Hunt takes the legislative helm

Gladstone legislator will be the next House speaker, making him one of the state’s most powerful figures

By Anthony Roberts

The Clackamas Review, Nov 19, 2008, Updated Nov 19, 2008 (1 Reader comment)

Ellen Spitaleri / Clackamas Review

Emily Hunt hands a box of food to her father, Representative Dave Hunt, as Gladstone Mayor Wade Byers and Debbie Ferren, nutrition coordinator for the Gladstone Senior Center, look on. The two men were taking food baskets to regular Meals on Wheels recipients in March 2008.

In April 2007, 500 pastors from across Oregon descended on the state capitol to lobby legislators over a bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Most legislators heard from a few pastors in their districts. Gladstone Democrat Dave Hunt, the House Majority leader and former president of the American Baptist Churches, had 25 religious leaders packed into his cramped office.

“Frankly I expected them to be coming down saying, ‘Bad bill, kill it,’” said Hunt, who recently searned his party’s nomination to serve as Oregon Speaker of the House, a position vacated by U.S. Senator-elect Jeff Merkley. “But they said, ‘What we’re asking you to do is to put in a religious exemption, and if you do, we’ll still think its bad policy but we can live with it at that point, and we won’t join the effort.’”

The “effort” the pastors – working under the auspices of the powerful Christian lobbying group the Oregon Family Council – alluded to was an attempt at gathering the signatures necessary to refer the civil rights measure to voters if the bill passed.

Hunt was serving on the House Rules Committee at the time and “immediately started drafting a religious exemption” that would allow churches to pass on job candidates if they were gay.

The ensuing vote in the Rules Committee proved to be a commentary on the art of compromise. The non-discrimination bill passed out of the committee by a 5-2 vote with two of three Republicans on the committee voting against it. The religious-exemption clause passed by the same margin, but with two of the four Democrats on the committee voting against it.

The bill eventually passed both chambers of the State Legislature, and the Oregon Family Council chose not to join the signature-gathering effort to refer it to voters. A rag-tag group of lobbying organizations tried to gather the signatures but failed.

Looking back, Hunt believes the religious exemption was good from both a policy and political standpoint.

“If you are a Catholic church you have free rights to practice your religion, but we don’t force you to hire a Baptist or to hire a Methodist or to hire a Jewish person. This really applies that same standard,” Hunt said. “Politically, even my more liberal friends, I think, would agree that it was the right move, even if they still don’t like the policy.”

Capitol insiders, even those against the exemption, admit Hunt’s compromise is part of the reason the non-discrimination law stands today. Ashland Democrat Peter Buckley was one of the Democrats on the Rules Committee who voted against the exemption.

“I opposed the amendment but voted for the bill with the amendment included because it was a compromise that was able to keep it off of the ballot, and let’s face it, it did,” Buckley said. “Dave listens to all sides, which I think is a real strong point.”

Tim Nashif, political director of the Oregon Family Council, denied that his group came to the Legislature to strike a deal. However, he credited Hunt and other Democrats with listening to the council’s concerns. He said that without an exemption, “we would absolutely guarantee that they’d be facing that referral and we would have fought it on religious liberty grounds.”

Nashif admitted the exemption proved to be a “deterrent” to a signature-gathering effort.

“Dave Hunt is a Christian and a church-going guy and we felt like he looked at this legislation and saw our concern,” he said.

Dave Hunt Democrat

The anti-discrimination bill is one of several instances in which Hunt has worked on both sides of the political aisle during his three terms as a state legislator, solidifying his role as a moderate. His reputation is such that he’s become an adjective. This election cycle the term “Dave Hunt Democrat” first came into play.

As an insult.

An anonymous commenter on the influential Democratic blog Blueoregon.com warned voters in Southeast Portland’s House District 42 that primary candidate Jules Kopel-Bailey was a “Dave Hunt Democrat,” not suitable for an area that “needs a true progressive.” Kopel-Bailey won the primary and will begin his freshman legislative term in January. While the incoming legislator doesn’t take credit for coining the phrase – Hunt himself said he shouldn’t use it “if he wants to get elected in Southeast Portland” – he’s comfortable with the comparison.

