Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney is retiring

Oregon’s longtime senate president is retiring. Peter Courtney is the longest-serving lawmaker in state history. The 78-year-old has presided over countless legislative sessions where he championed issues such as mental health parity and school funding, beseeched lawmakers to return after a dramatic walkout, and played a key role in former Governor Kitzhaber’s resignation. Now, he’s preparing for his last legislative session in office. We talk with him about his goals and his legacy.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud, I’m Dave Miller. Peter Courtney was first elected to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1980. He moved to the Senate side in 1999, and became Senate president four years later. In total, Courtney, who grew up in what he likes to call West By God Virginia, has served 38 years in the Oregon Legislature. He is both the longest serving lawmaker and the longest serving presiding officer in state history. But the short legislative session that starts next week will be his last, because for the first time in many decades, Courtney is not seeking reelection. Peter Courtney, welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Peter Courtney: Is this Dave Miller?

Miller: Yeah, it is. Did I not say that at the beginning? Yes, Peter Courtney, this is Dave Miller.

Courtney: Yeah, I have to be sure that you don’t tell everybody you’re Dave Miller, Harvard English major, pre-med at Harvard. I don’t know what happened there. And then your father was a doctor. I don’t know about Connie. Your brother was pre-med. So anyway, we’ve gotta get that straightened out before we go much further.

Miller: Do we? Okay, well, I’m glad you got that straightened. I want to start by playing a short clip from the last time that we had an extended conversation, that was back in 2017. Let’s have a listen to part of what you said.

Courtney (clip): Words like, enjoy, happiness. I don’t believe in all that stuff. I don’t relate to it. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it means. I’m a workhorse, that’s all I know. Hook up the plow, put me out in the field, I’ll keep pulling until I drop dead and you can turn me into glue.

Miller: The sense I got back then, because you said it, is you are going to basically do this until you dropped. What changed?

Courtney: I would like to run again. I would like to continue to be in the legislature, and I’ll miss it terrible.

I don’t have anybody in my family that will support me. They won’t talk to me again if I do it. In fact, they thought I wasn’t gonna run last time four years ago. But I snuck by ‘em in the dark of the night. And my sons and my wife made it clear to me: I got no place to live, no place to stay. And they’d all change their name if I don’t get out of this stuff. And so you know, what are you gonna do? I mean, I had some real health issues, but that’s the old idea: one day you drop in the field and they turn you into glue. I can’t say anything more than that. I’m 78, which means I’m in my 79th year of life, and I guess some people say you gotta get out. And I don’t know, you can tell I’m rambling, because I’m not happy with my decision. But I guess to everything there’s a beginning, there’s a tweener, and there’s an end. So I don’t know what to do. But say, I guess I’ll mosey. I’ll get on my palomino and I’ll mosey into the sunset.

Miller: Your answer is almost the opposite of the kind of fake answer that we hear so often from politicians when they’re resigning under some disgrace, and they say they’re doing it for family reasons. Here, you’re doing this for family reasons, but clearly you don’t like those family reasons.

Courtney: That’s true. I mean, I want to die in office, so to speak. More importantly, I just wanted to continue to be a legislator. I think it’s a glorious calling to be an elected official, but particularly the legislative branch.

Miller: Well, let’s turn to that. I’m curious about what you love about it. What makes being a lawmaker a glorious calling?

Courtney: You don’t have anything if you don’t have relationships. And relationships require you to get along with people that you don’t like. Maybe they don’t like you, at least you have disagreements, in order to make sure the thing keeps going, whether it’s government, whether it’s family, whether it’s a partnership, whatever. Maybe it came from team sports in my life. I just love to get something big done with people who disagree, but they don’t leave the room until they get the job done. I just think that’s great. And the highest level of that is making public policies that affect everybody’s life. And the dynamics is, can you do it? Can you negotiate with people you don’t like, vice versa, and can you keep this thing called the legislative branch going, which is the only thing that keeps you from being a dictatorship?

So I don’t know. It’s just something that appealed to me, but I’ll be darned if I know why. You’d have to ask the psychiatrist what’s going on with me? I don’t know.

Miller: The last three or four years though, they have been, in the Oregon legislature and legislatures around the country, dramatic to say the very least. You have dealt with multiple walkouts in the legislature as a whole. Two lawmakers resigned amidst allegations of sexual harassment. Another lawmaker, Mike Nearman, illegally allowed armed demonstrators into the locked capital. He became the first ever Oregon lawmaker to be kicked out of office by his colleagues. Just a couple of months ago in a special session, you ordered Senator Dallas Heard, the head of the Oregon Republican Party, to be removed from the Senate chamber because he refused to follow the rules and wear a mask. And that’s not a complete list of the dramas of different kinds that are not technically related to lawmaking. They’re all important distractions of one kind or another. What’s it been like to preside over a chamber for the last three or four years?

