Opinion: Oregon GOP ‘Railroaded’ by the AAA
Since casting my first ballot for an Oregon Republican slate in 1944, I’ve seen my party shoot itself in various parts of its anatomy.
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More recently, the party’s right wing has managed to catapult two Democratic governors into the statehouse by, in one case, supporting a third-party candidate willing to parrot its dogma, and in the second, nominating a tax crank who couldn’t even draw the votes of much of his own party.
The 1999 bill raising the tax was passed by both houses of the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by their oft-times nemesis, the Democratic governor. Both chief executive and lawmakers recognized that saving the highways is one issue too important to sacrifice to their sometimes rancorous statehouse feud.
But the GOP insiders at Redmond figured that the voters are so dumb that they’ll buy any scheme that claims to be “anti-tax.”
The disaster of Bill Sizemore’s 1998 campaign for governor was evidently beyond their memory span, so they swallowed AAA’s referendum that would repeal the 1999 increase.
Never mind that state Sen. Marilyn Shannon, herself a GOP stalwart, stood up to chide the party delegates, “You want to stamp your feet and say ‘no gas tax,’ but what you’re doing is draining funds away from electing Republicans.”
Moreover, as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, she could with real authority tell them that the 1999 gas tax increase embodied the very efficiency measures that referendum advocates pretend to want.
AAA, as pointed out on prior occasions, has an ugly history of money-laundering for the railroad industry, which will stoop to almost any trick in hopes of disadvantaging highway competition.
Not only in the United States but now in Canada, Big Rail and its unions and suppliers conduct operations under such fronts as CRASH (Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways) and CABT (Coalition Against Bigger Trucks).
Why would AAA play running dog for these interests?
One can only speculate that the association bosses figure that their members have all at one time or another been annoyed at some truck-jockey’s behavior, and that these same members — even though they patronize supermarkets, clothing stores and gas stations — aren’t smart enough to realize that almost all consumer goods would be beyond their reach except via truck.
AAA’s pretense that, among other goals, it seeks to protect Oregon truckers from sinister out-of-state interests, won’t stand even superficial scrutiny.
Having operated a substantial trucking fleet based in Portland, I can attest that Steven King isn’t half as creepy as AAA when it snuggles up to tell me it wants to look out for my well-being.
Most of the delegates to the GOP conclave in Redmond were, presumably, ignorant of being “railroaded,” a peculiarly apt term for this ploy.
But as long as inadequate and under-maintained highways continue to take a toll in time, property loss and personal injury, the descendants of the yellow-margarine rebellion will remember which party played a con game on them.
Whichever part of the GOP anatomy is at risk this time, maybe some of the party’s cooler heads will step in and take the gun away.
