Jackson County Democrats

JOHN KROGER www.johnkroger.com Born in Texas, a Marine at 17, John left the service at 20 to attend Yale University to study philosophy, graduating magna cum laude with both a B.A. and M.A. He worked for Chuck Schumer and Tom Foley, then in 1991 joined Bill Clinton’s fledgling presidential campaign as one of its first Washington hires. After short stints on the transition team and as a domestic policy advisor, he enrolled in Harvard Law School where he gravitated toward courses in legal history and the law’s philosophical underpinnings. John learned about efforts of prosecutors to bring Irish mobsters to justice at a stint in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston. He was himself a Federal Prosecutor from 1997 to 2000, working 70 to 80 hour weeks trying over 200 federal criminal cases involving mafia dons, public corruption, white collar crime, and narcotics trafficking; so he took a three month break for a trip on his bicycle from New York to Oregon. Then came the 9/11 attacks, and he reported to a command center in Manhattan where he processed search warrants and subpoenas to investigate potential terrorist cells. Oregon had captured his imagination, however, and he joined the faculty of Lewis & Clark in 2002, only to be asked to join the Enron Task Force in Portland, and lead the inquiry into Enron’s broadband business. In 2004 he was voted best teacher at Lewis & Clark in part because his teaching style is grounded in real-world applications.

KATE BROWN www.katebrownfororegon.comIn the great western tradition, Kate moved west; first to Colorado for her B.A., then on to Oregon for a law degree and Certificate in Environmental Law from Lewis & Clark. She has practiced family and juvenile law and taught at Portland State University. Elected in 1991 to two terms in the Oregon House of Representatives, She was then elected to the Oregon Senate in 1996 during the height of the Republican capture of the legislative process.
By 1998 she was Democratic Leader, successfully leading the Senate Democratic Caucus from a 10-20 minority to an 18-12 majority. After Governor Kitzhaber vetoed a Republican redistricting bill, Senator Brown took charge of offering an alternative plan for our Congressional districts that the Oregon courts adopted in its entirety. (Election laws and procedures are, of course, administered by the Secretary of State.) With Democrats squarely in the majority, she was elected Oregon’s first woman Senate Majority Leader in 2004. As the ranking Democratic leader, Kate developed a reputation for working effectively with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. While she sees a need to reform the initiative system, she views that as a prelude to making government more relevant for succeeding generations. A strong proponent of civic engagement, she advocates for ways to reach out to a generation that lives on-line, is connected instantly by text messaging, and is involved and engaged in it own way.”