Michael Byrne: Campaign Update

"I taught thousands of children how to ski. I've been a CASA for a dozen years, for seven different kids."

Michael Bryne

"I don't have any money.  I get checks for five dollars and ten dollars.  I'm buying lawn signs 25 at a time."

Michael Byrne understands that he is different from the other six Democratic candidates.  He isn't just trying to represent the hard working blue collar workers of the District.  He is one himself.

Bryne is a union stonemason. He teaches the craft and does the work. He gets his hands dirty. He runs a small business and deals with payroll and bookkeeping and bidding on jobs.

He says that the struggle his campaign has faced getting traction and being taken seriously is the problem that American working people have generally. "Wealth and power reward wealth and power."  Working people don't have it, so it is hard to break through and get ahead.

 Newspaper people interview me then don't print an article, he said. "They are afraid of Greg Walden." Byrne understands the political frustration of working people. His campaign lives it: "The system is rigged for the rich and powerful."

Young Byrne, in Wasco County

That was Trump's message, and people in the 2nd District voted for Trump. Byrne says it, too, and he is frustrated that not enough people want to hear it from him. Special interest PACs give lavishly to Walden.  Walden has wealth and power.

Byrne watches the struggle of the six other candidates to create a political personae here in the District. Byrne is authentic. He has deep roots. "I was 12 years a soccer coach." Her reports teaching skiing. He was a middle school basketball coach. He coached Special Olympics for ten years. He played music for dying people in hospice. 

He made a life here and he contributed here. He built. 

Byrne telephoned me while he was busy putting up lawn signs  He was on his way to visit his 91 year old mother.  He said his mother still has a wooden campaign sign stored in her garage, a sign for Greg Walden's father, a legislator whose seat Greg inherited. "She has never voted for a Democrat in her life, but now she going to. Greg Walden's vote to reduce Medicaid was the last straw."  Byrne said his mother watched Walden sound all so compassionate and empathetic and like he genuinely cared about people, then he voted to take away health care from people who have nothing.

Stonework by Byrne

Byrne: "Greg is a passive-aggressive bully. That's how they present to the world. So very compassionate, then they screw you behind your back."

Byrne said he got into this race because he thought that if he could get past the primary election that the matchup against Greg Walden would be clear and very favorable to Byrne. People could see that DC was messed up and Walden was a big part of the problem. Byrne said voters would prefer an honest, direct working person who would fight for other working people, and that anyone could see that Walden was a fake and that partisan politics wasn't working.

Taxes. He says the tax bill that just passed was dangerous and morally wrong. "Running up a deficit at the top of a cycle is crazy. The rich donors are getting paid off before it all comes crashing down. Rich people don't rely on Social Security or Medicaid or public schools.  Working people do, so those programs have to work, which means they have to be paid for."  

The tax bill just adds them to the deficit for our grandchildren to pay, he told me.  "As a businessman I have to have income to pay for supplies and payroll."

Health Care. Byrne says the marketplace will force a change. "Premiums will be going up 20%.  People are going to be pissed.  Things are going to change because they have to change."  He said the consortium of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and Goldman Sachs may show a path to something that will work to change health care. "Otherwise costs will kill us."

From Byrne's campaign website.

War. "Trump is making trouble abroad to shore up his popularity." That is why Trump is stoking war with Iran."  Byrne says the appointment of John Bolton is a very bad omen.  "Trump knows his re-election depends on being a wartime president. People rally around the flag at a time of war." Bolton is the way to get to war.  Congress needs to step in, Byrne said.  "Congress, not the president, declares war, but Walden is complicit in letting Trump do whatever he wants. Republicans are weak. They are going along with Trump."

Bolton is the key to the new Trump direction, Byrne said. Trump wouldn't do this on his own. "Trump is motivated by puerile instincts.  John Bolton, though, wants war.  Bolton scares me."

Michael Bryne is likable and appealing person, spoken of warmly by his campaign opponents. He is outspoken. He is incautious. While some of the other candidates are conscious of avoiding divisive language and being a "bridge builder", Byrne has a different style. He appears to say exactly what is on his mind. He is conscious that he is representing both his candidacy and he reputation of working people. His original comment was that Trump was motivated "by sex" not war, unlike Bolton. I read the quotation back to him.  He asked to clean things up. He said I should replace the word "sex" with "puerile instincts."  Byrnes spelled puerile for me, in case I was unfamiliar with the word. Working people are intelligent and educated. He can be "Congressional" when he needs to be.

He presents three emotions simultaneously: anger, frustration, and joy.  He seems like a man with a mission, wanting to win, resigned to the likelihood of losing, and still happy in outlook.

At work

His political talk goes back and forth between the bad things in the world (health care taken away, unfair tax policy, portents of war, the environment endangered} and the good things he has been involved with. He has built beautiful things. He has helped neighbors. He is passing along a craft to the next generation. 

His website and Facebook page and forum appearances document a lifetime as a practicing Catholic, with a wife, children, grandchildren, and decades doing good things for kids. His presentations at forums, over breakfast, and in interviews are a jumble of those things: problems in the world, mixed with with the one-on-one hand work of doing good things with people and stones.

It creates a coherent picture of a potential congressman. There is a mental category for this.  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.  Davy Crocket. The homespun hero. Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. It might be a picture that translates into votes in his home county and among people who know him, and there may be thousands of them, who know and remember his community building work fondly. But this is a far-flung District and he says his life and campaign are not yet translating into money that would help him get known out and about. "I don't have rich friends."  

In Frank Capra movies the hero doesn't need money. The hero has what he needs: integrity, conviction, and a cause that is right. At movie end the public understands they have their hero. Michael Byrne burns with emotion that America can be and must be better at serving the needs of our fellow Americans, as a nation, not simply one on one. "We have an unacceptable rate of childhood poverty. In a civilized nation, how can we let that happen?"


[A note on comments.  I love getting them.  Sign them, please.  I will be removing what I consider hit-and-run criticism of any candidate of either party running in Oregon.]