secretary of State, Kate Brown, determined in July that nearly half of the 175,000 signatures he’d submitted were invalid. Subsequently, in September, Marion County Circuit Judge Mary M. James decided against Wolfe in a lawsuit he filed challenging Brown’s signature validating process.
Bill Bradbury, former Senate President and Secretary of State of Oregon, commented on October 10, “Wolfe is using the Progressive Party ticket to engage in a personal vendetta against Kate Brown.”
Jillian Schoene for Kate Brown’s campaign concurs. She says, “Robert Wolfe broke state elections law, Kate Brown is holding him accountable and he is running against her in retaliation.”
Wolfe’s campaign site doesn’t suggest the thorough interest in state issues that most would expect of someone hoping to be second in line to be governor of Oregon. He states there that the focus of his candidacy “is primarily to highlight severe problems with Oregon’s revered Initiative and Petition system,” but also, “In addition, I strongly support the broader platform of The Progressive Party of Orgon (sic.)”
However, the issues listed on Wolfe’s site (excluding his arguments with Brown and her initiative and petition policies,) are only two. One is an objection to a clear-cutting vote Brown made (along with Governor Kitzhaber and Treasurer Ted Wheeler as part of the three-person State Land Board) in November 2011, and the second is a suggestion that voters approve Measure 80, which would legalize marijuana cultivation and sale to adults in the state.
Wolfe’s campaign financing disclosure (online at the Oregon Secretary of State site) shows that $8,000 of the $9,350 donations he has received comes from the FCP, a client of lobbyist Trey Bloker, whose clients are oil and gas and other conservative corporate interests, including the Koch Brothers.
$1,100 additional of the $9,350 total in Wolfe’s coffers came from the Citizens for Sensible Law Enforcement, which he is director, and which has received more than $374,000 from the same Texas group since March 2012.
The two sums together (8,000 plus $1,100) mean that more than 97% of Wolfe’s financial support comes from an organization that shares the same out-of-state lobbyist as conservative business interests.
Wolfe’s legal attorney in his fight with Brown is a staunch Republican activist, Ross Day of Vote Oregon LLC and Day Law Group. Day has partnered with Kevin Mannix, another conservative and former GOP gubernatorial candidate, on state petitions.
Salem Weekly asked Wolfe to provide his perspective on the apparent narrowness of his progressive platform and interest in state issues, on Bradbury’s comment that his candidacy is primarily a vendetta and on the right-wing associations of the Foundation for Constitutional Protection that funds him. He declined to comment.
I just love that with only about 9000 in financing for his campaign, Wolfe is scaring the Dems so badly that they cannot seem to quit publicizing his campaign – even if it is to try to demonize him. Kate Brown should be scared – as she has already deemed Wolfe “guilty” of violations of election law – when his hearing is still pending. Further, she has completely MADE UP categories for rejecting voter’s signatures (inactive voters is NOT a term that appears anywhere in election laws in Oregon – those signatures absolutely SHOULD count!)
I’m voting for Bob Wolfe. I worked as a Campaign Manager for what is now Measure 80 and I worked with Wolfe on I-24, and I can speak personally to how complicated the election laws are and how difficult it is to stay in compliance with conflicting laws between election laws and wage/labor laws. Yet we all bust our butts to try to make it happen, only to have thousands of signatures from valid Oregon voters simply thrown out like trash. That’s NOT democracy, and that is something that needs to change.
As for trying to demonize Wolfe for having conservative allies….so what? Mannix and others have long fought with the elections office over similar arbitrary rules – but most voters ignored it because they didn’t like the issue. The fact that it happened to a liberal issue (legalizing marijuana) only demonstrates that this isn’t about partisan politics, it IS about the failure of the Secretary of State’s office to do the job she was elected for. It’s time to OUST Kate Brown and put someone else in place, someone who will respect the will of voters and ASSIST petitioners in compliance, instead of “gotcha” tactics that destroy the integrity of the entire process.
“Active Voters” are required by the Oregon State Constitution. It’s been that way for nearly 100 years. Anyone with ballot access experience in Oregon can tell you that. The voter’s db clearly indicates if a voter is “active, or, inactive.” Most initiative campaigns check their signatures against the voter db to insure their signatures are sufficient for qualification.
But, according to this article he was running a pro-marijuana petition. Stoners have often been paper-work challenged. Enough said.
Just for the record, I am no longer “with” Vote Oregon, LLC. I haven’t been for about a year now. You may want to correct that. Your article is factually incorrect.