WeeklySenator.org is on hiatus. Weekly Senator is the first voter donation platform to offer its members multiple recipient weekly funding. Thank you for supporting this experiment in voter eduction and crowdfunding.
Ron Wyden
Oregon
Senator since 1996
2022 midterms
“Republicans’ insistence that middle-class families and local communities foot the bill for everything from roads to water to broadband, while mega-corporations not pay a penny more in taxes isn’t acceptable.”
Ron Wyden was born in 1949 in Kansas, and as a child moved to California, where he grew up to become that rarest of creatures: a 6’4’’ Jewish basketball prodigy. His skills took him to UC Santa Barbara on scholarship, and from there to Stanford where he ultimately graduated in 1971. He moved to Oregon soon thereafter to study law at University of Oregon, and discovered an interest in gerontology that led him to found the Oregon chapter of the Gray Panthers, a radical movement to fight against ageist laws and stereotypes (!?). In 1980, at the ripe young age of 31, he used that platform to run for elected office and became the U.S. Congressman from Oregon’s Third District.
The rest, as they say, is history. Wyden went on to be elected to that seat seven times, never with less than 70 percent of the vote. In 1996, he made the jump from the House to the Senate, taking the seat of the disgraced Republican sexual predator Bob “your name is your destiny” Packwood, and there Wyden’s stayed. In 40 years of public service, he’s held two jobs. He’s never lost an election. He’s never had a scandal. What’s the secret? For Ron Wyden — boy-politician turned elder statesman — it seems the lessons of the college basketball court have translated directly into the life of service. Unflagging hustle. Fundamentals. Team play. All to the end of rational, humane, moderately liberal policy goals.
During his life in public office, Wyden’s been married twice, and become the father of five children. His current partner, Nancy Bass, is the scion of the Strand Bookstore. Together they live in Portland and Washington D.C. with their now 13-year-old twins and eight-year-old daughter. He seems to have no hobbies.
—Jon Raymond
Jon Raymond is a writer of fiction and movies living in Portland, Oregon, his childhood home. His most recent novel was Freebird (Graywolf/Tin House), and his most recent screenplay was First Cow, based on his novel The Half-Life. He's also published a collection of writings about visual art called The Community.
Voting Record
Wyden’s voting record breaks fundamentally liberal, with occasional practical alliances across party lines where possible. Planned Parenthood gives him a 100 percent rating. League of Conservation Voters gives him 100 percent. The conservative Club For Growth gives him a meager 15 percent. He’s deeply liberal, but not what you’d call a firebrand.
Beyond his voting record, however, here’s the thing: Wyden has been the primary sponsor of a whopping 55 bills that have been enacted. Tip O’Neill was the primary sponsor of 8 bills that were enacted. John Boehner, 13. Lindsay Graham, 14. Sanity plus ambition, seasoned with pragmatism, fueled by innovation, in the pursuit of moderate liberal goals of justice and safety for all humans on earth: thy name is Wyden.
Policy Positions
Surveillance
Wyden has led the national discussion on the unintended consequences of the Patriot Act from the moment of its enactment. In 2007, he forced the declassification of the CIA Inspector General’s 9/11 report. Through the aughts, he fought against both the Bush and Obama administration’s reliance on “secret law.” In 2013, he crossed party lines to join Republican Rand Paul’s filibuster to block the nomination of John Brennan as the Director of the CIA, questioning the Obama administration’s use of drones. Often standing alone, he’s fought the unchecked power of Big Tech combined with state authority, both at home and abroad.
Healthcare
Wyden has been talking universal healthcare forever. In 2007, he introduced the Healthy Americans Act, which would have moved the United States away from job-based insurance and toward something resembling a single-payer system. Obama found the plan too radical, i.e. rational, but remained an admirer of Wyden’s “thought leadership.” To this day, Wyden stands as an acknowledged expert on actual healthcare solutions, from wherever they might derive. In November 2003, he announced his support for the Bush Administration-backed Medicare bill, touted as "the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965.”
Environment
On the environment, the protections Wyden has championed are many and concrete. He’s extended Permanent Wilderness protections for Mount Hood, the Columbia Gorge, and the Bull Run Watershed, among many other places, helping Oregon secure the most wild and scenic river designations in the lower 48 states. On the other side of the equation, he also authored the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act, commonly known as the “county payments” law, that helped provide a stable source of revenue for historically timber-dependent communities. The dude is a wonk.
Infrastructure
They all talk about it, but not many do anything about it. As Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, Wyden is a lead cosponsor of the Bridge Investment Act, which would provide a $75 billion investment in repairing, replacing, and upgrading the nation’s bridges. He is also a key author of the Blueprint to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure, a comprehensive package of bills that would provide $1 trillion in infrastructure funding and create more than 15 million new jobs.
Education
Wyden likes policies that increase high school graduation rates and expand career and technical education opportunities for Oregonians. His priorities for higher education policy include increasing college affordability and transparency, expanding the American Opportunity Tax Credit and simplifying student loans.
Endorsements
Democratic Advancement PAC
Human Rights Campaign
NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon
National Association of Home Builders
National Education Association
National Organization for Women
National Resources Defense Council
Oregon Education Association
Oregon League of Conservation Voters
Outdoor Industry Association PAC
Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon
Population Connection
State: Oregon
In Wyden’s lifetime, Oregon has evolved in the public imagination many times over. When young Wyden arrived as a law student in 1971, the state probably didn’t even register on most people’s national maps. Oregon: a place where it rains? By the 1990s, it had become known as a grunge annex; in the oughts, a lifestyle punchline involving kombucha and home-made pickles; in the teens, a bastion of white supremacy or a black bloc recruiting zone, depending on your news source. In reality, it’s been all and none of these things, and now finds itself living through one of its most perilous periods, a season of violence and environmental collapse. The forests of Oregon are burning. The divide between city and country is almost unbridgeable. Do we want the radical deniers of the Trump party leading us in these times? Or do we want a sane, rational, decent power forward like Ron Wyden?