Courtney: Well now that you come up with that litany of things, I guess it is bad. I mean, I have to say, Dave, you really made my day by that statement. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Miller: Had you really not?

Courtney: Thanks for ruining my day, and my rest of my life.

Yeah, it’s been hell. But you know what? I asked for the job. And life is hell and then you die. I mean, I think I said that last year, I don’t believe in happiness and all that. So you just gotta keep going. And some days it really rains. Some days you don’t know what you’re doing, and we’ve had a lot of them. But yeah, it’s been hard. Very very hard. But when you’re Irish, you know, you never get to celebrate. And so even if you get a victory, you’re scared to death to go to sleep, because in the middle of it, you’re gonna get woken up with a terrible dream or something. So yeah, everything you said is right, and that’s just scratching the surface, that isn’t really getting into everything And it’s been very bad. Very hard. And very lonely. But hey Peter, quit complaining. You wanted the job. You were fortunate enough to get it. So just suck it up and keep going.

Miller: Do you feel like the last almost four decades have prepared you for dealing with all those things over the last couple of years, things that have been described as unprecedented. Or, because they were so unusual, you were sort of all in this for the first time?

Courtney: Another profound question, Harvard. It takes years to answer. And so, I would just say that it was my family more than anything else. My mother had Parksinson’s disease for 39 years. And ever since I was three years old, I and my brothers took care of my mother. My father saw the family had some real problems, my own family and brothers and things. That’s the only thing I knew, was these terrifying medical issues and struggles. So when I came to the legislature, I guess I was somewhat of a melancholy person, and that prepared me better than anything I knew.

I also lost more than I won. I kid you about Harvard; Harvard rejected me. And when I think of the schools I applied to, they all rejected me. And finally, I went into a school because I had a scholarship because I won an oratorical contest. But then even to get into graduate school law school, they all rejected me but one. So, you know, I had a lot of defeats. I struggled with the Oregon bar, took me more than once. So when you have that list of defeats, I think what else are you gonna do? Just keep going.

I once gave a speech, “I’m a loser.” And one of my sons was in the audience and he said “Dad, I’m begging you, never give that speech again.” I realized that he didn’t see it that way.

But my point is that the losses mounted up, Harvard, and as a result, Mr Miller, they probably prepared me more than anything else.

As far as the legislature is concerned, they’re all gone now, I was fortunate to have around me individuals that knew how to legislate. They knew how to fight like crazy, and go out at night and have a drink or play Pinochle or something, and get right back at it the next day. They just knew how to do that. And they knew how to revere someone beyond their party, well beyond their party. They took care of each other in their own way. But boy, they knew how to fight each other. So maybe all that came together and helped me.

And also the mistakes of the past. 34 day special session, that will teach you something about a special session, Dave Miller. You don’t want that. A legislative session that goes through almost through Labor Day, that’ll teach you something about having a terminated legislative session, having an absolute deadline, you’ve got to get it done by a certain time. So I learned all those lessons through those terrifying experiences. And I just vowed, if I ever had anything to do with a session, I would do everything I could to make sure we don’t get into those kinds of situations.

Miller: You’re known as an institutionalist, meaning somebody who cares about and wants to preserve the traditions and the norms of the institution, in this case, the Oregon State Senate. Do you think of yourself that way? Do you think that’s an accurate portrayal of at least one set of your concerns? The institution itself?

Courtney: There’s no doubt I believe that the institution, the legislature - because I also spent seven terms, fourteen years in the House. I love the House, I revere the Senate.

I think the legislature is the most important branch of government. Now, you’re gonna have a governor go crazy and start screaming when she hears that. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who just was on my floor here swearing in two new members on Friday is gonna go crazy. But the fact is, you would not be talking to me now if it weren’t for the legislative branch. Instead you’d be talking to a dictator. So the only thing that keeps us different in terms of one person rule or an administrator ruining people’s lives because there’s no way to check them, there’s nobody they’re accountable to, is the legislative branch. And to be good at it, it takes a tremendous amount of work, and luck. And so to the extent that I show that through my actions, so be it.

