Daily Astorian Finds Frohnmayer "most interesting politician in Oregon" Editorial January 3, 2008

John Frohnmayer is the most interesting politician in Oregon this campaign season. Running as an Independent candidate for U.S. senator, Frohnmayer has a simple strategy.

John Frohnmayer's senate candidacy might be a pipe dream. Or it might work.
In a three-way race, he reasons, a candidate will likely win with 35 percent of the vote.

In Mike Riley's recent polling, Frohnmayer was the only candidate to gain since Riley's prior look at the race. The incumbent Sen. Gordon Smith is stuck at around 39 percent, and Democratic candidates have similarly not moved or have declined.

Frohnmayer's appeal is to the voter who is fed up with the Republican and Democratic parties and the partisan bickering that defines the stalemate in Congress. The Independent candidate says he won't match Gordon Smith's huge bankroll or the campaign war chest that national Democrats will lay on Smith's eventual opponent. But Frohnmayer says he won't need that much, and that he'll conserve his cash for the last weeks of the race.

This may be a pipe dream. It might work. But Frohnmayer at least is not a cardboard cut-out.