State legislator Gary Hansen proud of his Plumbers card

By DON McINTOSH, Associate Editor

Though he's no longer a working plumber, Gary D. Hansen maintains his union card, and says the principles of plumbing still apply to his work as a state representative. "You learn that shit flows downhill," Hansen says.

Hansen, now running for his third two-year term in the Oregon House of Representatives, is one of the handful of card-carrying union members who make up the Legislature's "labor caucus."

"The labor people are probably the best team players in the Democratic Party," Hansen says. "When you work in a union environment, you learn how to work as a team, and how to protect each other ... And union people understand the negotiation process."

Hansen, 58, said his interest in politics crystallized at age 15 with a handshake from presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. Born and raised in Tigard, Hansen graduated from Tigard High School in 1962 and studied political science at Portland State University. There, he took classes from the late State Senator Frank Roberts and late County Commissioner Ben Padrow.

"The lesson at Portland State was, if you were taking speech classes, you were supposed to use them for something important," Hansen recalls. "There was a real moral imperative to use it to fight for truth, justice and beauty."

While still a student, he drove school buses, and went to work for a local city bus company. He blazed a trail for young workers when, with the help of the bus drivers union, a rule against hiring anyone younger than 25 was thrown out. He went on to be elected president of his union sub-local of 140 drivers, and helped negotiate three union contracts.

He married Sandi Burket in 1965, and had a son, Travis.

Even in his 20s, Hansen thought about a future run for public office. When he and his wife moved to North Portland, it crossed his mind that the new home was in a pretty solid Democratic district.

In 1967, he interned alongside an AFL-CIO lobbyist in Salem.

The following year, on the recommendation of an uncle who was a contractor, he dropped out of college and enrolled in a plumbers apprenticeship program. Five years later, he turned out as a journeyman.

Hansen ran unsuccessfully for the State House against incumbent Howard Cherry in 1976.

But he kept going.

He was elected to Metro, the regional council, in 1982. He was elected a Multnomah County commissioner in 1990, and when term limits ended his stay in 1998, he ran for and won the Oregon House seat vacated by Mike Fahey, who had decided to make a run for state labor commissioner. [Fahey is a former official with the Carpenters and the Portland Metal Trades Council.]

The Oregon AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) gave Hansen a 100 percent rating for his votes in the 1999 legislative session, and 95 percent in 2001. [COPE objected to Hansen's support for a bill changing the tax laws to benefit corporations with high proportions of out-of-state sales and penalize those with predominately in-state sales.]

With the Republicans in control of the House, Hansen has been in the minority party since he got to Salem. But there are several victories he's proud of:

* A bill proposing a $100 title registration fee for new vehicles, with the money going to the state transportation budget. Hansen said the fee was later cut to $13 in the hands of Republican Transportation Committee Chair Bruce Starr. Still, the anticipated revenue allowed the state to issue $400 million in bonds to take care of much needed repairs.

* A bill that extended unemployment bene-fits 26 weeks. Hansen said it passed because it was linked to another bill that cut unemployment insurance rates for employers.

Hansen also won the passage of 10 of the 16 bills he introduced in the 1999 legislative session, in part because he focused on issues important to the building and construction trades. These tend to be low-profile issues which get bipartisan support.

One bill, for example, allowed the state boiler board to set rules for the installation of industrial process piping. That meant installation of high-pressure refrigeration and hazardous materials would be performed by licensed plumbers. "He's always there for us," said Plumbers Local 290 Business Representative Ron Murray. "For labor and the building trades in particular to have our own legislator is just really important to us."

During the 2001 legislative session, Sandi Hansen, his wife of 35 years, was diagnosed with cancer. She died last August at the age of 53. A schoolteacher and former executive director of the Oregon Chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, she had worked closely with her husband throughout his political career. When he left the Metro Council to join the Multnomah County Commission in 1990, she ran for and was elected to his old position, serving one term.

Her illness, Hansen says, has led him to take an interest in the laws surrounding pain management. Concerned that doctors may be too reluctant to prescribe adequate pain medication for fear of running afoul of strict controls on opiates, he joined the state's pain management task force, and is studying the matter.

Though he feels the loss of his partner and campaign manager, Hansen said he plans to continue in politics, and hopes to help raise funds for Democratic candidates in closer races than his, and work to recruit more labor candidates.

Hansen says he supports the idea of running "labor's own," but that the key is to start slow, recruiting good candidates and having them run for lower offices first. That way, they gain political experience and prove they're reliable on the issues that matter to working people.

Hansen's House District 17 - redrawn and renamed House District 44 last summer - is considered the second strongest Democratic district in Oregon, with almost three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans. The district consists of all of North Portland to Interstate 5, plus the area around the airport and part of the Cully neighborhood. In such a Democratic district, the primary election determines who will hold office. No Republican candidate has even filed for election this time. Thus, Hansen's seat is considered pretty safe in November. Hansen says his district's issues are the same issues that confront all of Oregon: How to preserve public education, social services, and public safety in a time of recession.

Hansen views the budget fix concocted by the special session as a stopgap. The problem, he says, is it takes a supermajority to pass tax increases, and a majority to pass spending cuts. There aren't the votes to pass deep cuts, nor to enact serious tax changes. So slick accounting maneuvers are the result, he said.

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