most immediately sold to Fred Meyer. It’s an example of misuse of power that clearly boils Weaver’s blood. Our next stop, Sunrise Enterprises, is a workshop offering “training and jobs for disabled adults." It’s a well- designed, remarkably upbeat worksite for nearly 200 men and women, making a wide array of wood products, assembling electric components and resuscitating telephones. Weaver is affable and very impressed. The visit’s high point is meeting Ron Regan, a telephone specialist, who says he’s been “getting heck all my life” for that infamous moniker. Weaver says, “If it’s between the President and yourself, I’ll take you.” Next, on the opposite side of town, I sit outside Roseburg Lumber (the nation’s largest independent wood products company) while my companions talk inside with company president John Thompson. It is the one stop where it’s suggested that I not come inside. Wait, you’re saying. Weaver’s inside with the people who tried to run him out of town. He killed the timber industry. DTO, 54°40' or fight. No, times change. John Thompson, who recently moved here from New York City, to head this locally owned company, knows Weaver in his East Coast context, where as Chair of the House Forests, Family Farms and Energy Subcommittee of Agriculture, he’s a power to be reckoned with. Thompson also knows that Weaver’s position and knowledge is now valuable for an industry in its worst year since the Depression. He knows that Weaver fought for the Emergency Housing Stimulus Program, a bill that Reagan vetoed. And he doesn’t doubt that Weaver will be re-elected. As the day wanes, we drive around town, with Jane repeatedly calling out, “There’s another Weaver sign.” We miss a shift change at a mill across town, stop by the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) hall, visit the Roseburg News Review, once his nemesis, and finally reach the Tom Tom Club in time for Weaver to prepare to address the Umpqua Lions Club. These green-vested, button- bedecked and bell-ringing gentlemen are unlikely admirers. To this group he presents himself as a fiscal conservative (“I voted for a balanced budget, an honest-to-God, detailed, balanced budget”) and a believer in a powerful America (“I want the strongest possible nation. I enlisted in the Navy at 17, and I would go again, if my country needed me. In a minute.”) This on the record, he proceeds into an attack against “the M1 tank, the Apache helicopter, the F18, that was supposed to cost $4 million and is costing $25 million ... it just doesn’t make sense. So we’re going to go out and borrow another $90 billion to finance these military boondoggles.” Late in his speech, Weaver says, “I want to say one thing about my opponent. I’d not be a politician if I didn’t.” A man blurts out, to the chagrin of his fellow Lions, “I don’t think that’s in order ...” Audience now in his pocket, Weaver pours it on ... “I just don’t believe in shipping our money and our jobs overseas. America’s been taken for a sucker for too long.... You know for sure I’m opposed to log exports. We buy Toyotas and Sonys from Japan, and send them back our raw commodities. I mean, are we an industrial nation? Or are we a colonial farm for Japan? Which is it; we’ve got to decide that.” Weaver turns the innocuous questions that follow into opportunities for sharing his insider’s perspective, his “those people are screwing us again” cachet. We leave as the chair offers to share some juicy jokes, “if only Jane Weaver [the lone woman present] wasn’t here with us.” After a brief stop at the threadbare joint headquarters of Weaver and gubernatorial candidate Ted Kulongoski, Greg drives us off toward Reedsport, on the coast. We’re soon on a rain-splattered two-lane highway, the darkness enfolding us in a womblike capsule. I am now the front-seat passenger, as Jim and Jane curl up in back. We talk a little of the day’s events and I segue to questions about his relationships with other Northwest members of Congress. “What about the accusation that you are not a team player?” Weaver proceeds to describe, in great detail, his relationship with Sen. Mark Hatfield in their sponsorship of the wilderness legislation. “It soon became very clear that he was unwilling to compromise one iota,” on a difference in the amount of land to be dedicated to wilderness in Oregon. “I tried to be very positive, diplomatic, complimenting him each week on Weaver receives the unqualified support of the National Rifle Association election after election. He's got enough irons in the fire that it's not worth being picked off on such a deeply felt issue. what he had done, but as the deadline for resolution (between House and Senate