PORTLAND, Ore. — As this year’s legislative session was nearing its end, Patrick Starnes, in a meeting with Gov. Kate Brown, said he got news he didn’t want to hear: Lawmakers wouldn’t be passing bills to reform the state’s campaign finance system.
The former 2018 Independent Party candidate for governor, who had dropped out of that race to endorse Brown — an announcement he made on KATU with Brown sitting next to him — after she committed to make campaign finance reform a priority in her administration, said he had the end-of-session meeting with the governor to get her to press legislative leadership to move on the bills.
But after finding out the bills would never make it to the governor’s desk, Starnes said, during a Zoom interview last week from his home in Brownsville, that he and his wife went backpacking in the wilderness “to get over that bad news.”
And now the cabinetmaker and home restorer says he’s seriously considering another run for governor to again bring attention to campaign finance reform, saying he was disappointed in legislative leadership and Brown.
“She did the first step of it in the constitutional amendment that was referred to voters, with Ballot Measure 107, but this other half of this promise fell short,” said Starnes, who also said he switched to the Democratic Party after President Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit upon taking office.
Read more at KATU.
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