Bend Bulletin / September 04. 2009

Former Gov. John Kitzhaber hopes to do something no other Oregonian has done: become governor of the state for a third term. While he was popular throughout his time in the state’s highest office, there’s no guarantee he’ll succeed.

Oregon’s Constitution limits service as governor, treasurer and secretary of state to two consecutive terms and no more than eight years out of any 12. Kitzhaber served as governor from 1995 to 2003. Before that, he spent one term in the state House of Representatives and three in the state Senate, including two as president of that body. He is trained as a physician.

He is eligible to run again, and in doing so he’ll be following the lead of the man who was arguably Oregon’s most popular Republican in the last half of the last century. Tom McCall governed Oregon from 1967 to 1975, a period in which the state adopted its bottle bill and the land use planning laws that have given so many fits in the intervening years.

McCall, like Kitzhaber, opted to try for a third term based on his popularity during the first two. He never made it through the primary. Instead, Republicans gave Victor Atiyeh their votes, and Atiyeh went on to lose the general election to Bob Straub. Four years later, Atiyeh began the first of his two terms as governor.

If there’s a lesson in this for Kitzhaber, it’s that popularity can be an ephemeral thing, here today and gone nearly as quickly as it came. Kitzhaber today fares pretty well in political polls, but that’s to be expected. The only declared Republican in the race, Allen Alley, is not widely known, despite a run for the state treasurer’s spot, and Democrat Bill Bradbury has been relatively low-key about his plans for the next election.

No one knows whether today’s popularity will have disappeared by the 2010 election, when Kitzhaber must again face the voters. His opponents from both parties hope so. They’re already busy reminding voters of his unfortunate quip six years ago about Oregon being ungovernable. Even without the quip, however, Kitzhaber knows that Oregon has changed in recent years, and he’ll have to persuade voters he has changed with it. That may not be easy.