“There really is a post-partisanship quality there, and I think that’s what really defines being a Dave Hunt Democrat. What is good policy and how do we achieve that policy and whether that’s a Democratic or Republican policy that’s irrelevant,” said Kopel-Bailey, whose father, Bob Bailey, was an Oregon City Commissioner. “How do we bring together stakeholders and create policy that’s more inclusive.”

Hunt has come to embody the middle of the political spectrum as well as any Oregon Democrat in office. One week, he’s taking softball questions from the hosts of a pro-labor show on left-leaning KBOO radio. The next, he’s answering questions in front of the local chamber of commerce, or advocating for a cut in businesses’ capital gains taxes.

“It just is something that comes very naturally to me,” Hunt said of his penchant for moderate politics. “It’s funny because when I first ran and was talking about those kinds of things I had several business folks who came up to me at the end of my first session and said, ‘Wow, you really meant that.’ Apparently they’d experienced several candidates who ran as moderates and then had taken a hard turn one way or the other.”

His moderate reputation has served him well in a district that leans Democratic, but isn’t known for far-left liberalism. Hunt’s name was mentioned as a potential replacement for U.S. Congresswoman Darlene Hooley when she announced her retirement, but Hunt opted to stay in the State Legislature so he could be nearer to his family – he has two young children.

Hunt’s campaign contribution list shows an incredible diversity of lobbyist money – including donors that don’t typically fill Democrats’ coffers. Alongside typical liberal-leaning groups like Planned Parenthood and various unions are large donations from Wal Mart and Anheuser Busch.

He helped the House Democrats fundraising group, Future PAC, raise more than $1 million this year, and he shelled out tens of thousands of dollars from his own campaign fund to candidates in contested districts, ultimately helping Democrats to win a supermajority in the House, where all tax and fee increases must originate.

Of course, one doesn’t build up a power base like that without ruffling a few feathers along the way. While it’s currently almost impossible to find someone with anything bad to say about Hunt, there is some mild dissent, even within liberal circles. Taking the middle ground often satisfies the greatest number of people, but it can leave out those on the far ends of the spectrum.

Anonymous blog posters aside, Hunt admits to being “hammered” by the environmental lobby in the past for his support of increased timber harvests in the Clatsop and Tillamook State forests. The Oregon League of Conservation Voters grades legislators for each session based on votes they took regarding environmental issues. Hunt scored a 70 percent in 2003, a 57 percent in 2005 and a 90 percent in 2007. Only two Democrats scored lower in 2005. For comparison’s sake, neighboring legislator Carolyn Tomei (D-Milwaukie) scored three 100 percents and outgoing Speaker Jeff Merkley never scored lower than a 94 percent.

Still, leaders in the Democratic Party believe his leadership is a good balance. Buckley said the leadership styles of Hunt and the liberal-leaning Mary Nolan (D-Portland), who was nominated as House Majority leader, are complimentary.

“The political divisions in our caucus are very small,” Buckley said. “I would say I’m on the liberal side and Dave’s on the more moderate side, and we agree on nearly every issue,” he said.

Roots in Eugene

Hunt, 41, was born in Port Angeles, Wash., before moving to Utah, where his father was assigned as a pastor. The family eventually moved to Eugene, where Hunt met his future wife, Tonia, who he took to homecoming.

Some of his earliest recollections of politics, however, spring from his time in Clearfield, Utah, where his father – a Democrat among a sea of Republicans – served on the city council. He recalled his father’s effort to strike down the city’s old blue laws prohibiting stores from opening on Sunday.

“We had people driving from our city to other cities and all the grocery revenues got lost. So the grocery folks in town came to the council and said, ‘Please overturn this,’” Hunt said. “So dad made the motion to overturn the Sunday blue laws and it died without a second. He came back a year later and got a second and it died 3-2, and he came back a year later and passed it.”

Hunt went to Columbia University, where he mulled a journalism degree before majoring in political science. He interned in the Eugene County Commissioners Office and was a page in Washington, D.C. for Oregon Congressman Jim Weaver.

He went on to work in the offices of Congresswoman Darlene Hooley and Congressman Brian Baird before becoming executive director of the Columbia River Channel Coalition, a position he still holds. Hunt was also vice chair of the Oregon City School Board from 1999 to 2002.

Hunt and Tonia have been married for 12 years and have two children, Andrew and Emily.