For months, Sen. Mark Hass pushed for an alternative to Measure 97, this fall's controversial $3 billion-a-year corporate tax plan.
High on his list of hoped-for allies? Gov. Kate Brown -- until she backed away.
"She kept telling me, 'Mark I think you're right, but I don't see a path,'" Hass said. "And I kept telling her, 'Governor, you're the governor. Your job is to set a path.'"
Asked about those talks,Brown says she couldn't have pushed Hass' proposal, or likely any other, through the Legislature.
"The challenges for getting a compromise here were great," Brown said.
But the back-and-forth plays into a long-running debate about Brown's leadership style, eighteen months after Gov. John Kitzhaber resigned in scandal and just weeks before Oregonians decide whether she should finish his term or give way to Republican Bud Pierce.
Has Brown's penchant for pragmatism -- honed during 25 years in state office -- sometimes kept her from challenging other political players and interest groups? Is her famed niceness enough? And will having a mandate, if she wins election Nov. 8, free her to lay out her vision for the state?
Brown has enjoyed goodwill from lawmakers and others who sympathized with her struggle to soothe the state post-Kitzhaber. She also responded adeptly as Oregon dealt with last year's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College and then, months later, militants' armed standoff in Harney County.
But what's yet to emerge, political observers say, is a striking vision for what Brown wants to accomplish. Though she managed to push through a compromise on the minimum wage this year, she's yet to squarely tackle the state's pension crisis or chart a clear path toward new transportation funding.
A campaign spokesman offered a list of Brown's priorities, including raising graduation rates, helping families economically, protecting the environment and easing traffic congestion. Brown, in an interview, said her focus will remain on delivering her predecessor's best ideas, some of which were sidetracked by controversy or simply left unfinished.
If she wins, she says launching Kitzhaber's "cradle to career" plan for improving public education should be her legacy. Brown, who's led Pierce, a cancer doctor, in every public poll this election, declined to say whether she'd seek another term in 2018.
"I see a legacy as the seamless system of education, creating truly a system of education from cradle to career," Brown said. "I cannot claim credit for the vision, but I want to be able to take credit for the implementation of that system."
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Brown said the road to a deal on Measure 97 never would have cleared the House or Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland. Even Senate approval was uncertain. But she had other reasons for walking away, she said.
She thought the two sides battling over the measure -- public employee unions and business groups -- would rather fight than sign a peace deal.
And, she said, any bill raising taxes would need a three-fifths majority. Then, once lawmakers finished fiddling with it, the measure would likely be sent to voters anyway. A measure from the Legislature, bearing the scars of uncomfortable compromises, would be harder to pass than something crafted expressly for the ballot.
"That means making a whole lot of adjustments to get those votes," Brown said. "I think by virtue of making those, it makes it very difficult to pass at the ballot as well."
But Brown may yet preside over legislative haggling. If voters pass Measure 97, lawmakers are likely to wrangle over improvements, such as scaling back the tax burden on certain industries or redirecting some of the revenue. Brown laid out a general plan to do exactly that in June.
It would allow businesses to subtract a portion of their Oregon payroll from their corporate tax bill, divert taxes collected on gas and diesel sales to the state highway fund and provide an exemption for software companies.
As written, Measure 97 would make certain Oregon businesses pay a 2.5 percent gross receipts tax on sales exceeding $25 million. The measure would grow the state's $18 billion operating budget by nearly a third. It pledges, without a guarantee, that lawmakers would invest the money in K-12 education, health care and senior services.
Ryan Deckert, president of the Oregon Business Association, said the group hopes "to have a leader of the state that wants to take on hard issues."
If Measure 97 passes, Deckert said, Oregon's governor will need to lead in deciding how to spend the $6 billion it would pour into the state's two-year budget. If it fails, he said, the governor will have to rally support for what could be painful budget cuts -- needed to help close an estimated $1.35 billion shortfall.
Either way, the governor will need to help mend fences.
"I feel like there's going to be some wreckage and carnage and high stakes," Deckert said of the day after the election. "It's go time at that point."
Deckert, who served with Brown during his six years in the Senate and who has praised some of her decisions previously, declined to say whether Brown or Pierce exemplify the leadership Oregon needs from a governor.
Even Kitzhaber appeared to critique Brown for waiting to take a public position on Measure 97, writing his thoughts in a lengthy Facebook post in June. Brown eventually endorsed the measure in early August.
Oregon's first woman governor, Democrat Barbara Roberts, rejected criticism that Brown is not a strong leader. "People look at her and they see this short woman," said Roberts, who also supports Measure 97. "But from my perspective, she stands very tall in her political courage."
House Minority Leader Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, argues Brown's decision not to negotiate over Measure 97 was political -- and not a sign of weakness.
