Tina Smith: “I thank my colleague. It seems only yesterday but it was over 8 years ago that Senator Wyden and I engaged in a very…”

“I thank my colleague. It seems only yesterday but it was over 8 years ago that Senator Wyden and I engaged in a very hotly contested race for the seat of Bob Packwood, formerly the seat of Wayne Morse. I believe he was called ``the tiger of the Senate,'' a man for whom Senator Wyden had worked earlier in his college years. Ours was a campaign that Oregonians will not soon forget because it was so hard fought. It was a special election. Ron Wyden won that race, and I narrowly lost that race. Yet, through a matter of circumstances, it was possible for me to continue running for the seat of Mark Hatfield with his announced retirement. So a few months later, I was elected to the U.S. Senate to the Hatfield seat, the McNary seat, the Baker seat. I think it was a question on every Oregonian's mind and certainly in the press whether Ron Wyden and I could work together in any fashion because of the difficulty of the race we had run. What I did the morning after my victory was to call Ron Wyden and invite him to breakfast. No sooner had the orange juice been poured than it was very apparent to both of us that we were similar in nature in terms of our desire to do right by the State of Oregon.”