Oregon House of Representatives
In 1968, AuCoin's opposition to the Vietnam War led him to co-chair Eugene McCarthy's Presidential campaign in Oregon's Washington County, west of Portland. AuCoin stayed with McCarthy after President Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out of the race. McCarthy's upset victory over Robert F. Kennedy in the Oregon Democratic primary encouraged AuCoin to run for elective office in 1970, seeking and winning an open seat in the Oregon House of Representatives in Washington County. Two years later, he was re-elected to the 57th Oregon Legislative Assembly. The Democrats took control of the chamber and he was elected House Majority Leader, the second highest position in the House.
In his time in the Oregon House, AuCoin was noted for championing environmental, consumer protection, and civil rights issues. As the Democrats’ floor leader, he helped pass maverick Republican Governor Tom McCall's plan (opposed by legislative Republicans and later rejected by voters) to provide 95% state funding for public schools, enacted statewide land use planning rules, reduced penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana, and established funding of mass transit from highway funds previously earmarked solely for roads. AuCoin also chaired the committee that led the efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
Read more about this topic: Les AuCoin
Famous quotes containing the words oregon and/or house:
“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it—low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion—and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)