A Governor Truly Tightens His Belt
Thomas Patterson/Statesman Journal, via Associated Press
For a week of food, Governor Kulongoski limited himself to $21, the
average for Oregonians on food stamps.
By William Yardley
Published: May 1, 2007
SALEM, Ore., April 27 He swore off beer, had to put the pricey
organic bananas back on the supermarket shelf and squeezed four
meals out of a single chicken, all in the name of reducing hunger.
And this is not even an election year.
Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoskis decision to live on $3 a day in
grocery money for a week, as he had been urged to do in an Oregon
food stamp challenge, could confound the surest cynic. At 66, he
was just elected to his second term, with a budget surplus
surpassing $1 billion and a legislature controlled by his fellow
Democrats. So just what was there to gain politically?
For a governor who has long pushed to reduce hunger and happens to
like eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, maybe that was not
the point.
As Wayne Scott, the leader of the House Republicans, put it:
Obviously Im in the opposite party, so it would be easy for me to
knock him for this. Now, I dont know that I fully believe that
hes eating on $21 a week, but I do think hes trying to bring
attention to the food stamp issue. Hes a pretty straight
shooter.
Mr. Kulongoski, who said he had not tried to skirt a strict limit
of $21 for the week the average amount allowed Oregon food stamp
recipients claimed that his only goal had been to raise awareness
of hunger here and of a need for the federal government to preserve
the current level of stamp benefits.
Along the way, however, the governor, little known outside the
state, also raised awareness of himself. News organizations across
the country picked up coverage of his shopping expedition to his
local grocery store, where he was guided by a state worker who had
temporarily relied on food stamps. Calls came in from Europe.
Hundreds of people sent e-mail messages to the main sponsor of the
challenge, the Oregon Food Bank, saying they too had been inspired
to give it a try.
By the end of the week, not only had Mr. Kulongoskis relatively
spare entry on Wikipedia been updated to reflect the developments,
there was also a sense that the 5-foot-9, 155-pound governor had
set a high standard for other elected leaders who profess to care
about the needy. In Washington, the House Hunger Caucus asked
members of Congress to undertake a similar challenge in May. Closer
to home, Mr. Kulongoski noted, one of his West Coast counterparts
would have a particularly tough act to follow. I think Arnold
probably has a larger caloric intake than I do, he said.
Mr. Kulongoski has made hunger an issue since he was first elected
in 2002. That fall, he said in an interview, he was surprised to
learn that Oregon ranked high on the list of what the Department of
Agriculture used to call hunger and now calls food insecurity.
Oregons timber and agricultural industries had long been
struggling, driving up unemployment, and the high-tech boom that
had benefited places like Portland had started to unravel.
Since then, the state has fallen lower on the list, thanks to an
improving economy and federal policies that allow it to expand
eligibility for food stamps, said Michael Leachman, a policy
analyst for the Oregon Center for Public Policy, which advocates
for lower-income people.
Still, Oregon continues to have a higher unemployment rate, at 5.2
percent, than that of the country as a whole, 4.4 percent.
High-tech jobs are growing again in Portland, but the timber
industry continues to decline. We have a very pronounced
rural-urban split, said William Lunch, a professor of political
science at Oregon State University.
Under a farm bill now before Congress, advocates for the hungry
say, the rules that allow expanded eligibility for food stamps
could be restricted, potentially disqualifying about 50,000 of the
434,000 Oregonians who use them. On Friday, Mr. Kulongoski sent a
letter to President Bush asking him to preserve the current
benefits.
The governor, a former labor lawyer, state insurance commissioner,
state attorney general and member of the Oregon Supreme Court,
noted more than once during his week on the low-cost diet that he
grew up an orphan in a Catholic boys home in St. Louis. He said
Friday that he had learned to clean his plate no matter what was on
it.
With Mr. Kulongoski and his wife, Mary Oberst, limited to $42
between them, what was on the plate became distinctly familiar. Ms.
Oberst, who typically does their cooking the governor has no
kitchen staff released a to-the-penny menu midway through the
week that showed a single chicken surfacing first with zucchini on
the side, and then later in salad and a chowder.
[The couple returned to their regular diet on Sunday afternoon. In
a brief telephone interview on Monday, the governor said that
eating less had clearly affected him. I went to bed earlier, he
said, because I was tired at the end of the day. He also said he
had missed his stash of Northwest microbrews.]
How much do the Kulongoskis usually spend on food? Hard to say. The
governors office puts it at just $55 a week, but that is for
at-home meals only. Not included are things they eschewed during
the challenge: meals at official functions, dinners out, and
lunches and snacks bought on the job.
For all the public fascination with the governors menu, there did
not appear to be immediate benefits for his policy agenda. Mr.
Kulongoskis proposal to provide health insurance to children by
raising the cigarette tax failed in an initial vote during the
week, though he said he believed that it would pass before the
legislature adjourns in June. His plan to expand financing for
community colleges has also stalled for now.
Asked if his lean week had bolstered his political heft, he said:
I dont think it makes any difference. Ive been in this for 35
years, and these things all pass. Next week they may not remember
me being on the diet, but something will stay in the mind about
hunger in Oregon.
The New York Times[/url]
