Jack Roberts grew up in Eugene, where he graduated from Sheldon High School, the University of Oregon School of Journalism and the University of Oregon Law School, then acquired an LL.M in Taxation from the New York University of Law School. After ten years as an attorney in private practice, Jack was first appointed and then twice elected to the Lane County Board of Commissioners. In 1994, he was elected state labor commissioner, an office to which he was reelected in 1998. He finished second in the 2002 Republican Primary for Governor, behind Kevin Mannix and ahead of Ron Saxton. Since 2003, Jack has been the executive director for Lane Metro Partnership, a nonprofit economic development agency for Eugene, Springfield and Lane County. The focus of this organization is on fostering business investment through recruitment, retention and expansion of traded sector businesses. Jack and his wife, Tammy, still live in Eugene with their three sons, John, Joe and Jake.
Originally published in The Oregonian — May 17, 2012 – Primary 2012 aftermath: Lawyers and judges steal the show this election You know it’s an unusual election when the most interesting statewide races are those in which only lawyers and judges are running. Despite indications from a recent SurveyUSA poll, the magnitude of Ellen Rosenblum’s [...]
Originally published in The Oregonian — April 19, 2012 — Oregon Supreme Court race provides intriguing primary candidates – With the Republican presidential nomination apparently decided and only Democrats having any candidates for Oregon attorney general, not to mention the labor commissioner race being bumped to November, the major choices left for all statewide voters [...]
Secretary of State Kate Brown’s surprise decision to move the Commissioner of Labor election from May to November may prove to provide Knute Buehler with his strongest issue in challenging Brown in that same November election. – Originally published in The Oregonian — 04-05-12 – Why the labor commissioner election controversy won’t die – Questions [...]
Originally published in The Oregonian — 03-23-12 — Did Kate Brown mishandle the labor commissioner election decision? Knute Buehler, the lone Republican candidate for secretary of state, just got a significant in-kind contribution from an unlikely source — his opponent, Secretary of State Kate Brown. Generally, the job of secretary of state is so nondescript [...]
Originally published in The Oregonian — 3/8/12 – With no governor or U.S. Senate race on the Oregon ballot this year, can voter interest be stirred by the four intermediate nonjudicial statewide offices that are up for grabs? History suggests not, but at least two of those races deserve special attention, particularly since they should [...]
Originally published [here] in The Oregonian 2/23/12 – In 2010, when Oregonians voted to amend our state constitution to require annual legislative sessions, the main argument in favor of the change was that we could no longer expect a biennial budget to meet our needs without an annual checkup. The wisdom of this view seemed [...]
Originally published in The Oregonian 1/26/12: Now that basketball season is in full swing, I find myself watching the Republican presidential debates and wondering when the coach is going to call timeout and bring a whole new team in off the bench. “OK, Chris Christie, get in there for Romney. Jeb Bush, go take Gingrich’s [...]
OUR BUDGET CRISES ARE POLITICAL, NOT ECONOMIC - Once again we seem to be moving toward another self-imposed budget crisis in Washington, D.C., this time over the scheduled expiration of the one-year payroll tax cut and extension of unemployment benefits that were passed last December. At one level the crisis is self-imposed because both parties [...]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OREGONLIVE.COM 12/01/11 – When John Kitzhaber graduated from South Eugene High School in 1965, his goal was to attend Dartmouth College, where his father once taught. Unfortunately, his C average as a self-described unmotivated student didn’t qualify him for the school of his choice. Instead, he had to attend the University of [...]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OREGONLIVE.COM 11/03/11 – It’s no surprise that Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley publicly support SolarWorld’s call for tariffs on their Chinese competitors amid allegations of unfair trade practices by the Chinese government. After all, the German-based company has a plant in Hillsboro that employs 1,000 Oregonians whose jobs are at [...]
IS RICK PERRY CONFUSED ON IMMIGRATION OR ARE WE? – Originally published on Oregonlive.com 10/07/11 – Rick Perry has revealed some rough edges since joining the race for president, but the issue that has hurt him most is the one for which I like him best; namely, his defense of the law allowing Texas high [...]
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OREGONLIVE.COM 09/08/11 by JACK ROBERTS - After spending August blasting Republicans for putting political gamesmanship ahead of problem-solving, President Barack Obama returned to Washington, D.C., at the end of the month and announced he would address a joint session of Congress on the crucial issue of jobs at 8 p.m. EST on [...]
In Part I one of this column (which appeared on Northwest Free Press on August 27), I gave an example of how conservatives and liberals in America can use the same words and grammar but have very different understandings of what is being said. That example was Mitt Romney’s statement in Iowa that “corporations are [...]
It looks like its official. The United States is now a bilingual nation. Only the two languages we speak aren’t English and Spanish but Liberal and Conservative. For the most part, this is even more confusing than the bilingualism in parts of Canada, where at least everyone recognizes whether someone is speaking French or English. [...]
Anyone who doubts the essentially political nature of Standard & Poor’s decision last Friday, August 5, to downgrade the U.S. credit rating obviously hasn’t read the rating agency’s own explanation for what they did. “We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S.,” S & P explained, “because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising [...]
The on-going debate over raising the debt ceiling has focused on many areas of disagreement between Democrats and Republicans but none bigger than the Republican determination not to raise taxes. Many pundits credit this to the political power of Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform who have spent years collecting “No Tax Increase” [...]
Originally published on Oregonlive.com 07/14/11 – The report last week of anemic job growth for the past two months — just 18,000 new jobs in June and a downward revision of May’s new jobs number to just 25,000, less than half the initial estimate — has people speculating that the United States may be on [...]
The liberal media has apparently decided to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War by reviving one of the great debates leading up to that conflict by attacking Michele Bachmann’s interpretation role of the framers of the U.S. Constitution in the eventual elimination of slavery. The current controversy began with a speech by Michele [...]
