High-profile Senator resigns
Sen. Vicki Walker will take top parole board slot
Sunday, July 12, 2009 2:17 AM PDT
BRAD CAIN
Associated Press
SALEM — An outspoken Democratic state senator who once considered running against Gov. Ted Kulongoski is quitting the Legislature to become head of the Oregon Board of Parole and Supervision.
State Sen. Vicki Walker of Eugene was appointed by Kulongoski to the parole post, and will resign her $21,000-a-year legislator job as of Sunday. The parole job pays a $97,000 annual salary.
Walker and Kulongoski have had their political differences over the years. But Kulongoski issued a statement Thursday saying he appointed Walker to the parole board because she understands the “complexities’’ of the criminal justice system.
The Eugene legislator contributed to former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s political demise in 2004 by helping a newspaper obtain court documents about Goldschmidt and the 14-year-old girl he sexually abused while he was mayor of Portland.
At the time, Walker said Kulongoski had been too chummy with Goldschmidt, who she said was part of an “old boy network’’ in state government. She also criticized what she called Kulongoski’s lack of leadership on issues such as education and health care. However, Walker in February 2006 dropped plans to challenge Kulongoski in that year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in which Kulongoski was seeking re-election.
In the years since then, Walker and Kulongoski have managed to patch up their strained relations.
“We decided we could have mutual respect for each other,’’ Walker said after Kulongoski announced her appointment. “The governor loves my spunk, as much as it gives him grief sometimes.’’
Kulongoski’s spokeswoman, Anna Richter Taylor, said she realizes the appointment might surprise some, given the harsh criticism that Walker leveled at Kulongoski just a few years ago.
“That’s politics,’’ Richter Taylor said. “The governor appointed her because he thinks she is very smart; she’s a hard worker; and she is committed to whatever job she takes on.’’
Over her years in the Legislature, Walker has shown a capacity to emphasize her personal life and her difficult past as a means of winning support for causes that are important to her.
During a 1999 House committee hearing on a bill that would have required parents be told before their teenage daughters are allowed to have abortions, Walker disclosed that she was raped as a child — and said that was one reason she opposed the legislation.
That same year, during a House floor debate on an adoption bill, Walker surprised her colleagues by disclosing that she was once a surrogate mother and had not been allowed to watch the daughter she bore grow up.
