On the road with: Jeff Merkley

Of course the candidate that champions his record on the environment was going to show up to a campaign stop in Yachats in a hybrid Toyota Prius.

It was not quite 9 a.m. Thursday when Oregon House Speaker and U.S Senate candidate Jeff Merkley (D-Portland), all 6'2" of him, burst out of the tiny car in the Yachats Commons parking lot just off of Highway 101. It was day nine of his 100 Towns Tour for Change that has him traversing the state in hopes of promoting his candidacy for U.S Senate.

"At least he is tall enough to be a senator," one woman in the crowd said as he entered the room.

Yachats was the 20th stop on Merkley's statewide tour, and he came to visit the small, pacifist-minded town of 644 residents to talk about the Iraq War. He blamed America's addiction to oil for the extension of the war, and said that American troops were merely filling a vacuum of security that Iraqis would not be motivated to fill unless there was a fixed timetable for troop withdraws.

"There is extensive chaos, and even on the days we don't hear about American casualties, you can bet there are Iraqi casualties," he said.

Merkley also took the opportunity to address the issues faced in the war in Afghanistan. He had no concrete idea for how to deal with the original front in the war on terror, but he said the situation was vastly complicated by the U.S draining military resources in Iraq. Merkley also proposed that once the U.S embraced research into alternative fuels, it can rid itself of a dependence on foreign oil and not have to venture into such wars in the first place.

Once finished, he took questions. He was quizzed on a variety of issues, from health care, to the salmon run, to gas prices.

Ingrid Olson, a Yachats resident said the local Taft Elementary School could not meet the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. As a result the commuty now spends a portion of the budget budget to bus the young students elsewhere. Merkley offered ideas for revamping the accountability of teachers, including measuring the progress of the individual students, not the school. But he made sure his commitment to knowledge was clear.

"The future is education. We are in a global economy; a knowledge economy. If we don't do something to help our education system, we will find ourselves sliding down toward a second or third tier economy," Merkley said.

Timber issues also weighed heavily on residents minds. They were unsure what happened next after the federal compensation for Oregon timber was revoked in June. Merkley tried to make it very clear to the crowd that he supported a ban on old-growth logging, but urged that there were solutions available to local communities that would make everyone happy.

"Look, I am from Myrtle Creek, and I understand the issues surrounding the timber industry," he said, referring to the town where he spent the early part of his childhood. "And today as I hike through the forests in Oregon, I see a lot of second growth that needs to be thinned and can be useful."

The blue Merkley yard signs stuffed into Subarus may have reflected that it was a biased crowd in attendance, but the crowd nonetheless spoke enthusiastically about his visit.

"He's taking us in the right direction," said David Peltier, a 53-year-old Yachats resident said of Merkley. "Gordon Smith is out of sync with the needs of Oregon."

While Senator Gordon Smith (R-Pendleton) was in Salem on Thursday, accepting the endorsement of the Oregon Farm Bureau and criticizing Merkley's record on rural issues, Merkley took advantage of being center stage in Yachats to launch a few criticisms of his own toward Smith.

"This administration and Senator Smith got it backward. We need to be slow to go to war and fast to take care of our men and women when they come home," Merkley said.

And as residents fretted about soaring gas and food prices, Merkley also took the opportunity to blame Smith and the Bush administration.

"Smith has spent the last 12 years doing favors for special interests; that has dramatically reduced our economy," Merkley said.

After the Yachats visit, the tour continued up the road, where Merkley made a surprise visit up the road to the Sea Dog Bakery in Waldport, sharing coffee and danish with voters in the quiet seaside community. But after a quick bite and several long conversations, Merkley jumped back into the Prius and headed north on Highway 101. The 100 Towns Tour for Change still had several dozen stops to go.