Home

Membership endorses Frohnmayer for US Senate

Members at a very well-attended membership meeting on Monday, March 17, voted overwhelmingly to endorse the candidacy of John Frohnmayer for US Senate. The endorsement came at the end of a long evening at which Frohnmayer, an independent, and Democrats Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley each pitched the members for their support.

Initial expressions of difficulty deciding between three highly qualified candidates eventually gave way to feelings of clear disappointment in the Democratic-controlled congress and its failure to meet expectations from the 2006 election mandates. Frohnmayer, the controversial former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts under the Bush I administration, is running as an independent, beholden to no party. Citing several other strong independent Senate candidates around the country, he expressed the belief that the time for creating a third political movement is ripe, and that if the independents manage to deprive both the Republicans and Democrats of a majority in the Senate, the independents will then be in a position to force the Senate to deal on the independents’ terms with the tough problems that both major parties have side-stepped in recent years.