OPINION

Dave Frohnmayer, the quintessential Oregonian

Statesman Journal Editorial Board

Dave Frohnmayer wanted to be governor of Oregon. He would have been a good one. But fate held other plans for him.

Frohnmayer, who died Monday at age 74, was best known in recent years for being the brilliant president of the University of Oregon. He served for 15 years, the second-longest tenure of any UO president. The job of university president is so intrinsically challenging that two UO presidents have come and gone since Frohnmayer retired in 2009, and a third one now is being recruited.

But there was much more to Frohnmayer than his distinguished career as university president, law school dean and law professor, although those achievements alone would be reason to mourn his passing.

Frohnmayer was a moderate Republican in an era when the statewide Republican party was more mainstream and fielded compelling candidates for statewide office.

"Dave was a quintessential bipartisan leader more interested in solving problems than party affiliation," 5th District Congressman Kurt Schrader, a Democrat, said Tuesday.

After serving three terms as a state representative from Eugene, Frohnmayer was elected three times as Oregon attorney general. He won six of the seven cases he argued on the state's behalf before the U.S. Supreme Court. Back home in Oregon, he successfully defended the State System of Higher Education in an expensive class-action lawsuit that claimed bias against women professors. He tenaciously investigated the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, whose Central Oregon commune spawned domestic terrorism and other crimes.

Despite being a high-profile public official, Frohnmayer always kept his name and phone number publicly listed in the Eugene phone book. He was a gentleman, courteous and accessible.

In 1990, he was the Republican candidate for Oregon governor. It's widely believed that Frohnmayer lost to Democrat Barbara Roberts because independent candidate Al Mobley took votes away from him on the right side of the political spectrum. Mobley was running with the backing of the anti-gay Oregon Citizens Alliance, whose vestiges remain in parts of Oregon.

Yet Frohnmayer probably represented mainstream Oregon — fiscally conservative, socially moderate and environmentally responsible. Such a candidate might win statewide election today, if only he or she could make it through the conservative Republican or liberal Democratic party primaries.

The personal blessing to Frohnmayer's gubernatorial loss was that it allowed him to again focus on his family. Two of Lynn and Dave Frohnmayer's daughters eventually would die of causes related to Fanconi anemia, Katie at age 12 in 1991 and Kirsten at age 24 in 1997.

It was a measure of respect for the Frohnmayers, as parents and as public figures, that all Oregon seemed united in grieving with the family.

The Frohnmayers co-founded the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund. As public as his campaign was against that blood disorder, he privately had dealt with his own prostate cancer for more than five years.

Frohnmayer was a Rhodes Scholar who went on to become a world-class university president. Oregonians will remember him as a man of great character who loved his state and had his priorities in the right place: Family came before politics.

Dave Frohnmayer was more than the quintessential bipartisan politician. He was the quintessential Oregonian.

Link

To read more about University of Oregon President Emeritus Dave Frohnmayer, go to uoregon.edu/Frohnmayer.