On the Campaign Trail With Jeff Merkley

Jeff Alworth

I have been invited by the Merkley campaign to attend a three-day kick-off event as it wends its way North and South across Western Oregon. I’ll be posting regularly from the trip.  This first post was written last night, before I could get to an internet connection.

I write this as we sail down I-5 aboard Merkley One, in this case a 2004 RV wrapped in the very stylish blue and green decals of the Merkley for Senate campaign. It is 9:09 pm, and we are bound for lovely Medford, where at the indecent hour of 8:30, the candidate will hold the first of four events tomorrow on his kick-off tour. We are just south of Salem, which puts our ETA sometime after midnight. I have a few more facts of slight stature to share, but probably I should hit the highlights first—particularly, the kick-off’s kick-off, held earlier this evening in the parking lot of Madison’s in SE Portland.

Although I have seen the start of a relatively small number of campaigns, I think this one was typical—friends, supporters, and family gathered to celebrate a candidate and his (or her) launch into what will quickly become a grueling routine. But the kick-offs are fun and hopeful and energetic.

In this case, there was a pretty impressive cast of supporters to help achieve lift-off: Diane Rosenbaum and Chip Shields talked about Merkley’s leadership in Salem (standing behind them were other non-speaking legislators; Sam Adams revved up the crowd, and then former Governor Barbara Roberts, in the evening’s most charming speech, really made the case for why Merkley has to show Gordon Smith the door. (I have video; at some point I may get it cut and post it).

Merkley, who was arriving on a flight at about the time the Retrofits (Jake Oken-Berg’s band) fired up, was en route during the speeches, and somehow miraculously showed up just as Barbara Roberts was finishing her comments (I was told later that this was probably intentional, but color me surprised it came together so well). Jeff was joined onstage by Mary, Brynne, and Jonathan and gave a fairly low-key speech that hit on the themes I think we’ll see throughout the campaign (that’s another thing kick-offs do: define themes).  They are:

Leadership. In the intro speeches, everyone talked about the work Jeff did in the state legislature. Although I suspect this section will get cut down, as Merkley ticked off what he had accomplished, it was striking for its breadth and liberalness. He made the transition to “wouldn’t it be nice to do these things on a federal level?” and that was inspiring.

Personal history. Jeff’s background as a “regular Oregonian” candidate—a family man whose background is not one of privilege, but fairly typical for the state. Hardworking parents, first in his family to go to college.

Gordon Smith. Unseating an incumbent is all about putting the incumbent’s record on trial. The message here appears to be that Smith and Bush are one in the same, with Smith voting with the President 90% of the time. (They have to work out the next piece. Roberts called Smith the 10% Senator, and then Merkley, observing that Smith had actually cancelled out all but 6% of Wyden’s votes, called him the 6% Senator.)

Iraq. ‘Nuff said.

It's a pretty tight pitch, and everyone seemed to be on the same page.  None of the speeches ran more than about ten minutes, and what emerged was the skeleton that the campaign can add meat to on when they want to highlight specific issues.

And now for a meta-interlude.  I suppose I should make some mention of this little endeavor, as it constitutes an experiment in blogging. As many of you know, I am backing Merkley in his Senate run. I’m not neutral in the MSM sense of journalism. On the other hand, I’m not getting paid by the campaign to cover this roll-out, nor will they see anything before it goes up. I think I may be crashing with someone at a hotel tonight, and I do get to ride Merkley One, but since I don’t get paid to blog and had to take days off work to make the trip, this was pretty much a necessity. At some point in the next couple days, I’ll go into this in greater depth. But, cards on the table, now you know what the story is.

Okay, back here on Merkley One, it’s now 10:10 pm, and I notice that it’s getting a might chilly.  Summer must be over. (Incidentally, Merkley isn’t actually on Merkley One, he flew ahead with his family. I ride with Claire, one of his long-time staffers, Representative Chuck Riley, who’s driving, and Reggie, one of the guys who makes all this stuff happen. There’s another van somewhere with more folks, but I will refrain from naming it ... for now.)

I don’t believe we’ve passed Eugene. A quiet has fallen on the RV, and my battery is down to 27%. So as the night wears down, I offer you a few behind-the-scenes factoids only an embedded blogger can hope to capture:

Merkley is tall. I’m a hunchy six feet, but even standing up straight he was considerably taller than I.

The campaign played a hokey song after Jeff spoke. Upbeat, slightly sentimental, easy listening for a broad audience. I believe this is de rigeuer in major campaigns, so I don’t hold it against anyone, but I suspect that by the time Merkley One pulls into Salem on Wednesday, I’m going to have had plenty of it.

Merkley One is a designation of my own creation. The stereo is broken. My iPod remains in its dock at home, where I had been charging it for this trip. Damn.

Medford is further from Portland in the middle of the night than in the middle of the day. 

All right, that's it for tonight.  More tomorrow...

By Jeff Alworth Sept. 18, 2007