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Senate District 6 candidates spar on illegal immigrants
By Diane Dietz
The Register-Guard
Published: Sunday, October 15, 2006

Democrat Bill Morrisette, who's seeking a second term in the state Senate this November, considers himself a lifelong warrior on behalf of ordinary people against oppressive corporate power.

Morrisette faces a challenge this election from Lebanon Republican Renee Lindsey for the Senate District 6 seat.

Lindsey, who has scant political experience besides a school board term, says she's running with a single issue in mind, and that is to encourage illegal immigrants to leave the state.

To Morrisette, a highlight of his first term was setting the state minimum wage - which meant taking on the restaurant lobby.

His low-cost medical prescription initiative, Measure 44 on the ballot this fall, would extend cheaper medications to uninsured Oregonians - which meant a fight with the pharmaceutical lobby.

Next in his sights is setting a 15-cent tax on each 12 ounce beer sold in the state, and that means going toe-to-toe with the powerful beer and wine lobby. The revenue would pay for alcohol, drug and mental health treatment.

"We're fighting, basically, the big corporations," he said.

The district takes in a wide geographic area, which encompasses Brownsville, Springfield and Creswell.

Lindsey said many of the state's problems would be solved if illegal immigrants left.

"We should make this an unfriendly environment. If it's unfriendly they will seek out another residence," she said.

She said state government may be spending as much as $1 billion a year on illegal residents, through schools, social services and prisons.

"There's a lot of money going out on individuals that really shouldn't be here, and that's taking away monies from real Oregon citizens," she said.

Lindsey said the state should verify the citizenship of everyone who holds an Oregon driver's license or gets services from the state.

Illegal immigration "affects everything," Lindsey said. "Until we clean our house, we can't make our house better."

Morrisette, on the other hand, said illegal immigrants come to Oregon because employers hire them and depend on them. They're woven into industries: food service, agriculture, construction, he said.

"They're here because they're saving people a lot of money, economically," he said.

If the state rid itself of illegal immigrants, the blow to the economy might be greater than the savings the state and school districts would realize from not serving them, Morrisette said.

In the meantime, it doesn't make sense to cut them off from education, health care and driver's licenses, he said.

Oregonians have a stake in immigrants learning English, becoming literate and gaining citizenship, he said. It benefits the state to have educated drivers on the road, so denying licenses doesn't make sense, he said. Hospital emergency rooms must take all comers by federal law, so there's no way to deny medical care, he said.

Health care has been Morrisette's main issue. Since he entered the Legislature in 1999, he's served on a health committee. He was chairman last session, and he expects to run the committee in the Democrat-controlled Senate next year.

Morrisette said he wants to expand medical coverage to all children in the state with money from an increased cigarette tax, or some other way.

Lindsey, who says she has libertarian leanings, said the state should leave health care to private enterprise. "Right now, hospitals take emergency care for anyone. I don't know that the state getting involved in this will solve the problem," she said.

In some circles, Morrisette is a bit of a populist hero because he has been one of a few lawmakers willing to oppose the powerful Oregon Beer and Wine Distributors Association.

For years, Morrisette has tried to raise the taxes on beer to raise money to pay for drug and alcohol treatment and mental health services. In his view, the distillers shift the damage caused by their wares - the social problems - onto taxpayers.

Morrisette said he got an early taste of corporate political power growing up in Anaconda, Mont., home of the Anaconda Copper Mining Co.

"You had to support the the ACM to be elected in Anaconda or Butte. They controlled everything," he said.

Morrisette said that before the 2007 Legislative session starts, he'll file a citizen's initiative to raise the beer tax.

"We're going to ask for a 15-cents-a-drink increase with the idea that during the session we might get 10 cents from the industry, which would be fine," he said.