Oregon senator seeking new term has come on strong as progressive

PORTLAND – Jeff Merkley, who was chosen by the Democratic Party establishment over a liberal activist in his first run for U.S. Senate, makes an unlikely hero for the party’s left wing.

But in the six years since going to Washington, D.C., he has become one of Congress’ strongest champions for progressive causes – from cracking down on Wall Street to promoting gay rights.

Merkley is back on the campaign trail asking Oregonians for another term as he faces a Republican who looked to pose a serious threat to his tenure. But Portland neurosurgeon Monica Wehby has been held back by a series of embarrassing stories from her campaign and personal life. She’s made Merkley’s popularity with liberals a central theme of her case against him.

Merkley doesn’t talk up his clout on the left or present himself as a progressive crusader. He focuses on his working-class upbringing.

“I still live in a blue-collar community and there are very few senators who do,” said Merkley, who lives in far east Portland, miles from the craft breweries and craftsman bungalows that have drawn young people to the inner east side. “We need more legislators who live with working people, who live in those communities.”

Born in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, Merkley reminds voters he’s the son of a millworker who lost his job when the mill closed. After a stop in Roseburg, his family settled in Portland, where his dad worked as a mechanic.

He’s financially comfortable now, with a six-figure congressional salary and four rental properties in Portland and Washington, D.C., according to his personal financial disclosure filed with the Senate. But he said his family’s ability to make ends meet and send him to college, despite a modest income, is what drives him to push for the populist ideas that have raised his profile on the left.

Merkley, along with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, successfully pushed Congress to attach the so-called Volcker rule to a 2010 financial regulation law aimed at preventing practices that contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown. The rule is intended to stop banks from trading for their own profit.

He steered the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a long-stymied bill outlawing workplace discrimination against gays, to a successful Senate vote last year. He was a vocal critic when President Barack Obama considered nominating Larry Summers to head the Federal Reserve, and he was an early critic of the Afghanistan War.

He fought to change the Senate’s rules of debate to tamp down on filibusters. He secured one victory: preventing the filibuster of executive branch and judicial nominations, except the Supreme Court.