Reinhard turns on Bill Sizemore

At the tail end of a typical screed against Oregon's "elites", against the City Club of Portland, against the Legislature, right-wing Oregonian columnist David Reinhard takes on right-wing initiative racketeer Bill Sizemore:

Which brings us to the system's real problem: His name is Bill Sizemore. He has turned the initiative process into a tidy business for himself. In the process, he's acquired a public image that sullies every measure he touches. He's radioactive.

But the Sizemore problem, too, is self-correcting. Voters have regularly rejected his measures. Even plausible ones that bear his fingerprints are likely to go nowhere -- if they're intended to go anywhere beyond a spot on the ballot. And even Sizemore's natural allies have turned on him. They're sick of his profligate use of the initiative. They're tired of putting measures on the ballot with no real thought of the campaign required to pass them or their impact on Republican candidates. They're revolted by his perversion of Oregon's initiative system.

Yes, Sizemore still has his funders. But they, too, may soon see he's wasting their money and our time.

Read the rest.

Is this the beginning of the end for Bill Sizemore? Is it possible that his funders will finally abandon him? If so, will it make any difference in Oregon politics - or will he just be replaced by another right-wing initiative racketeer? Discuss.

  • Bill R. (unverified)
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    The villain behind the scenes is Dick Wendt of Jeld-Wen. He's bankrolling the right wing machine, including Bill Sizemore. From my home in K. Falls. He's also got Ron Saxton on his payroll.

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    Is this the beginning of the end for Bill Sizemore? Is it possible that his funders will finally abandon him? If so, will it make any difference in Oregon politics - or will he just be replaced by another right-wing initiative racketeer?

    The later most likely, which renders the former fairly moot.

  • LT (unverified)
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    The secret to defeating Sizemore is when ordinary people get fed up.

    He had so many measures in 2000! And then one day a friend who is not at all political said he wanted to vote against all the Sizemore measures after having determined "he is only in it for himself" but wasn't sure how to identify Sizemore measures. I said it was easy--in the Voters Pamphlet, if Sizemore signed an argument in favor just vote no, if he signed an argument against vote yes.

    And of course all the Sizemore measures in 2000 lost.

    Has Sizemore paid off his court ordered payments yet? If not, how is he allowed to operate?

    Now, if only there was a way to get people to see that "Sizemore only in this for himself" point of view when the petitions were being circulated, no amount of money could change those people's minds.

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    Yes, Sizemore still has his funders. But they, too, may soon see he's wasting their money and our time.

    Is there any reason to believe that Dick Wendt and his family and associates, including Loren Parks, will abandon him?

    I've seen no indication. And from what I've seen Reinhard takes his cues from Wendt - not the other way around - so don't think Reinhard is foreshadowing anything here.

  • David Bragdon (unverified)
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    You need to look at their cynical motives. They are NOT in it to win. They run these ballot measures mostly to force Democratic-oriented interests to spend money defeating the measures, and thereby reduce money available to be spent electing Democratic candidates. The won-loss record of the measures is beside the point for them. And, for Sizemore, it's a paycheck win or lose.

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    His business model does not require him to win. He takes his ballot titles to funders with polling and focus group results and gets money. He puts things on the ballot that suck up the political resources it takes to fight them. He makes us defend Oregon every time there is an election. That's why Dick Wendt puts him up and supports his "work." Sure, they'd like to win, but what he does is good enough for his funders; they're not revolted at all. It's a business model that supports Sizemore and his family and at the same time furthers political goals whether he wins or not. Dave Reinhard knows this.

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    In my estimation David and Sue are 100% correct. Sizemore, Wendt and Parks see themselves as foot soldiers doing their duty for the cause.

  • STeve (unverified)
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    Explain to me again, why the virulent fear of Sizemore?

    If he keeps putting up losing measures then his backers will give up and we can abandon control of the state to the legislature without any checks like you all want.

  • Larry (unverified)
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    "Explain to me again, why the virulent fear of Sizemore?"

    Could be that SDS is the local version of BDS.

    Bill is like Lon. Pretty soon people will be asking 'Bill who?' just like some of you are are now asking "Lon who?"?

  • liberalincarnate (unverified)
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    People will be asking "Bill who?" once he is in prison being gang raped like Lon was. That is when people will forget. It will also be when justice will be served.

  • jim (unverified)
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    Bill Sizemore is an Oregon hero for his efforts in passing Measure 5, the property tax limitation. Had that not passed, Oregon's local governments would be gouging taxpayers for more money while providing the same shoddy services.

  • Mark Smith (unverified)
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    [homophobic comment removed -editor.]

  • Unrepentant Liberal (unverified)
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    Bill Sizemore is a big turd, not a hero. I'm glad he's out there wasting his backers money. It's my fondest hope to see him go to prison someday.

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    As David B. & Sue H. have said, Sizemore isn't wasting his sponsors' money. They're buying the disruptiveness, and if they happen to win, that's an added bonus.

    STeve apparently has the bizarre view that we don't elect the legislature, elections being of course a major way in which we do not "abandon control."

  • ws (unverified)
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    Years and years back, before we'd begun to have such a proliferation of initiatives each and every election, and before I knew what Sizemore was all about, I thought it was quite a breakthrough for Sizemore to have used the initiative process to limit taxes. In that vein, it seemed like a big win for ordinary people that big shot politicians didn't want to listen to.

