Big ambition

BACK STORY • Steve Novick sees surprises ahead, not just for Smith

By todd murphy

The Portland Tribune, Aug 7, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (9 Reader comments)

Since April, former federal Department of Justice lawyer and state Democratic politico Steve Novick has quietly waged his campaign for Sen. Gordon Smith’s seat in D.C. As for all the naysayers, he says: “I think they’re underestimating me.”

JIM CLARK / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

They apparently weren’t wowed by the candidacy of Steve Novick.

When national Democratic leaders flew Portland state legislator and Oregon House of Representatives Speaker Jeff Merkley out to Washington, D.C., several weeks ago to persuade him – successfully, it turned out – to enter the race to challenge incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, the national Democrats already knew about Novick.

Longtime Oregon Democratic activist Novick had entered the race against Smith more than two months earlier – after a parade of bigger-name Oregon Democrats had decided against entering the race.

Since April 18, Novick had been quietly speaking at small campaign events. Railing against Smith and his votes in support of President Bush. Raising more than $190,000 for the race.

But traditional politicos apparently can’t quite decide what they think about Novick. And if traditional politicos had expected Novick to bow out now that the bigwig Democrats had weighed in, well, Novick apparently has other ideas.

Because Novick – all of 4 feet 9 inches tall, with a hook for a left hand and a talent for distilling political passion into pithy sound bites and political theater – is everything except traditional.

He entered the University of Oregon as a 14-year-old, after his Cottage Grove junior high school shut down because of a failed school levy. Four years later, with a UO history degree, he was off to Harvard Law School – where, in the words of one of his classmates – “he was four or five years younger than most of our classmates but significantly more articulate and intelligent.”

By the time he was 31, Novick was lead counsel for the U.S. government in its successful lawsuit to recover cleanup costs from the polluters who made New York’s Love Canal a toxic waste dump.

And then, when he might have turned his Justice Department experience into a lucrative job with a prominent law firm, Novick came back to Oregon – to first work for a losing Democratic U.S. Senate candidate and then as the lead staff person for the heavily outnumbered Democrats in the Oregon state Senate.

Now, as the 44-year-old Novick has decided it’s time for him to move from the political back stage to the main stage, national Democrats, at least, appear to be dismissing his candidacy.

And Novick scoffs at that dismissal.

“I’m not worrying about it. I think it’s hard for them to think outside their traditional thinking and imagine somebody who isn’t rich and who hasn’t held office as a viable candidate,” he says.

He won’t be leaving the race, he says. And he plans to win it.

“I think they’re underestimating me,” he says, matter-of-factly.

Contender shows contrast

Watching Novick talk to a group of two dozen Portlanders, many of them recent high school graduates, at a campaign event in a Southwest Portland home last week, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could offer a more stark contrast – physically, politically and otherwise – to Sen. Smith.

Smith was born in Pendleton, but as a child moved with his family to Maryland when his father became an assistant U.S. secretary of agriculture.

After getting his law degree and practicing law briefly, he took over management of his family’s frozen vegetable processing company in Eastern Oregon. He’s tall, with dark and – at least some Democrats like to say – perfectly coifed hair. “Nobody has hair quite like our junior senator,” Novick says, smiling.

Novick is not perfectly coifed. Talking to the group in Southwest Portland, he eventually leans his arm on the back of a dining chair, without bending over. At times, he runs his right hand through his hair; at time he uses it to clasp the hook at the end of his left arm.

He talks about his modest upbringing, about how his mother for years was a waitress at a hotel restaurant in Cottage Grove. (He uses that fact to criticize Smith’s vote to allow restaurants to avoid paying the minimum wage by counting waitresses’ tips.)

He talks about labor unions, frequent allies in his Oregon political work: “A lot of people think unions are old-fashioned. But they provide an essential way for people without much power to band together and negotiate with people who do have power.”

He talks about the war in Iraq and what he considers Smith’s far-too-late criticism of it: “Things aren’t going to be pretty after we get out. But things aren’t pretty now.”

And at least a couple of times, he doesn’t know exactly how to answer a question from the group – about what the United States should be doing in Darfur, for instance. He asks the questioner what he thinks should be done.

“I don’t know enough about Darfur,” Novick says. “To tell the truth, it’s something I know I should know more about than I do.”

Smith said to be vulnerable

Afterward, while some even in this politically novice audience wonder about Novick’s chances against Smith, several say they liked his directness – even in acknowledging what he didn’t know.

“This is the first time I’ve been revved up about a political candidate in quite a while,” says Jan Carpenter, a Beaverton High School teacher who, with her 18-year-old son, Joseph, hosted the event. “He’s smart. He’s articulate. He’s direct.”

Democrats – and some Republicans – believe that Smith will be vulnerable in his 2008 re-election race. That’s partly because of his own positions, political experts believe, partly because of his association with the national Republican Party, an unpopular president and a very unpopular war in Iraq. (Smith spokesman R.C. Hammond declined to comment about the race, or about Novick, for this story.)

Novick supporters say Novick’s manner – along with his appearance – will help him serve as an almost perfect contrast to Smith.

“He’s authentic,” says Portland pollster Lisa Grove, a longtime friend of Novick. “Voters are sick of hair-sprayed candidates, and this bland-platitudes stuff,” she says.

“This is a very change-oriented electorate,” Grove says. “And if he’s not the face of change, I don’t know what is.”

It’s easy to be remembered

Novick was born without a left hand, and without a fibula in each leg.

He sometimes walks with an uneven gait. But he dismisses any notion that his physical differences have had any effect on how he’s gone about life or in how people have treated him.

Still, he is willing to joke about his differences – to joke that he’s the only political candidate who can remove a hot oven rack without a potholder, for instance.

And his campaign, seeking advantages where it can find them, has embraced his physical differences. People visit his main campaign Web site by linking to www.votehook.com. Emblazoned across the site and on much of his campaign material is his slogan: “The fighter with the hard left hook.”

“I think there are people who might be a little bit uncomfortable with someone who looks different,” Novick says. “But if you demonstrate that you’re not uncomfortable with it, then it’ll be fine.”

The first job of politics, he says, is to be remembered. “And I think it will be fairly easy to remember the little guy with the left hook.”

But Novick’s definitely is a left hook – a worldview that fits neatly within much of Portland’s politics but maybe not so neatly with the politics of much of the rest of the state.

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