You can’t take the legislative branch for granted. It could go under very readily, very easily, especially in a state that uses initiative referendums and recalls way too much, and in a state that the out of staters are coming in and filing one initiative after the other. Initiatives, it’s a killer, because you just ran one person’s idea through if you get it passed. You don’t make it go through the grizzly, difficult, horrendous saga called the legislature.

Miller: Often, the way the phrase “institutionalist” has been used though, not just to describe you, but others - the knock, I guess, and this could come say from the left among Oregon Democrats, is that is that you care too much about traditions and perhaps the idea of bipartisanship, and not enough about ideological policies, and making sure that the policies can pass, even if it means not paying attention to bipartisanship or or the institution itself. I’m curious what you make of that critique.

Courtney: I’ve been criticized severely for - and nowadays you live in a time, David, that if I even say something good about a Republican, I’ll be clobbered by my side, and vice versa. In the old days, that wasn’t the case. You could still say great play, great move. Today, I can’t do that, because the issue of partisanship means I’m right and you’re wrong, no matter what. And it’s true of our society across the boards. There’s no loyalty anymore. And there’s rigidity. There is. It’s in athletics, it’s in religion, it’s in everything we do.

So truly, I am going to be criticized because, as the Speaker of the House once said about me, “the Senate prioritizes getting along or trying to work with each other more than the House does.” She said that. And when I read it, I just smiled and said, I suppose that’s right. Today’s enemies, tomorrow’s ally. Plus, who in this legislature, there’s 90 of us Dave, doesn’t represent Oregonians? Everybody’s representing Oregonians. And Oregonians, wherever they live, you know, they hurt. They don’t get something or their children don’t get something. And I have an obligation to be as concerned about Eastern Oregon as I do my own valley area. So I don’t know how you can do that by being blindly partisan, blindly against anything that’s not your way.

I mean, I guess I have been hit hard by what you said. And I just think it’s a philosophy that I don’t support at all.

Miller: Where do you think Oregon is headed right now? And I ask that, keeping in mind everything you’ve just said about the hardening political divisions in the legislature, that are very reflective of so many people in the populace as a whole. But broadly, what do you think of the direction our state is going in?

Courtney: Well, you’re asking me a question that requires a PhD dissertation. You’re asking for a very simple answer to a question that requires tremendous research.

The state has changed. Out of staters are coming in in large numbers, and have been. They don’t they don’t become Oregonized, they bring in what they think should be to Oregon. They don’t get Oregonized, they don’t identify with what Oregon is. You also have a situation, and I said this recently, when I came into the legislature in 1980, as you say, we Democrats had Democrats coming out of Pendleton, Ontario, Baker City, Klamath Falls. Republicans had Republicans coming out of Washington County. And those days are all gone now. The Democrats in the legislature are basically Portland through Eugene. And other areas are basically Republican. And so when you have that, clearly, you’re going to have a divide. It’s very profound. I do think there are men and women on both sides who try very hard to think about legislators who come from a different way of life than they do, and try to think of their people they represent. But at least geography, where people live and their political affiliation, has changed. And that change is now causing Oregon, I think, to become basically another state in that sense.

So where is she going? You know, I’m not going to make some profound statement, because I don’t have it in me right now to tell you, to give you a PhD dissertation, Doctor of Political Science answer. It’s definitely changed. And it’s a whole different world. It is really different.

Miller: Do you have a guess as to what it’s going to be like when you strike your gavel down for the last time?

Courtney: Well, it’s gonna be huge applause, given what you’ve just said. I mean, it’s gonna be a standing ovation. Not because they’re sad, because they’re happy to get rid of me, given you just said that. And so, I don’t think there’s gonna be anybody missing Peter Courtney. I have no illusions about that.

You know, Ted Kulongoski, when he got stressed, when he got mad at me when he was governor, he’d say “You know, Peter, right outside this building, no one’s ever heard of you. They all never heard of you. And the day after you leave here, they’ll never even remember who you are.” So, I don’t think there’s going to be anything but “Get him out of here. Thank God he’s gone. We get our chance now.”

Miller: That’s other people. But the question is, how do you think you’re going to feel?

Courtney: Oh, terrible.

Miller: Peter Courtney, it was a pleasure once again to talk to you, and I look forward to talking with you again.

Courtney: Why didn’t you go into medicine? What happened on the medicine thing?

Miller: This is a lot more interesting to me. And nobody cares about why I didn’t go into medicine.

Courtney: Well, I care. Your father is a doctor, right?

Miller: He is. Yeah. But why don’t we talk about this another time?

Courtney: Why? Why don’t I-

Miller: Because I have another segment that’s important, and I want to get to it. Peter Courtney, it was great talking to you.

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