versions) drew near, my House colleagues persuaded me to yield, for Hatfield was going to let the entire national wilderness package die if he didn’t get what he wanted.” So much for teamwork. I ask about his mentors, those he’d learned from or respected. I expect him to mention irascible old Wayne Morse, also from Eugene, who was king of the filibuster in his day (a tactic Weaver used extensively in his opposition to the regional power bills). “Morse was a good man ... he picked the right fights. But Morse was vindictive. He could never forget.” We talk of Democratic Governor Oswald West (1910-14), who passed the legislation preserving Oregon’s coastline for all generations. “He did some wonderful things, but he was ultimately a tool of the utilities and special interests.” U.S. Senator Richard Neuberger: “a great conservationist ... a good balance with Morse in the Senate. You need both types ... like you need both a Weaver and an [Rep. Les] AuCoin.” “The man who impresses me most, We fly down the highway. Weaver is now waxing poetic, reciting long passages of Kipling, Shakespeare and Robert Service. his politics are nearly identical to mine,” Weaver continues, “is Walter M. Pierce [Governor of Oregon, 1922-26, and later U.S. Rep. from Eastern Oregon, 1930-38]. People always say that he was a Klansman, and that’s all you hear ... I thought I was the first person worried about sustained yield. Then I find that he was fighting over that in the 1920s. He fought the special interests and the utilities throughout his career. Read his Memoirs; they’re great.” That Wednesday night, talked out finally, we fly down the highway. Weaver is now waxing poetic, reciting long passages of Kipling, Shakespeare and Robert Service. We are traveling through the dense forest that sustains life here, night and the voices from the past our only companions. Day II We awaken to a drizzle. It’s as Don Berry says, “after two days of rain it seems as though it has been raining since the world began.” We arrive at Reedsport High School bright and early. Few are registered here, but their parents vote, as will these yoyng people in the near future. Weaver is introduced by a teacher as a man “of considerable courage,” which is now to be tested by these still-somnolent young adults. He quickly throws the floor open to questions, “to find out what you’re thinking, to find out what’s going on.” After several questions from the Young Republican contingent, intended to embarrass Weaver, which he handily finesses, a teacher asks, “Would you support a Constitutional Convention to deal with a balanced budget?” Weaver responds: “I think a Constitutional Convention is a very dangerous thing. Such a convention could cause turmoil, and these are certainly uneasy times for us economically. It could rewrite the whole Constitution. And I think the Constitution’s the greatest document that’s ever been written and adopted by any nation in the history of the world.” The talk moves to jobs and, given the setting, he emphasizes his commitment to quality in education. “When we vote on appropriations bills, I vote against nuclear subsidies, the big defense contracts. I vote for the education programs. That’s the greatest investment we can possibly make.” As he mentions his pride in whom he nominates to the military academies, a young woman responds, “You’re sending more money to defense.” “No,” Weaver replies, “on the contrary; if we have really top-flight officers in our military, that means we don’t need to spend so much money. Do you know where the money is going? Do you know what our military weaponry is like?” Here, to a now-wide-awake audience, his description of the weapon systems is much more detailed, a staggering, frightening array: “30,000 nuclear warheads; the Reagan Administration wants to build 17,000 more. At a cost of $20-$30 billion. Five hundred bombs would pulverize the Soviet Union. And they can do the same to us. We’ve got 1,050 Minuteman II and III missiles, these huge missiles sitting in silos, for a total of 2,400 hydrogen bombs, which can reach the Soviet Union in 30 minutes. Forty Polaris and Poseidon submarines ... and now we’re building Trident submarines; and one Trident submarine, that’s being equipped up in Seattle now, the USS Ohio, can destroy every Soviet city over the size of Springfield. One submarine. We have B52 bombers, and we’re equipping them with 4,000 Cruise missiles; the Cruise missile is dropped out over the ocean, comes in low under the radar, and can’t even be seen until it destroys its target with a hydrogen bomb. I’m opposed to this. Pershing II missiles in Europe, which could destroy the city of Moscow within four