Prof James Moore in the "Sunday Oregonian”:

The public employee unions won. It appears that the union message that corporations were getting away with $10 a year in taxes, and that very few people were in the higher income tax bracket, swayed a large number of voters. Voters bought into the idea that the new taxes would bring specific services to communities.

This election to defend the public employee unions looked more like the possible beginning of a new political era, one in which unions could more confidently push for their goals.

So, a victory for the unions, right?

The biggest mistake being made in analyzing the outcome of Measures 66 & 67 is that this was a union battle won by the unions. The unions made possible the victory with their support and funding, but the unions on their own would have lost this election. Battle. This election was won because the unions were the starting point.

This campaign was not won because of mailers or ads on tv and radio; No votes almost triumph in those circumstances, and Oregonians are just as gullible as anyone else when an election is being based on ads. Both sides had effective ads, and I know from talking to voters (anecdotal information here, not data) that the No ads sowed seeds of confusion and doubt that added to the Yes campaign’s already difficult task of getting voters to approve a tax increase - even when that increase was not on themselves (congratulations to the voters of Douglas County, standing tall for the vast numbers of wealthy people in their population; good job taking care of yourself and your kids).

We won this campaign because we had a massive, dedicated grassroots campaign of volunteers on the phones and at the doors. And while many of those volunteers were union members or family, and most are union-friendly, I’m willing to bet the majority of us were not members of unions.

The volunteers at the Bus Project registering and then contacting young voters, not union.

The retired couples and individuals, patiently phoning voters and knocking on doors: some union, many not.

Professionals, self-employed, retail workers, so many more who joined the fray; far too many volunteers outside the union circle for this to be a “union” victory.

The unions in Oregon, both public employee and otherwise, understand that the deck is stacked against working families; those are, after all, their members. They know that most non-union working families face the same issues: rising costs and falling incomes. Moore uses the word “union” not unlike Mannix and Sizemore: to label and isolate hundreds of thousands of Oregonians who love and care about their state from “the rest of us” — as if belonging to a union means you don’t care about the state just as long as you get yours.

Which some do believe, but is nonsensical. Unions prosper when society as a whole prospers. It does not take Nate Silver to correlate the decline of unions with the decline of the middle-class. Since the late 60s, union membership has fallen, and so has the standard of living of the majority of Americans. M66/67 saved some union jobs, but, more importantly, the money protects Oregonians on a larger scale: schoolkids, those who depend on state programs for health care, public safety — these are not “union” issues; these are human issues.

James Moore, like Bill Lunch at OSU, has a very limited, unimaginative perspective of Oregon politics. He sees things in standard view, based on old textbooks and with no understanding of the changes occurring at the grassroots — in communities across Oregon and America. It’s easy for him to talk about a “union” campaign because his understand is far too limited to know better. The best he can do is talk about “demographics” and changes in populations as if that explains something more fundamental and profound. It doesn’t.