Leadership Quote by Ted Kulongoski

A politician reaches for the cosmos when the polls get terrestrial. “As long as the sun rises over Ontario and sets over the Pacific” isn’t geography so much as stagecraft: a sweeping, almost oath-like frame that tries to turn a campaign promise into a law of nature. The line also quietly stitches together Oregon’s internal map - eastern high desert and border towns (Ontario) to the coastal edge - signaling that this isn’t just Portland talk. It’s a nod to the perennial Oregon problem: voters who suspect Salem governs for the I-5 corridor and forgets the rest.

The next move is classic governing-by-aspiration. “What they want and need most” implies consensus without specifying the tradeoffs that real budgets demand. It’s a useful vagueness, letting different audiences hear their own priorities: timber communities hear jobs, public employees hear stability, environmentalists hear “change,” business leaders hear “renewal.” The triad “hope, change, and economic renewal” is calibrated to be both emotional and managerial, blending uplift with a promise of competence. “Hope” softens anxiety; “change” flirts with reform without naming enemies; “economic renewal” grounds it all in paychecks.

Context matters: Kulongoski came into office after a period of political turmoil in Oregon and during economic uncertainty in the early 2000s. The subtext is reassurance: continuity of effort (“I will dedicate myself”) paired with a reset of mood. It’s less a blueprint than a bid to own the narrative arc - from drift to direction - across the whole state, sunrise to sunset.