Bill Sizemore isn’t the potent political force in Oregon he once was, but the teachers’ union is still after him. It smacks of retribution.

In the 1990s Sizemore sponsored initiatives to limit public spending, and the Oregon Education Association and another union went to court to fight him with a lawsuit charging racketeering. In 2002 they won a $2.5 million judgment against his political organization, Oregon Taxpayers United. More recently they also won a court order for attorney fees in another case. Now they’ve sued him again, charging that he was getting money indirectly and hiding assets in his wife’s name.

Legal issues aside, the main public issue in this court struggle is not about money and court orders, but about political freedom.

The unions persuaded a court that irregularities in signature gathering by Sizemore’s outfit amounted to racketeering, and that this had damaged the unions by forcing them to campaign against measures that would have hurt their members. That line of argument should have been rejected by the courts.

In the first place, racketeering laws are aimed at the mafia and other forms of organized crime. They should not be applied to wrongdoing in a political context.

In the second place, the way to punish wrongdoing in political campaigns is to see if laws were broken and if so, to prosecute the culprits in criminal court. If instead we give private interests the the incentive to file civil suits to fight political opponents, then the parties with the biggest coffers and the sharpest lawyers get to determine political outcomes, and that’s not the way this country is supposed to work.

We’re supposed to have the right of initiative and referendum. Already curtailed by administrative restrictions and new legislation this year, that right is in jeopardy if the losing parties can win racketeering lawsuits on the basis of transgressions that are insignificant in view of what the electorate has determined it wants.

The continuing litigation against Sizemore looks like not so much an attempt to right a wrong, but more like revenge for Measure 47 (1996) and an attempt to shut the man up. (hh)