Race for Congress heats up even before opponents officially file

By Ramond Rendleman

Milwaukie orthodontist Andrew Godzyk is still waiting to decide who he will support in this year’s 5th Congressional District race.

“It’s still too early to tell,” Godzyk said. “I need to see how things shake out and what’s going to happen before I come down in favor of a particular candidate.”

With political polarization becoming the norm in 2012, it would be easy to think that undecided voters would be few this election year, especially in Clackamas County. But they could be found in abundance last week at U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader’s first visit to the Milwaukie Rotary Club last week.

The Canby Democrat, who was elected to the district in 2008 and re-elected in 2010 by a 15,000-vote margin, is positioning himself as a moderate “average Joe” who’s still on the rise in terms of the influence he can exert for his district.

“I’m learning a little bit, just like you guys,” Schrader told the crowd of Rotarians. “One of the big issues that we’ve been dealing with, just like you all have been dealing with, is how to balance our budgets.”

Schrader is among the 145 U.S. House members proposing to give confidence to businesses and consumers by paring $3.7 trillion to $4 trillion from the federal budget deficit during the next decade, bringing U.S. debt down to around 60 percent of its annual output of goods and services.

Only 38 percent of the $3.63 trillion federal budget is in discretionary military and domestic spending that Congress can control annually.

Schrader hopes to do that balancing by scaling back $1 trillion in tax breaks for wealthy Americans, offering instead simplified rates that range between 12 percent and 28 percent depending on income level.

Schrader argued that the stakes for success were huge, considering that under current conditions the Social Security Trust Fund would zero out by 2036, triggering a big hit to the paychecks of senior citizens.

“You’re not supposed to talk about social security if you want to win an election, but I’m going to, because I want you to know what’s going on,” he said.

District politics

Schrader’s campaign has already started in political frontlines like Milwaukie, despite no candidate officially filing for the Republican nomination contest in May. Greg Leo, chief of staff for the Oregon Republican Party, said that there would be a good field of candidates for District 5 Republicans to choose from before the March filing deadline.

Fred Thompson, who lost by about a 3-to-2 margin in the 2010 primary against Scott Bruun, has said that he would file for the GOP primary along with Karen Bowerman.

Milwaukie resident George Peters said that although he’s a registered Republican, he’s having trouble supporting the existing party structure “because they don’t have a program that supports everyone.”

“If some Republican could come up with a strong program that could get the support of the party as whole, that would be great,” Peters said, after watching Schrader’s presentation at the Rotary.

Meanwhile donations are ramping up for Schrader, as Democrats once again expect a strong challenge to his seat. Public finance records show that Schrader has about $360,000 in his campaign war chest as of Sept. 30; he had about $150,000 to spend June 30 of last year.

Schrader is campaigning in the Milwaukie area for the first time, and after last year’s redistricting, his new district’s composition has more registered Republicans by losing a section of Southwest Portland.

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