"You're the governor, you make the options that are on the table," McLane said. "She's been around the building 25 years. She knows politics. When something fails on Kate Brown's watch, it's because she chooses for it to fail."
McLane now says that's what he believes happened in 2015, when Brown brought a bipartisan group of lawmakers to hammer out a $343.5 million transportation package.
Brown was willing to change the state's low-carbon fuels program, enraging some lawmakers. The deal fell apart, as House Democrats balked and Brown faced pressure from environmentalists, including billionaire Tom Steyer, to maintain the fuels program. Brown now says she will not repeal the low-carbon fuels law as part of a transportation deal.
"Kate Brown could have forced that through," McLane now says of the 2015 transportation deal, after saying "criticism doesn't lie with the governor" in comments to the The Oregonian/OregonLive last year. "Other governors have pushed things through."
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Last month, one of Oregon's top investment officials publicly called Oregon's $22 billion pension debt "a moral issue" and urged Brown and lawmakers to find solutions.
So far, Brown has seized on just one: a plan "to increase investment returns" by giving new management powers to the Oregon Treasury's investment division. But even at best, current estimates show, the plan would save $1 billion over 20 years.
Brown has dismissed other ideas that might save far more money, some pitched by a bipartisan pair of senators, as politically impossible or too likely to wind up in court.
The investment plan was initially hatched by Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler. Until Kitzhaber resigned, Wheeler and Brown were widely expected to vie for governor in 2018. Wheeler's version of the proposal never passed the Legislature, where Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, opposed it.
Brown said she's still vetting the idea and said she didn't know why Courtney opposed it.
"We are re-tooling the measure in hopes of getting support," Brown said.
Courtney, who mentioned his "very long, hard-working relationship with the governor," said "we're discussing that."
"I'm not going to get further than that," he said. "Clearly I took a very strong stance ... I'm not quite clear what the position is the governor's taken."
Courtney declined to comment on Brown's race against Pierce because he also credits the Republican with saving his life. Pierce treated Courtney during his battle with colon cancer.
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But Brown's political background before becoming governor, serving 17 years in the Legislature and six as secretary of state, has shown her willingness to push major policy fights.
A month after becoming governor, Brown signed Oregon's first-in-the-nation automatic voter registration law, which she'd championed for years as secretary of state.
And in the 1990s, she pushed tighter domestic violence bills through the Legislature. Brown, who worked as a lawyer in the foster care system, started her political career lobbying on women's and children's issues for the Women's Rights Coalition. She worked to pass Oregon's Family Medical Leave Act.
Maura Roche, a former lobbyist for Planned Parenthood who now works as a consultant, befriended Brown when she was doing that work. Roche's mother was chair of the Women's Rights Coalition.
"Women's issues were sort of treated like, 'What is the one or maybe two women's issues that we have to pass to sort of just check a box and say we did something for women?'" Roche said. "It was harder to get attention for these issues at that time."
As it turned out, Brown's work on domestic violence held personal significance. During a debate this fall, Brown revealed that she was a victim of domestic violence. Brown hasn't shared any other details, other than to say it didn't involve her husband, Dan Little.
Roche said Brown played an important role in passing the state's same-sex domestic partnership law and a bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Brown, now the nation's first openly bisexual governor, started working on the bills years before they passed in 2007. Roche said Brown lined up support from two Republican co-sponsors who "were facing death threats in their offices."
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No one disagrees about Brown's affability, both in public and private.
"When you're sitting with her, she's a very nice person," said McLane, the House Republican leader.
But with the governor hoping to enter her third annual legislative session next winter, is it still enough to win over lawmakers?
"We need a governor who is going to be a centrist, who is going to build consensus and actually get things done," McLane said.
Dmitri Palmateer, a Kitzhaber deputy chief of staff who became Brown's legislative liaison, said Brown was a reassuring figure in the wake of Kitzhaber's departure. When he walked with her through the Capitol mall, "it would take forever because she'd stop and talk to everybody."
"She is such a warm person, a genuinely warm person," said Palmateer, who worked with Brown for seven months. "This was exactly what Oregon needed."
Brown describes those moments as among the most challenging and rewarding parts of her job.
"What there's no school in is the incredible, extraordinary moments that happen to you as governor," Brown said.
Brown remembers the "extreme pain" and "the suffering in the families" of shooting victims in Roseburg last fall. But she also remembers joyful moments.
Earlier this year, she said, an eighth-grader in Lane County who'd led Brown on a school tour asked to shadow the governor for a day. The girl got her wish. Then, this fall, Brown saw the girl near the front row at a debate in Eugene.
"So you can imagine the confidence that gave me," Brown said. "I will never forget that moment."
-- Hillary Borrud
503-294-4034; @hborrud