Sean C. Morgan
Fourth Congressional District Republican candidate Jim Feldkamp told timber industry representatives that restoring the natural resources economy was a priority if elected.
Feldkamp faces Democrat incumbent Peter A. DeFazio in November.
Feldkamp campaigned in Sweet Home on Tuesday last week. After visiting Mollie’s Bakery, he met with timber workers at Cascade Timber Consulting then visited the Senior Center.
“He’s an Oregon boy,” state Rep. Jeff Kropf, R-Sublimity, said. ‘He’s not a Massachusetts transplant like our current congressman. He’s not a socialist like our current congressman.”
Feldkamp’s family owns Umpqua Dairy. He played ball at Oregon State University, and he flew missions for the Navy during the Persian Gulf War. He then worked in counter-terrorism for the FBI until last August.
“We can win this,” Feldkamp said. “People don’t realize this district’s Republican. There’s no reason DeFazio should be there.”
President Bush carried the Fourth District, and so did Sen. Gordon Smith, Feldkamp said. In Eugene, “DeFazio has been very organized,” but Republicans in Lane County have not been in the past. Starting this campaign, Feldkamp’s staff’s strategy is not to win Lane County but to take 30 percent or better in Eugene and win in the rest of the district.
“People are starting to make the comparisons between President Bush and Mr. Kerry and how I and DeFazio size up on the issues.”
“In his campaign, he doesn’t have a vision for the district,” Feldkamp said. Rather, he tents to elicit fear and complain about bad things are. He offers no plan to fix them.
In Washington, D.C., “Republicans don’t like him. Democrats tolerate him,” Feldkamp said. “He loves to agitate. We’re not going to change that.”
DeFazio is a member of the Progressive Caucus with leaders, like Nancy Pelosi and presidential candidate John Kerry, Feldkamp said. That caucus abandoned the term “socialist” in its title in the 1980s, but its website still looks socialist.
Feldkamp is running in support of the war on terrorism and restoring the economy.
Rep. DeFazio’s position on the war against terrorism “gets me upset because it’s a dangerous world out there,” Feldkamp said. The second thing, “he won’t talk about the economy because he’s wrong on it.”
Feldkamp refers to opponents of logging as “preservationists,” he said. “I think we’re all environmentalists. You spend more time in the woods than the so-called experts in New York and L.A.”
Because of the preservationists, the Biscuit fire has yet to be logged after three years, Feldkamp said. They’re not worried about the environment. They want to shut down the forests, he said.
Some 38 percent of revenues for schools and other services came from timber taxes, Feldkamp said. When the timber industry was cut, the government had to raise taxes.
“We want to get back to our resource base,” Feldkamp said, but he also wants to add in the technology industries. “We’ll bring back the wood chips and bring in the microchips.”
Among his ideas is to change the way the Port of Coos Bay works. Right now, Coos Bay must worry about funding for dredging every year. Instead of dealing with that every year, Feldkamp asked why not have Homeland Defense put cutters there, then funding for dredging will always be there opening the channel and bringing more business into the district.
Asked about education funding, Feldkamp said the current system is ridiculous with the state government spending half a billion dollars each year, and kids still can’t read.
“The economy is what drives education,” Feldkamp said. The timber tax would provide the resources to provide desired service levels.
The No Child Left Behind Act provides accountability, but “it’s federal money,” Feldkamp said. “Any time there’s federal money, there’s strings attached. I’m a big states’ rights fan, so I think it’d be great if we didn’t have federal money, but we need federal money.”
Improving the local economy would address that, he said.
Preservationists are getting in the way of doing it.
All it takes is an injunction and time to make a timber sale worthless, CTC Vice President Milt Moran said. The Biscuit Fire, now three years old, probably won’t get any bids when it is finally opened up. The wood will be worthless by the time crews can set up and log it.
Laws, like the Endangered Species Act, have good intent, Feldkamp said. People use them for their own agendas. The ESA allows third parties to sue at the expense of the government, and Feldkamp would like to change that.
“Sierra Club, we’re not telling you, you can’t sue,” Feldkamp said. “We’re just telling you you’re going to pay for it.”
Other laws creating problems include the National Environmental Policy Act, Feldkamp said. It doesn’t recognize the difference between living and dead timber.
Even Greenpeace officials say it doesn’t make any sense to harvest dead timber, Feldkamp said. “That’s what these preservationists always want to do, shut down the forests.”
Mike Melcher suggested selling the resources to the industry.
“Everything to me is on the table,” Feldkamp said. “We want to provide resources and get them back into the economy. These people that live in New York and L.A. think we’re cutting down every tree out here, and they have shut down our economy.”
The ESA and NEPA need to be changed, Feldkamp said. People can argue about spotted owls, the ESA and old growth, “but you don’t have room to argue about burned timber. Let’s talk about different opportunities for you guys to bring the economy back up. There’s a real opportunity to do something for the district, for the state.”
“It’s this small group of people that are very vocal and very militant,” Moran said. “They’re calling the shots for us.”
DeFazio has helped with a plan to harvest up to 500 million board feet, Feldkamp said. It identifies old growth as 125-year-old trees, but that’s only half the timber allowed under the Clinton Forest Plan. The state would be better off meeting those targets.
“Well, Peter, too little, too late,” Feldkamp said. “He’s trying to appease you guys. He’s saying, ‘Who’s supporting this Feldkamp kid?'”
DeFazio is a superb politician, Feldkamp said. “He’s great at constituent services. I will be too. I can answer the phone. He’s been through five administrations, and he can’t get things passed. The problem is that he’s there as long as he wants.”
Oregon’s reputation is a poor, unfriendly business climate, Feldkamp said. “It’s a great place to live, but the tax structure is screwed up. We’re not friendly to business,” and getting timber back is a key to solving it.
On terrorism, “I like to say we turned the lights on, and the cockroaches scattered,” Feldkamp said. “We went through Afghanistan like a hot knife through butter. It took the Russians 10 years to lose it. That’s why Libya coughed up its nukes.
“Going into Iraq was the right thing to do, but you’ve got to hold the course. This thing about exit strategy is bunk. Our exit strategy is to win. You’ve got to lay the hammer down, and Bush is right.”
In 1992, when the body of a U.S. soldier was dragged through Somalian streets, “we cut and run,” Feldkamp said. Each year, terrorists got more and more aggressive; and President Bush has said no more, regardless of the United Nations.
“Now we know why,” Feldkamp said, referring to the oil for food scandal. “The U.N. wasn’t playing fair. It’s a heck of a world out there. It’s a dangerous world.”
Feldkamp said he disagrees with DeFazio’s “cavalier attitude.”
He voted against the war, and like presidential candidate John Kerry, he voted against the $87 billion bill that would supply the troops.
“He comes back to the district and complains” about a lack of supplies for the troops, Feldkamp said. “But he voted against the $87 billion to fund that.”
People say there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and now people are finding out what intelligence is all about.
“Intelligence is about finding out what people don’t want you to know,” Feldkamp said. “People say, you should have known,” but DeFazio was among those who thought the United States should slash intelligence spending in the 1990s at the same time Saddam Hussein played a cat-and-mouse game with the U.N. and colluding with Al Quaida though not on the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.
“He had the best information he could,” Feldkamp said of President Bush. Now Iraqis tell bone-chilling stories of life in Iraq.
“DeFazio’s wrong on national security, and I think he’s wrong on the economy,” Feldkamp said.