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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Gordon Smith, Oregon's junior senator, was first elected to the Senate in 1996. Smith was born in Pendleton and grew up, after his father sold his food processing business to serve as an aide to Eisenhower Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, in the Washington suburbs. He is a cousin of former Congressmen Morris and Stewart Udall and of their sons, Congressmen Mark Udall and Tom Udall. Smith served two years as a Mormon missionary in New Zealand, then graduated from Brigham Young and from law school in Los Angeles, was a law clerk in New Mexico and practiced law in Arizona. Then he bought the family frozen vegetable processing company in Pendleton, and guided it out of debt to profitability; Smith Frozen Foods is now one of largest private label packers of frozen vegetables in the country. In 1992 he was elected to the state Senate and in 1995 became Senate president, a fast rise. In 1995 and 1996 he ran for the Senate seat from which Bob Packwood resigned. He lost, after a battle of negative ads, to Ron Wyden 48%-47% in January 1996. The month before, Mark Hatfield had announced his retirement after 30 years in the Senate. At first Smith was reluctant to run again--indeed, he is the only American in history to run in two Senate races in the same year--but Republicans urged him to do so. Attacked during the Wyden race for being endorsed by the conservative Oregon Citizens' Alliance, Smith positioned himself closer to the center and turned down the OCA endorsement this time; when OCA head Lon Mabon ran against him in the primary, Smith beat him 78%-8%. Smith's opponent in the general was Tom Bruggere, another self-made millionaire who, like Smith, owned a Ferrari. In an ad shot in soft focus, Smith said he continued to oppose abortion, but promised not to back a constitutional amendment banning it and at the end of the campaign said he would vote for Medicaid to cover abortions in cases of rape, incest or threat to life of the mother; he promised to work for a balance of environmental protection, economic development and job creation. Smith won 50%-46%. Against some expectations, Smith has compiled one of the more moderate voting records of Senate Republicans. He voted for mandatory background checks and for child safety locks on guns--both reversals of previous stands. He continued to oppose abortion, but in 2000 backed the use of embryonic stem cells in medical research; the cells are used in research to combat Parkinson's disease, which has stricken several of his relatives. He did not change his position on assisted suicide, however. While his Oregon colleague Wyden repeatedly threatened to filibuster Don Nickles's bill which would have overturned the assisted suicide law Oregon voters approved in 1994 and 1997 referenda, Smith voted for it. "For me, it's an issue of principle on which I'm prepared to stake my political career," he said later. He called on the Bush administration not to prosecute physicians for prescribing lethal drugs, but in November 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft signaled he would do so; he was blocked from acting by a federal judge and appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. In the meantime Smith opposed congressional action. Smith strongly supported the 2000 prescription drug bill sponsored by Wyden and Olympia Snowe in 2000 and in summer 2002 wrote his own bill with Bob Graham that at one point seemed the compromise most likely to pass the Senate. Since 1999 he has been Edward Kennedy's chief co-sponsor of the hate crimes bill that adds penalties for crimes committed because of the victim's gender, sexual orientation or disability. He disappointed some of his admirers in gay rights groups by sponsoring his own version of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage; he said he favors letting states decide whether to recognize civil unions. He voted against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulation bill when it passed with 59 votes in April 2001, but when it came back from conference committee in February 2002 he indicated he would provide a 60th vote against a filibuster, and thus assured its passage. He was one of the few Republicans to vote for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999. He supported the Iraq war resolution in October 2002. He offered amendments to the 2003 Medicare/prescription drug bill to insure that health clinics serving the poor get reimbursement and to require cost-based reimbursement for both screening and diagnostic mammography. Smith has tended to oppose measures sought by environmental restriction groups as undue limits on economic activity. He very strongly opposed breaching dams on the Snake River. He championed the cause of the Klamath Basin farmers who were denied irrigation water because it was said to be needed to protect the endangered sucker fish--a heavily publicized case in Oregon. He parted with most of his fellow Republicans to vote against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to vote for higher CAFE auto gas mileage standards. He questioned Wyden's 2004 proposal to double the wilderness area in the Mount Hood National Forest, and threatened to sponsor an amendment to end all legal challenges to salvage logging in the area affected by the 2002 Biscuit fire. The election of Wyden in January 1996 and Smith in November 1996 was the first time two senators were elected who had run against each other in the same year. Surprisingly, considering the negative character of their campaign, they became friends. They have held dozens of joint town meetings across Oregon and have issued dozens of joint press releases; they lunch together every Thursday. They have worked together when bills have special impact on Oregon. Smith got a seat on the Finance Committee in January 2003. Wyden got a seat there two years later, only the third time in history that a state has had both its senators on the Finance Committee. Smith was a lead sponsor of the main provision in the 2004 corporate tax bill which reduced the tax on foreign profits brought back to the United States from 35% to 5.25%; this resulted in a major repatriation of capital for many firms abroad, including some firms with big operations in Oregon, like Nike, Intel and Hewlett-Packard. In December 2004 he sponsored a bill with Kent Conrad to shield from income taxes half of annuity incomes for retirees up to $20,000. In September 2003 Smith's 21-year-old son, afflicted with bipolar disease, killed himself. Smith announced this on the Senate floor in March 2004 and said he would sponsor a bill to train childcare professionals and to develop screening for mental health and behavioral conditions. He presented his bill, authorizing $60 million in grants to states and tribes and $22 million to colleges and universities, in July, and in September, as Smith spoke tearfully on the floor, it was passed by both houses on the same day. Smith came up for reelection in 2002. It was generally agreed that the strongest potential opponent was Governor John Kitzhaber but he declined to run. That left Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who announced in October 2001. Bradbury attacked Smith's votes on environmental issues, abortion, tax cuts, education spending and assisted suicide. He had revealed to voters some time before that he has multiple sclerosis, which made it difficult for him to walk long distances; he carried a director's chair so he wouldn't have to stand for long periods. Smith had two strong assets. One was his work with Wyden. Wyden endorsed Bradbury and conducted fundraisers for him, but he also pledged not to attack Smith in any way and they continued to send out joint press releases. The other asset was money. By April 2002 Smith had raised $4 million--nearly twice as much as Bradbury would during the whole campaign. And, although Smith had spent none of his own money on his November 1996 campaign, Democrats knew that he could always get out his checkbook and match whatever they raised for Bradbury. In the spring, the DSCC ran some ads attacking Smith. But for most of the spring and summer and into October Smith had a monopoly on airtime. He ran ads on his accomplishments, stressing in the Portland media market his support of expanded health care benefits for women and children and his opposition to oil drilling in ANWR. In the Medford media market, he stressed his opposition to the cutoff of irrigation water to Klamath Basin farmers. On radio ads in rural areas, he called Bradbury an "environmental extremist." In September, he ran in the Portland market an ad featuring Judy Shepard, mother of murdered student Matthew Shepard, praising him for his support of including gays in the hate crimes bill--the first pro-gay rights TV ad run by any candidate, the Human Rights Campaign said. Lon Mabon, running as a third party candidate, said, "If you vote for Gordon Smith, you're voting for homosexuality." Bradbury went up with TV ads in October, attacking Smith for opposing assisted suicide and accusing Smith of preferring his own views to those of voters. But he couldn't come close to matching Smith, who ultimately spent $5.6 million to his $2.1 million. Smith won 56%-40%, carrying every county in the state but one, Multnomah (Portland).
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