Oregon’s 76-year-old Senate president, Peter Courtney, was criticized by environmentalists and some fellow Democrats after he failed to marshal enough support for a climate change bill and appeared not to grasp the seriousness of sexual harassment at the Capitol.
In the final days of the legislative session, some mused that his leadership, the longest by any Senate president in Oregon history, might be over.
But Courtney, the state’s longest serving lawmaker, insisted to The Oregonian/OregonLive this week that he isn’t going anywhere.
That marked a change from the final day of the session, three weeks earlier, when Courtney wouldn’t discuss his plans.
Amid questions about his health and his unilateral decision to concede the death of the climate change bill in order to reconcile with Republicans, Courtney refused to answer a question about whether he wanted to continue as Senate president, saying he had “no idea what the answer to that is today.”
Now, buoyed by media coverage of majority Democrats’ legislative wins and news that opponents of a new multibillion-dollar business tax dropped their effort to overturn it, Courtney is feeling loquacious.
“Here I am. I’m not going anywhere,” Courtney said in an interview this week, noting the Senate president’s term is two years. “That’s all I’ve got to say … Nothing more profound than that.”
He compared himself to a sports player letting “a big game, a big season” of wins sink in.
“How does a guy, when (Republicans) run away two times, have 130 bills passed in two days?” Courtney asked, referring to the fast-paced end of the session after Senate Republicans returned from their second boycott of the Capitol.
He said he’s already plotting how to pass the climate change bill during the 2020 short session and met twice with House Speaker Tina Kotek on the topic in recent weeks.
So are Courtney critics convinced he should stay?
Environmental activists took aim at Courtney after he conceded defeat on the climate bill five days before the session ended. With all 11 Senate Republicans still away from Salem, he announced his caucus of 18 Senate Democrats couldn’t muster the needed 16 votes to pass the bill – clearing the way for Republicans to return and claim victory over its defeat.
Meredith Connolly, Oregon director of the group Climate Solutions, wrote two weeks ago that Courtney “traded away Oregon’s response to the climate crisis, in a shrinking plea for the rogue senators to return to do their jobs.” Connolly did not respond to a request for comment Thursday and Friday on whether Courtney should remain Senate president.
Tom Kelly, chair of Oregon Business for Climate, issued a statement after Courtney’s carbon bill announcement, calling it an “extraordinary breach of faith with how our legislative process should work.” On Thursday, Kelly said he was frustrated Courtney announced the plan lacked Democratic support because “I was told by people, inside people, that there were the votes and votes had been counted by other people including our governor.” As for how Courtney might have convinced Republicans to return and provide the quorum necessary for a vote on the climate bill, Kelly said he did not know.
Whether Courtney should retire, Kelly said, “is not for me to say.”
Sen. Jeff Golden, a liberal Democrat from Ashland, was among a handful of Democrats who pushed for caucus rule changes last fall that would have reduced the Senate president’s powers, for example over which bills receive a vote. Golden said this week it’s “time for a reset” and Democrats “need to find new ways to get legislation done.” He declined to comment “on supporting Peter or not right now.”
“While some people would criticize (Courtney’s) leadership style, it was a hellacious session,” Golden said. “I’m not quite sure what a superb leadership job would have looked like.”
Sen. Michael Dembrow, the Portland Democrat who championed the climate bill in the chamber, wouldn’t say this week whether Courtney should stay. But he talked of working with Courtney on the next attempt to pass the proposal. “At some point, I’ll want to sit down with him and talk about what it means to have (cap-and-trade) as a priority and just figure out what our strategy is going to be,” Dembrow said.
Even if Senate Democrats did want a new leader, it’s not clear who might ascend to the job. The full 30-member Senate votes to select a president, so any Democratic senator would have to secure the votes of 16 in their party or line up bipartisan support. Courtney overwhelmingly won re-election in January with bipartisan support, with two Republicans and one Democrat voting “no.” That Democrat, Sen. Shemia Fagan of Portland, did not respond to requests for comment on Courtney’s future this week.
A handful of Democrats are rumored to be interested in the job. They include two senators who opposed the climate change bill, Sen. Arnie Roblan of Coos Bay and Sen. Betsy Johnson of Scappoose, a co-chair on the powerful Joint Committee on Ways and Means.
Others said to be interested in becoming Senate president are Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, Ways and Means co-chair Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward and Sen. Mark Hass, who played a central role in passing Democrats’ new business tax to fund education. Burdick and Steiner Hayward are both from Portland and Hass is from Beaverton.
With the exception of Roblan, who did not respond to a call for comment, all of those senators said this week they are focused on their current duties and spoke positively of Courtney’s leadership.
Courtney has three years left in his Senate term, including another as Senate president. So unless he steps down early, the next choice of Senate president would occur in January 2021.
Golden, the Ashland senator who put aside his reservations to vote for Courtney back in January, said he believes Democrats “could consolidate around someone” again if Courtney were to step down or not seek reelection as president, despite their differences on high profile issues such as the climate bill.
Surrounded by his staff, Senate President Peter Courtney prepares to gavel out the 2019 legislative session on June 30.
Still, Courtney’s effectiveness in landing Democrats’, education advocates’ and public employee unions’ big prize this year — the huge business tax that will boost school budgets and could indirectly help the state budget in other areas — illustrates why some interests and party members might be reluctant to give up on him. All 18 Senate Democrats voted “yes” when the tax-for-schools bill came up for a vote in mid-May, sending it to Gov. Kate Brown, who promptly signed it.