minutes. We both, with just a small amount of our weaponry, could destroy each other.” The students listen intently, occasionally gasping or uttering disbelief. Then he brings it all home. “One of these tanks [the M1] could just about support the entire budget of the Reedsport Schools ... the President vetoed the Housing Bill; it would have been wonderful for us; it gave us a chance to put some people to work in the mills; it was vetoed because it took away from the M1 tank and all these military programs.” The young people who crowd around him after the session are concerned about the future. Their parents are unemployed, with all benefits cut off. Can something be done? After stops at the local radio station, where Weaver is informed that he has the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and a thinly attended reception at City Hall for veterans and their kin, we drop by the Senior Center across the street (as Weaver told the students earlier, “80 percent of the people over 65 years of age vote. That’s an enormously powerful voting bloc.”) and proceed to the IWA hall, where some 40-50 long-term unemployed members are gathered in expectation. International Paper (dubbed “IP on you” by one woman), the town’s major employer, had shut down its plywood mill some two years previous. To avoid paying permanent closure benefits, IP refuses to announce a final shutdown. So these hearty-looking men and women, workers of all ages, though many are precariously near retirement, hang in limbo. Unemployment ran out months ago, welfare would require selling their homes, for which there is no market. Tax foreclosures are happening all around them. They share a litany of complaints against IP: “guarantees of permanent employment” that were reneged on weeks later, foremen who practice favoritism, and won’t give you the time of day, and repeatedly broken promises of a decision on closure. A local IWA official quickly puts Weaver on the phone with an IP “higher up.” Afterwards, there’s little he can offer. “He’ll be hearing from me soon, I promise you that; we’ll try to set things right.” Weaver talks of his China trade visit, of bills before Congress, but mostly he listens to these people and their story, and gets angry. An hour later, at a labor luncheon in Coos Bay, he distills it. “That IWA hall in Reedsport, with people 55 and 59 years old, who worked 30 years in that mill, and are now laid off, not qualified yet for any retirement programs, and yet unable to get a job anywhere. Well, no problem; they’ll be able to retire at 62; they’ll only have to go without food for three or four or five years. It’s the cruelest thing imaginable.” Here, the abstract statistics about a $60 billion tax cut for the wealthy and the unprecedented federal deficit caused by military spending, have recent associations with their victims. The rain, now pelting down as we enter Southwestern Oregon Community College, has begun taking its toll of our souls. Inside, one young woman asks him what can be done to stop the rape of our forests. He looks at her in astonishment. “Do you know anything about my role in Congress?” He explains the many factors in his fight for sustained yield, and concludes, “I love the timber industry. I don’t want them to cut all the trees down and leave. I want them to stay here and provide jobs for all the years ahead.” The rest of the day is downhill, a visit to Weyerhauser’s salmon ranch (none are jumping) and a day-end gathering of teachers. As we drive back to Eugene he talks of earlier campaigns, his years of struggle against “Scoop” Jackson and the nuke group, and memories of his prepolitical days. We reach the Weaver place around 8, and part company quickly. Before leaving town, I peek into campaign headquarters. The joint is jumping. Epilogue Two weeks later, Weaver sweeps the election with his biggest margin ever (59 percent to Anthony’s 41 percent). Days thereafter, I finish up Pierce’s Memoirs (Oregon Historical Society, 1981). I began to understand what Weaver relates to in Pierce. This fighting populist and New Dealer was no angry proletarian. He had been on the inside, as a wealthy rancher and capitalist ... learned the tricks and saw the results. Jim Weaver, builder (“I found out that I liked making money”) was decidedly wealthy when he took office. Both, firm believers in free enterprise, found it difficult to accept its raw side. Pierce: “Who owns the forests? Do those who have the legal possession to the land upon which the forest has grown have the moral right to harvest the trees in any manner they see fit?” Or was that Weaver? ■ Clinton St. Quarterly 15
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