This is probably (I hope) the kiss of death for Macpherson. He's managed to make about 300,000 enemies for his involvement with Kulo on PERS. He's going to pay this time around.

I know you get confused, but calling Barbara Roberts an "old boy"? Tsk, tsk.

Yup, got my newsletter today. 2 great reasons to vote no on the Hair-boy.
I hope the females don't go on what the coiffure is , but what is missing underneath that counts.
Jack, nice good ol' boys do not necessarily make good AG's.

PERS was mismanaged in the 1990s. Someone had to do something to fix it. Greg is a true pension law expert. You do not have to vote for him, of course. But, you should feel very lucky to have the choice to vote to someone of Greg's quality. He is a partner at Stoel Rives and would take a big pay cut to be AG. He went to Harvard, as I recall. Top notch candidate. Nice person also.

Joel, I hope you're kidding.

Please try checking John's background before you play the Harvard/good guy/"you should feel lucky" card.

Joel is not kidding. Greg is everything Joel says he is, and more. That's why Greg was in my Top 10 favorite Public Figures of 2003.

John would not be taking that big a pay cut to be AG; I can tell you that for sure. He is a brilliant communicator, and I surely would not want to be up against him in a criminal case.

There's lots more to be said, and I leave that for later, but Joel's right.

I did not say anything bad about John. I have heard some good things about him, and I am interested in learning more. I know Greg is a good candidate. If there are two good candidates, then we are indeed lucky. In some elections, we don't even get one.

Greg Macpherson is a fantastic candidate and clearly the best out there. Kroger is an arrogant and severely inexperienced candidate who brags about a planted column that called every single DOJ attorney an "underachiever." Oregonians should get behind the candidate who has already committed to doing great things for our state and right now the only one in the race with a real record of accomplishment is Greg Macpherson.

To Joel:

PERS was NOT mismanaged in the 1990s. The Board did exactly what the Legislature charged it to do. No more, no less. PERS is charged with a fiduciary responsibility to put its members first and so long as they didn't pay out more than they took in, they were doing their fiduciary duty. The real beef the employers had was with the Legislture. In 1995, they passed HB 3349 - the income tax remedy arising out of the Hughes case (Hughes v Oregon, 1991) and instead of placing the responsibility on the State itself to pay the cost of remediating this contract breach, they dumped it on the employers. Consequently, in 1997, employer rates spiraled up sharply (take a look at any PERS CAFR and you can see this clearly). This pissed the employers off. The only recourse they had to go after PERS' alleged mismanagement. The Lipscomb case (City of Eugene et al v PERS) was decided on a stupid technicality, which the PERS Board got trapped by in 2000. The technicality basically was that it was recommended that they raise their gain-loss reserve from 18 months to 30 months. The Board adopted this in February, but didn't publicly announce that it planned to this incrementally. As a result, when they paid out 20% earnings for 1999, they only raised the reserve to 23 months. This was their "abuse of discretion". The Legislature's actions were picked apart by the Supreme Court -- it was badly written law and the court essentially told them that. Macpherson was responsible for writing this badly written law along with Kulo. Not only did Hardy Myers tell the Legislature this was bad law, so too did the Legislative Counsel. They persisted, lost in the Supreme Court, PERS is refusing to comply, and 16 court cases remain. I don't know how you can praise some one as a great lawyer when he nearly alone created this litigation monster. Would he, as AG, tell himself that this was "bad law", as Hardy Myers told the Legislature? Greg Macpherson as brilliant legislator -- I think not. As AG, I hope not.

Let's be glad that someone will replace "Hardly Matters" in the near future. Maybe it will be time for some of those AG staffers to earn their pay.