After publicly considering retirement in 2017, Courtney was the leader who pitched the strategy of building support for such a tax hike by sending a bipartisan committee of lawmakers around the state to highlight the need for greater education spending. Kotek signed on and Brown used the committee as a go-to talking point when asked to explain her education platform on the campaign trail in 2018.
This week, Courtney said his strategic decision to push for passage of the tax and spending law early in the session proved critical. Although he acknowledged it was the governor who stepped in to cut the deal that brought Senate Republicans back from their first boycott to vote on the bill (she pledged to kill gun safety and vaccine bills), Courtney took credit for having it queued up for a vote the day they returned. A state revenue forecast two days later, predicting Oregon would bring in nearly $876 million more in taxes than estimated just months earlier, could have sapped the political momentum to pass the new tax.
“We would never have gotten revenue passed two days later,” Courtney said.
Uncomfortable in the #metoo era
Not long after Courtney filed for reelection in 2017, questions began to bubble up about his handling of complaints that men in the Capitol sexually harassed and groped women.
Courtney sanctioned then-Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, in October 2017 but largely focused on how Kruse violated state law by smoking in his office. It was not until the second paragraph of his letter to Kruse that Courtney raised the issue that had become a hot topic at the Capitol: Kruse’s years-long alleged groping and verbal harassment of women including interns and Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, who had broached the issue on Twitter without initially naming Kruse.
Gelser, who was on vacation this week and declined to comment on Courtney, repeatedly complained of Kruse’s behavior to legislative leaders starting in 2016 and has expressed frustration Courtney did not do more to stop Kruse’s harassment of women, which an independent report revealed was extensive.
As legislative leaders prepared to sign a $1.3 million settlement over Kruse’s and other men’s harassment at the Capitol, Courtney gave a floor speech that stuck with Capitol observers because of what it suggested about the top Democrat’s understanding of the problem. Although Courtney is a skilled orator known for speaking fondly and forcefully about the Legislature as an institution, he sounded emotionless as he read a statement about what he learned in trainings on creating a respectful workplace.
“I myself found the training very helpful and immediately started to implement it in my office in terms of saying things like ‘hello’ when I come in in the morning and ‘goodbye’ when I leave,” Courtney said.
Around the same time, Willamette Week and the Statesman Journal reported that women students had also been frustrated by Courtney’s handling of sexual harassment allegations two decades ago in his job as an administrator at Western Oregon University.
He finally apologized to anyone harassed at the Capitol in a speech on a resolution supporting survivors of sexual violence, in a move that Gelser said co-opted the resolution drafted by some of the Capitol staff who experienced harassment.
Leadership style
Oregon’s Senate tends to skew older than the House, where many lawmakers begin their legislative careers. In recent years, a growing number of newer Democratic senators and some interest groups have increasingly chaffed at Courtney’s long-running rule that he will only bring up for a vote those bills with enough support to pass and his preference to have at least one Republican “yes” vote lined up as well.
Courtney recently described relationships between senators as “the grease that makes this place run” and has worked for years to avoid upsetting Republicans. But he had to govern this session alongside less tradition-bound newcomers including Portland Sen. Shemia Fagan, who defeated three-term incumbent Sen. Rod Monroe largely on the issues of affordable housing and rent control. The slogan on a T-shirt she wore on the Senate floor in June hinted at her willingness to challenge the Senate’s old guard: “burn. it. down.”
In 2017, bills on rent control and the national popular vote passed the House only to die in the Senate, where Courtney declined to bring them up for floor votes. Under pressure, Courtney relented this year and both bills passed.
Democrats have started to talk about whether to ask voters to amend Oregon’s Constitution, to lower the two-thirds quorum requirement that made it possible for Republicans to shut down the Senate. The state is one of just four to impose such a high bar, Burdick said on June 30. Courtney was reluctant to say whether the requirement needs to be changed, suggesting he would prefer to rely on voters punishing lawmakers who walked out. “You have to have people being elected that would not walk,” Courtney said.
Health issues
Questions also arose this year about whether Courtney’s health was good enough for him to continue leading the Senate. Less than two months into the session, he was forced to take a 10-day leave of absence due to a recurrence of thyroid eye disease, an autoimmune condition that causes eye swelling, irritation and decreased vision. Doctors warned the lawmaker that his condition would worsen “if he doesn’t take the time to recover properly,” a spokeswoman said at the time.
Courtney returned on schedule but at times appeared sleepy or checked out during committee meetings, including a May 21 Ways and Means subcommittee meeting on a public pension reform bill. Courtney said on Friday he did not recall sleeping during any committee meetings. “I’m very, very healthy,” he said.
If Courtney is ignoring his physical limits, it would not be the first time. After running the Hood to Coast relay for roughly two decades with his team Peter and the Wolves, Courtney had a hip replacement about ten years ago. He kept running. “I broke my leg as a result,” Courtney said of his last attempt at the relay in 2014. He “went down” and “I crawled for almost a quarter mile.” A women’s team eventually came along and picked him up in their van. “And I knew I was done.”
Might Courtney’s political career end the same way? He said he must stay to pass the climate bill, calling it “unfinished business.”
“That always will be my story, unfinished business,” Courtney said. “Another field, another work horse, another field to plow … I don’t know whether the old horse is gonna come out of the barn or drop in the field.”
— Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud
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