Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the dedicated service of one of my team members, Claire Griffin. Claire retired this January after a long and eventful career. She stuck with me through thick and thin, from when I was a newly elected State representative to the speakership of the Oregon House, to my service here in the Senate. I first met Claire in 1998 at a candidate training event when I was running for the Oregon House. Claire came as the campaign manager for another candidate who was running in a tough race for an open seat. Claire and her candidate kept making key points, responding to all the questions being asked about how one would run their campaign. I just kept thinking: I am in so much trouble. I wish I had it together--like the two of them. They were enormously outspent in their race and did not win but finished respectably. It was just after the election that the candidate called me and encouraged me to hire Claire for my team, so I did. Thus began a wonderful 13-year partnership. One of the first things I got to know about Claire was that, while she had moved to Oregon, she was steeped in California politics. Her face would light up with stories from her California days. Jesse Unruh, former California assemblyman, treasurer, and speaker figured prominently in these stories. The underlying theme of these stories was, if I had just a fraction of Speaker Unruh's political smarts, we could get a lot more done.…”