    In successive elections, even I rather quickly began to see what a clown Sizemore was, driven by his own rigid, self-absorbed mission to impose his personal moral values on everyone. I remember last year when Sizemore piped up on this weblog in response to some comments to a post about...gay marriage, I think it was. Well, he certainly was fairly eloquent at first, but then his words quickly began to reveal themselves as drawn heavily from apparently rote learned bible lessons. Any remaining respect I could ever have had for him as a positive force for social change is probably gone now.

    Reinhard? I'm not sure he is really much different than Sizemore. They're both good with words, and they're both clever tacticians. Just as Sizemore seems capable of turning out poorly formulated initiatives one after another, Reinhard seems to consistently pour out nearly the same hard line conservative justifying position, column after column, whether or not it makes any sense to do in reality what either of them says.

    Does Reinhard's turning against Sizemore offer a sign of hope for a more effective non-partisan effort to address significant issues facing Oregonians today? I don't see Reinhard's gesture to represent that. These two are not examples of the kind of people that are able to help find viable, constructive solutions to problems we all face today. These guys are a big part of the problem.

  • David Peterson (unverified)
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    Bill is quickly devolving into irrelevance. If you don't look, maybe he'll go away? Please explain how a hypocrite like Wendt even gets his damn phone calls returned- regardless of how much money he has? I am starting to look northward in my search for sanity.

  • David (unverified)
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    I think these guys are just parasites, making a living off contributions from ignorant people who blindly support their initiatives. Whenever they want to drum up the cash machine, they launch an initiative and then wait for the contributions to start pouring in from the ignorant people,

    They are parasites, the same as bacteria eating the flesh.

  • mrfearless47 (unverified)
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    jim writes:

    "Bill Sizemore is an Oregon hero for his efforts in passing Measure 5, the property tax limitation. Had that not passed, Oregon's local governments would be gouging taxpayers for more money while providing the same shoddy service"

    I don't think that Sizemore had any direct relationship to the sponsors of Ballot Measure 5. That was Don McIntire and another, now deceased, libertarian civilian. Sizemore may have been involved with signature gathering, but he wasn't responsible for writing the measure, drumming up the support for it (except possibly by being a petition circulator), or funding it.

    That doesn't make him a better person, much less a hero. Bill Sizemore is just another American huckster trying to earn a buck off the axiom "there's a sucker born every minute".

  • Anonymous (unverified)
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    Some here have it right - Sizemore's initiatives act as political Rolaids: absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess union political funds.

    How much will be spent to defeat the merit pay initiative? How about the bilingual ed initiative? How about the tax cut? How about the paycheck protection initiative?

    There are plenty of conservatives who wish he would stop, who don't find it helpful that Sizemore more or less crowds out more sober conservative political efforts. But tactically, the point is to direct the union $$$ to chasing an endless series of hobgoblins, and it is very effective at doing this.

    I know he is a guy the left loves to hate. But for every ballot initiative his donors spend $300K to get on the ballot, at least 10 times that is spent to defeat.

    Who's the sucker?

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    I know he is a guy the left loves to hate. But for every ballot initiative his donors spend $300K to get on the ballot, at least 10 times that is spent to defeat.

    Who's the sucker?

    Exactly..

    And that would be every union in the state that has to fight the battle to keep from being buried by the anti-union right to work for less minority faction in Oregon.

    Unfortunately for those of us in the labor movement, every initiative we have to fight comes from the hard-earned dollars of our members who pledge to fight the blatently anti-union purpose of those on the right who see unions as anti-American and enemies of capitalism.

    Personally, I don't think the initiative system is a bad system, and it gives citizens a right to change the government when it's elected officials won't listen to them. To that extent I see the wisdom of that.

    However, it's clear that Sizemore is more interested in lining his own pockets (with untraceble income) hidden from the eyes of the law, by using the ideological bias of those who hate and despise the labor movement.

  • Eric Parker (unverified)
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    And everyone wonders why I vote "NO" on everything. Thanks to ol Billy Boy, it's the only real recourse (sp) left to clean up the initiative process.

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    Posted by: Anonymous | Jan 14, 2008 8:35:56 AM I know he is a guy the left loves to hate. But for every ballot initiative his donors spend $300K to get on the ballot, at least 10 times that is spent to defeat. Who's the sucker?

    Exactly. And watch what happens when the Fright-Wing clues up and jettisons the bad brand name of Sizemore and pushes the same crap but without the Sizemore name attached as a red flag?

    That will make the hill even harder for progressives and working families to fight, that is what I worry about.

  • LT (unverified)
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    "Some here have it right - Sizemore's initiatives act as political Rolaids: absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess union political funds."

    So, that is the answer--if "excess union funds" are absorb by Sizemore measures, that makes this state better because....?

    Please notice that underfunded Mike Huckabee is doing rather well even though he isn't the anti-union Republican so many others are.

    I am not a union member, but someone who has worked very hard in jobs like retail where Sizemore or anyone else unable to be polite to everyone and answer specific questions would not last a day.

    Didn't Sizemore have a court decision against him? Has he paid that off? Or do the anti-union folks think he doesn't owe that because being anti-union allows one to go against a court decision?

  • Sid Leader (unverified)
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    The Oregonian still printing "Cut and Paste" Davey?

    I guess so, alongside Jonah Goldberg, the first Jewish author in American history to put a cartoon of Hitler on the cover of his book to make money to feed his poor family.

    How sad, for civilization.

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