Oregon AFSCME members are invited to a special April 29 fundraiser for Jeff Merkley that will feature noted Vietnam veteran and former U.S. Senator Max Cleland.

 

Merkley, Speaker of the Oregon House, is the Council 75-endorsed candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. The April 29 event costs $25 for union members, and will occur from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the ILWU Local 40 Union Hall at 2401 NW 23^rd Ave.

 

You can make reservations by calling Merkley's campaign office at (503) 274-4439.

 

Here's some background on Cleland. After returning from Vietnam as a war hero and a highly decorated triple-amputee, Cleland was elected to the Georgia State Senate, where he distinguished himself as an advocate for his returning veterans. When fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, Carter appointed Cleland as administrator of the U.S. Veterans Administration.

Cleland returned to Georgia at the conclusion of the Carter presidency and went on to serve 14 years as Georgia's Secretary of State before being elected in 1996 to the U.S. Senate. He served in the Senate with distinction and as the November 2002 mid-term election neared, he enjoyed a significant lead in the polls over his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss. But then Chambliss parlayed a legendary "attack ad" on Cleland's opposition to President Bush's proposal to create the Department of Homeland Security to an unexpected upset.

 

The reality is that six months earlier, Cleland had co-sponsored the original bill to create a homeland security agency. He was not against creating the DHS, he was opposed to the Bush version of the bill, which — for unexplained "national security" reasons — stripped the 170,000 employees of the new agency of all civil service protection and denied them as well the right to unionize.

 

As the Atlanta Constitution newspaper noted, "Cleland's opposition to the labor provision somehow got twisted into proof that Cleland opposed the homeland security act and also America." Bounced from the Senate, Cleland has in recent years become a popular speaker nationwide and a virtual "object lesson" as to how far Republican advisor Karl Rove would stretch the truth in campaign ads.