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Steve Novick is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith. Novick spoke to the Douglas County Democrats at Chi’s Restaurant in Roseburg.
It took Steve Novick only a few seconds to dispense with the niceties Thursday evening in Roseburg and tell a Democratic audience why he jumped into the primary race to oppose U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith.
“I’m running for the United States Senate, because, as I think you’ve heard before, this country is going to hell in a hen basket and somebody’s got to do something about it,” Novick said, during a speech before the Douglas County Democratic Party.
One of those hen baskets Novick said, was the war in Iraq. He said the United States military should never have gone there in the first place and that we should pull out as soon as possible.
“We don’t need to leave a residual force to be a target and a provocation and a recruiting tool for Al-Qaida,” the Portland resident told an audience of about two dozen people at Chi’s Garden Restaurant.
He said we should reach out to some of Iraq’s neighbors, including countries hostile to the U.S. such as Iran and Syria, and see if we can work together to stop the violence in Iraq.
“There are groups within Iraq that they have enough influence with that, they could help stop the violence. And if they say ‘OK,’ then I think it’s worth working with them to try and make that happen. If that’s not possible, then I think you just get out.”
If the United States does pull out of Iraq, Novick said he knows it won’t make all of the problems go away.
“I think bad things will happen, but bad things are happening now. We can’t solve this mess by ourselves. We may have created it, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that we can solve it. And we cannot stay there indefinitely, the way even as some of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to be saying.”
Novick, 44, grew up in Cottage Grove and attended school in Yoncalla during seventh grade and part of his eighth-grade year before his family moved back to Cottage Grove. He attended classes at the University of Oregon after Cottage Grove schools shut down for budgetary reasons for a few months while he was in high school. He received permission to remain at UO and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1981 at age 18.
He joked that some of his friends still tell him it’s never too late to go back to school to get his GED.
Novick went to Harvard Law School and later became a prosecutor for the United States Justice Department under the Reagan and Bush administrations. He focused on bringing lawsuits against polluters for violations of the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
Novick was the lead prosecutor in the Love Canal case, which involved the discovery of toxic waste seeping out from a pit covering more than three dozen city blocks in Niagara Falls, N.Y. A school had been built on the site in the 1950s and school officials had ignored warnings that the site was unsuitable for such use. In the late 1970s, parents began questioning whether their children’s medical problems were connected to leaking waste at the site. Occidental Petroleum, which had originally owned the land, was sued by the Environmental Protection Agency and later agreed to pay $129 million in restitution.
After spending nearly nine years with the Department of Justice, Novick returned to Oregon and served as chief of staff to the Democrats in the Oregon Senate. He also served as executive director for the Center for Constructive Citizen Action, which fought Measure 91, an initiative sponsored by Bill Sizemore in 2000.
Measure 91 would have allowed individuals and companies to deduct all of their federal income taxes on their state returns. The measure, which was defeated, would have cost the state more than $1 billion a year in lost revenue.
Novick also served as policy director for Ted Kulongoski’s first run for governor in 2002.
If elected, Novick said he would sign on as a co-sponsor of legislation to address global warming, to improve health insurance coverage and reform the insurance industry, to expand protections for workers seeking to organize, and to take away tax incentives that allow drug companies to write off huge television ad budgets as a business expense.
One of the criticisms of the federal government, Novick said, is that agencies work to spend any remaining money they have before the end of the year to hedge against the following year’s budget being cut because the additional money isn’t needed.
If elected, Novick said he would work to enact a program used by former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. Locke had a program where he told agencies that had a surplus at the end of the year they could keep half of the money saved and spend it the next year without it affecting the following year’s allocation. The remainder was placed in a special fund that helped finance school construction projects around the state.
Novick said a similar program operated on a national level would provide great dividends for both the government and schools.
During his hourlong appearance, Novick never mentioned Jeff Merkley, the Oregon House Speaker who is also running in the Democratic primary. Instead, he focused his remarks on Smith, the Pendleton Republican ending his second six-year term in the Senate.
He described Smith as a rich businessman out of step with the struggles of working Oregonians. He said Smith worked to earn a large tax break for a drug company but couldn’t push through an extension of the timber safety net, even with his Republican Party in control of Congress and President George W. Bush in the White House.
