Les AuCoin
Walter Leslie AuCoin is an American politician. In 1974 he became the first person from the Democratic Party to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from since it was formed in 1892. The seat has been held by Democrats ever since.
AuCoin's 18-year tenure—from the 94th United States Congress through the 102nd—is the sixth-longest in Oregon history. In his career, AuCoin took a prominent role in abortion rights, local and national environmental issues, multiple-use management of federal forests, and national security. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, he wrote the ban to stop Interior Secretary James Watt's plan to open the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration. AuCoin was an early advocate of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and arms control with the Soviet Union, and a critic of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the rightist government of El Salvador in the 1980s. At the time of his retirement in 1993, he was 84th in overall House seniority, dean of the Oregon House delegation, a majority whip-at-large, and a veteran member of the House Appropriations Committee.
AuCoin was a two-term member of the Oregon House of Representatives from 1971 to 1974. In his second term, he was House Majority Leader, at the age of 31. He is a full-time author, writer, lecturer and occasional blogger. AuCoin is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. He and his wife Susan live in Portland.
Early life
AuCoin was born in Portland, Oregon, on October 21, 1942, to Francis Edgar AuCoin, a short order cook from Portland, Maine, and Alice Audrey Darrar, a waitress from Madras, Oregon. When he was four, his father abandoned the family. Les and his brother Leland moved with their mother to Redmond, Oregon, then a small Central Oregon sawmill and farming town, living on her restaurant wages and tips. AuCoin attended Redmond High School, where he was elected most valuable player on the school's basketball team. He also joined the staff of the school newspaper, where he discovered an aptitude for writing—a skill that would help propel him into journalism, Congress and, in political retirement, life as a writer. In 1960, he became the first male in his extended family to graduate from high school.AuCoin enrolled at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, then transferred to Portland State University. In 1961, he enlisted in the United States Army. He was assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division and the 10th Mountain Division where he served as a public information specialist, writing dispatches to The Nashville Banner, the Louisville Courier-Journal, The Nashville Tennessean, Stars and Stripes, and Army Times, among other publications. AuCoin's Army postings included Fort Ord, California; Fort Slocum, New York; Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Sullivan Barracks, West Germany. While stationed in the segregated South, AuCoin was caught up in a near race riot in reaction to a sit-in by blacks at an all-white lunch counter, an event that crystallized his zeal for progressive politics.
Following his Army career, AuCoin worked for one summer at The Redmond Spokesman newspaper, then returned to Pacific University, where he was hired as the director of the school's public information department and simultaneously completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1969. He married Susan Swearingen in 1964, and the couple had two children: Stacy in 1965 and Kelly in 1967.
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.During his time in the Oregon House, AuCoin championed environmental, consumer protection, and civil rights issues.
As the Democratic floor leader, he helped pass maverick Republican Governor Tom McCall's plan 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 that had been earmarked solely for roads. AuCoin also chaired the committee that led the efforts to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
U.S. Congress
In 1974, United States congressman Wendell Wyatt of Oregon's 1st congressional district announced that he would not seek a sixth term. AuCoin won a five-way Democratic primary with more than 50% of the vote and then faced Republican state public utility commissioner Diarmuid O'Scannlain in the general election. With the Watergate scandal fresh in the minds of voters, AuCoin became the first Democrat ever elected to the 1st district, winning 56% of the vote to O'Scannlain's 44%. He was subsequently re-elected eight times despite being initially targeted by the national Republican Party as "an easy mark." After AuCoin's departure, the Republican Party continued to regard the district as one they could expect to win, though the Democratic Party has held the seat ever since.Defense
In 1981, AuCoin won a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, and two years later, was appointed to the subcommittee on Defense appropriations. AuCoin became a legislative critic of weaponizing space, opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, basing his opposition on probability theory, holding that it could not fully defend the United States in the event of an attack. He also authored a legislative ban on U.S. flight tests of anti-satellite weapons, which carried the force of law unless the president certified that the Soviet Union tested a similar weapon of its own. His amendment effectively legislated arms control for the first time through an act of Congress.AuCoin supported the nuclear freeze movement and was a leading critic of President Reagan's proposed MX missile, arguing that such "first strike" weapons would prompt the Soviet Union to match them, and, since a first strike ability favored the aggressor, reasoning that such an event would increase the vulnerability of the U.S.
Although he opposed the Reagan administration on strategic weapons, AuCoin used his position on the defense subcommittee to improve U.S. conventional arms. On an inspection tour at Fort Benning, he learned from the commander of the United States Army Infantry School that replacement of the aging M47 Dragon anti-tank missile was a major infantry priority because it exposed its operator to enemy return fire until his round found its target. AuCoin, himself a former infantryman, pressed for the development of a modern substitute, often resisting the U.S. Army Missile Command and other agencies that favored other technologies. AuCoin's legislation resulted in the adoption of the FGM-148 Javelin missile, which put its homing device in the round rather than the launcher to allow its operator to fire and immediately seek cover. The Javelin was first used in the 2003 Iraq War and is considered by some military scholars to be "revolutionary" in its potential to put infantry on a more equal footing against armor in conventional land warfare.
Foreign policy
AuCoin's opposition to U.S. support of authoritarian governments in El Salvador and Guatemala and the Nicaraguan Contras—irregular forces armed by the Reagan administration to topple the Sandinista government—led him to travel frequently to Central America to document right wing human rights abuses. In 1987, a constituent of AuCoin's named Ben Linder was killed by Contra forces while helping build a small hydroelectric electricity generator for Nicaraguan villagers. Pressed by AuCoin to investigate, the U.S. State Department noted discrepant accounts of Linder's death: the Contras asserted that Linder died in a firefight, but village witnesses claimed the Contras gave no opportunity to surrender and assassinated Linder at point-blank range.In his second congressional term, AuCoin's 1978 amendment to grant partial most favored nation trade status to the People's Republic of China was the first China trade bill to reach the House floor. Though narrowly defeated, it presaged the United States' formal normalization of political and trade relations with China less than a year later. In February 1979, AuCoin led a trade mission of Oregon business leaders to China, the first such delegation from any U.S. state.
Oregon economy
AuCoin used his seat on the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee to address a number of economic priorities throughout Oregon, including construction of the Oregon Trail Center in economically distressed Baker City, renovation of Crater Lake Lodge, restoration of the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde and Confederated Tribes of Siletz, and construction of the Seafood Consumer Research Center in Astoria and the Fort Clatsop Memorial Visitors Center.Working together, AuCoin and Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield secured federal funding for the construction of Portland's acclaimed east- and west-side light rail projects, the largest public works project in Oregon history. Since its unveiling, the rail system has guided urban growth and spawned an estimated $3.5 billion in new construction in the Portland metropolitan area. For his work on the project, a plaza at one of the stations is dedicated to him.
AuCoin had a hand in the rescue of Northwest lumber and plywood mills during the recession of the early 1980s. The mills faced financial ruin when federal timber sales contracts they had purchased at a face value of hundreds of millions of dollars were rendered worthless by the collapse of the lumber and plywood markets. Along with Senators Hatfield and Howard Metzenbaum, AuCoin helped write the Federal Timber Contract Payment Modification Act of 1984. After requiring timber companies to pay a penalty to the U.S. Treasury, the bill released the firms from their contracts and allowed them to return approximately of standing timber to the government, much of it commercially pre-thinned.