PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A generation of Oregonians has never lived under a Republican governor, and state Rep. Dennis Richardson would like to show them what it’s like.
If Richardson is to topple Oregon’s longest serving governor, though, he’ll have to introduce himself to an electorate that doesn’t know him and overcome his party’s dismal reputation in Oregon. But his biggest hurdle is more fundamental - his conservative views on abortion and gay marriage, and the fiery language he’s used to express them.
His staunch conservatism helped Richardson jumpstart his political career in southern Oregon, but it’s become a liability in the more liberal - and more populated - Willamette Valley.
Richardson hasn’t changed his views, but he’s trying hard to change the subject.
“The social issues have been determined,” Richardson said. “They’re not up for debate. It’s not an issue.”
Despite his best efforts, however, they very much are an issue, in large part because Richardson’s critics have made sure of it with a $200,000 advertising campaign.
Richardson says he’d enforce the laws, no matter how distasteful he finds them. As co-chairman of the Legislature’s budget committee, he points out, he helped oversee creation of an Oregon Health Plan budget that included funding for abortion.
“Do I like the idea? Not particularly,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “But that wasn’t my job to enforce my own viewpoint. My job was to ensure that the best interests of the state were dealt with. And as governor, that’s what I will do.”
Richardson’s critics aren’t comforted. A commitment to enforcing the current laws says nothing about how Richardson would act on bills that reach his desk, they say.
“As governor, I worry about the appointments that he would make and the agency heads he would hire, and the agency agendas as they relate to providing basic health care for women in Oregon,” said Laura Terrill Patten, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon.
Richardson prefers to talk about Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber, who was thought to be nearly invincible when Richardson announced his campaign more than a year ago. While still the front-runner, Kitzhaber is more vulnerable after the failure of the Cover Oregon health insurance enrollment website.
Richardson promises a focus on creating jobs and improving one of the nation’s worst high school graduation rates, but he’s less specific about how he’d do it. He says he’d figure out what makes some education systems stronger than others, then try to eliminate the barriers to expanding them.
Richardson, 65, grew up south of Los Angeles, raised along with two older sisters by a carpenter and homemaker.
He saved enough delivering newspapers to buy an old sports car, which he later sold to pay his first tuition bill at Brigham Young University.
Without another Porsche to pay for more school, Richardson returned to California, where he reconnected with his high school sweetheart. They married and had a son. Richardson worked and saved money, eventually returning to BYU, but once again fell short on cash.
“It was then we decided I can’t afford to do this, I’m going to get drafted, I should really go enlist,” Richardson said.
He joined the Army, was selected to be a helicopter pilot, and after a year of training, went to Vietnam. Though he was never shot, his chopper sometimes came back cratered with bullet holes.
He had battles in his personal life, too. While Richardson was in Southeast Asia, he and his wife were divorced.
Ten months into his yearlong tour of duty, with the war winding down, he was offered a chance to leave early and accepted. He returned to the United States and a life he didn’t recognize. He had no job, no wife, owed child support and felt “disoriented.”
In his search for the purpose of life, he reconnected with the Mormon faith his father had long before left behind. It changed his life.
“I can be good at being a heathen,” Richardson said. “I can eat drink and be merry. But I only wanted to do it if that was all that there was to life.”
Richardson got married again and returned to BYU to finish his degree and go to law school. Looking for an affordable place to raise their family, Richardson and his wife, Cathy, settled in southern Oregon. He opened a legal practice and they raised their eight children, all girls.
After spending decades to build his practice, he shut it down to focus on his political career.
“For Cathy and I, we made the decision we would spend the last 50 years of our lives in service,” Richardson said. “If I’m not the governor, we can serve meals at St. Vincent de Paul.”
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Follow AP political reporter Jonathan J. Cooper at https://twitter.com/jjcooper .
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