“He wasn’t able to get it done. As I said, he was able to get $11 billion for Pfizer, but he wasn’t able to get an extension for the county payments when the Republicans were in charge,” Novick said.
• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.
“I’m running for the United States Senate, because, as I think you’ve heard before, this country is going to hell in a hen basket and somebody’s got to do something about it,” Novick said, during a speech before the Douglas County Democratic Party.
One of those hen baskets Novick said, was the war in Iraq. He said the United States military should never have gone there in the first place and that we should pull out as soon as possible.
“We don’t need to leave a residual force to be a target and a provocation and a recruiting tool for Al-Qaida,” the Portland resident told an audience of about two dozen people at Chi’s Garden Restaurant.
He said we should reach out to some of Iraq’s neighbors, including countries hostile to the U.S. such as Iran and Syria, and see if we can work together to stop the violence in Iraq.
“There are groups within Iraq that they have enough influence with that, they could help stop the violence. And if they say ‘OK,’ then I think it’s worth working with them to try and make that happen. If that’s not possible, then I think you just get out.”
If the United States does pull out of Iraq, Novick said he knows it won’t make all of the problems go away.
“I think bad things will happen, but bad things are happening now. We can’t solve this mess by ourselves. We may have created it, but unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that we can solve it. And we cannot stay there indefinitely, the way even as some of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to be saying.”
Novick, 44, grew up in Cottage Grove and attended school in Yoncalla during seventh grade and part of his eighth-grade year before his family moved back to Cottage Grove. He attended classes at the University of Oregon after Cottage Grove schools shut down for budgetary reasons for a few months while he was in high school. He received permission to remain at UO and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1981 at age 18.
He joked that some of his friends still tell him it’s never too late to go back to school to get his GED.
Novick went to Harvard Law School and later became a prosecutor for the United States Justice Department under the Reagan and Bush administrations. He focused on bringing lawsuits against polluters for violations of the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
Novick was the lead prosecutor in the Love Canal case, which involved the discovery of toxic waste seeping out from a pit covering more than three dozen city blocks in Niagara Falls, N.Y. A school had been built on the site in the 1950s and school officials had ignored warnings that the site was unsuitable for such use. In the late 1970s, parents began questioning whether their children’s medical problems were connected to leaking waste at the site. Occidental Petroleum, which had originally owned the land, was sued by the Environmental Protection Agency and later agreed to pay $129 million in restitution.
After spending nearly nine years with the Department of Justice, Novick returned to Oregon and served as chief of staff to the Democrats in the Oregon Senate. He also served as executive director for the Center for Constructive Citizen Action, which fought Measure 91, an initiative sponsored by Bill Sizemore in 2000.
Measure 91 would have allowed individuals and companies to deduct all of their federal income taxes on their state returns. The measure, which was defeated, would have cost the state more than $1 billion a year in lost revenue.
Novick also served as policy director for Ted Kulongoski’s first run for governor in 2002.
If elected, Novick said he would sign on as a co-sponsor of legislation to address global warming, to improve health insurance coverage and reform the insurance industry, to expand protections for workers seeking to organize, and to take away tax incentives that allow drug companies to write off huge television ad budgets as a business expense.
One of the criticisms of the federal government, Novick said, is that agencies work to spend any remaining money they have before the end of the year to hedge against the following year’s budget being cut because the additional money isn’t needed.
If elected, Novick said he would work to enact a program used by former Washington Gov. Gary Locke. Locke had a program where he told agencies that had a surplus at the end of the year they could keep half of the money saved and spend it the next year without it affecting the following year’s allocation. The remainder was placed in a special fund that helped finance school construction projects around the state.
Novick said a similar program operated on a national level would provide great dividends for both the government and schools.
During his hourlong appearance, Novick never mentioned Jeff Merkley, the Oregon House Speaker who is also running in the Democratic primary. Instead, he focused his remarks on Smith, the Pendleton Republican ending his second six-year term in the Senate.
He described Smith as a rich businessman out of step with the struggles of working Oregonians. He said Smith worked to earn a large tax break for a drug company but couldn’t push through an extension of the timber safety net, even with his Republican Party in control of Congress and President George W. Bush in the White House.
“He wasn’t able to get it done. As I said, he was able to get $11 billion for Pfizer, but he wasn’t able to get an extension for the county payments when the Republicans were in charge,” Novick said.
• You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.
