More Media Mauling Merkley on Mortgages, Mailings

by: torridjoe

Wed Feb 27, 2008 at 07:45:00 AM PST

And perhaps if Merkley weren't running such a really, really bad campaign so far, and taking specifically disparaging potshots at Novick in the process, I wouldn't find myself putting together another article today on just how bad it's getting for them. That said, I recognize that as someone with a pretty healthy bias built in, I will not serve as a widely-utilized source of objective information about the race.

When the state paper of record starts poking and jabbing at you for days in a row, however, I think you gotta take note. I've noticed no particular bias in this race on the part of The Oregonian, beyond what seems to be a fairly common media predisposition towards Steve's more quotable nature--so if they've turned on him, they've done so suddenly. But for the last couple of days, they certainly have not been kind to the courtly House Speaker.

{more below}

On Sunday's front page, Merkley's picture graced readers from above the fold {pdf}, a big red DOWN arrow situated next to his brooding face. The text accompanying their designation of Merkley as the session's big loser couldn't have been what he wanted to see in the session wrapup:

Merkley scored points for getting a mortgage reform bill out of the House but burned bridges trying to ram it through the Senate. He got grief from Republicans for shutting down minority reports and taking campaign contributions during the session. And Merkley, who is running for U.S. Senate, could have used the time to prepare for the May primary and a possible fall faceoff against Republican Sen. Gordon Smith.

That was Sunday. On Monday Novick endorsed Barack Obama, which was followed in rapid succession by Merkley's own endorsement. Then, apparently having been excited by Sunday's reclamation of Ralph Nader as a Presidential candidate for 2008, the campaign fed Harry Esteve at The O a fairly bizarre attack using a 12-year old quote in a letter to the Willamette Week from Novick, which indirectly reflected Novick's 1996 support for Nader. LO covered that here, yesterday. Esteve notes drily that the Merkley team certainly had been "doing some digging" in order to retrieve a 12 year old LTE, and doesn't seem to take the charges very seriously.

By yesterday's news cycle, you might have figured things would have mostly blown over regarding the session and specifically the mortgage bill. But editors had assigned Ryan Frank to figure out why the bill had failed, and he published his piece--once again above the fold--on A1:

The Legislature's three-week session provided little time for consumer groups to counter industry arguments. Tepid support even from Democrats and strong Republican opposition led House Speaker Jeff Merkley to water down the bill to win votes. But in the process, he lost the consumer support base and the political momentum fell flat.

"The real strong advocacy wasn't there," said Senate President Peter Courtney, a Salem Democrat who controlled the bill's fate in the session's final hours. The Senate vote, Courtney said, "wasn't close."

That's a 2-0 record for the mortgage industry in two years. But they, along with consumer groups and legislators, pledged work on more potential reforms for next year's session.

(That notion of who's winning on the scoreboard will come up again in a moment.) The article feeds off Sunday's session wrapup and zooms in on the mortgage bill failure in the Senate, filling in the human details of the struggle:

About 6 p.m., [Merkley] ran into the men who controlled the Senate's agenda, Courtney and Majority Leader Sen. Richard Devlin, D-Tualatin. In a meeting in Devlin's office, the two men were polite but firm. "We checked it, and we just didn't have the votes," Courtney said Monday.

Merkley left the Capitol about 9 p.m. dejected. The next morning, he tried again. This time, the conversation wasn't as mild. "It was clarified for us in a very straightforward assessment that it was not going to happen," Merkley said. "I'd call it blunt."

With the deadline passed, some viewed Merkley's repeated pushes as grandstanding by a guy more interested in his Senate campaign resume than the good of the Legislature.

The bill never made it to the Senate floor.

A rough post-mortem for Merkley, for sure. Could he console himself that the deluge was over? Not quite--one last salvo hit their bow again yesterday, as AP reporter Julia Silverman took a look at Merkley's email to supporters discussing the mortgage bill:

"Jeff Merkley brought Democrats and Republicans together to defeat the corporate lobbyists and pass legislation limiting prepayment penalties and requiring full disclosure in subprime mortgages," crows the e-mail, signed by campaign manager Jon Isaacs.

Merkley did do just that ... in the Oregon House, where he is the speaker. But that's only half of the story.

The other half is that the state Senate let Merkley's mortgage industry reform law die as the three-week special session closed on Friday.

But his e-mail to supporters doesn't mention the Senate, or say that the bill will not become law.

It was an unusual rebuke from his Democratic colleagues, who have a majority in the state Senate, particularly since Merkley had made it clear that he hoped to campaign on the consumer advocacy issue during what promises to be the state's marquee race of 2008.

Merkley had lobbied hard for Senate Democrats to pass the legislation, even briefly declining to give consideration to Senate bills on the House floor until action was taken.

But the bill died under heavy mortgage industry pressure, a clear win for its lobbyists.

The Merkley campaign's e-mail spun it differently: "If you're keeping score, that's Jeff Merkley: 2, corporate lobbyists: 0."

2-0, 0-2--what's the diff? For a campaign that thinks it's way ahead in the primary despite being behind in every primary or general election poll conducted on the race, this further inversion of reality suggests that perhaps their scoreboard needs fixing--and they definitely could use a cutman in their corner after the last few days.