Josh Marquis |
Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis periodically has come to political notice recent years whenever a substantial major-office set comes open, or Democrats are hunting for a challenger (as, earlier this year, for the U.S. Senate): His name winds up, a little mysteriously, on the list of possibilities. Which tends to generate questions, such as, who is this small-county prosecutor who keeps getting these mentions?
Turns out that this election is giving us some unexpected answers to that question.
Marquis has been DA since 1994, when he was appointed; in the way of many smaller-county DAs who've wanted to keep the post, he's been routinely re-elected (four times) since. He has some knack for visibility, making a name as a death-penalty advocate (and quoted on the subject by the U.S. Supreme Court).
There's also, however, some contention surrounding him at home in Astoria. Base pay for prosecutors is paid by the state government in Oregon, but counties have the option to add to that base, and many of them do. When they don't, the main reason is severe financial hardship (as in Coos County, where the DS has taken a pay cut). In Clatsop County, the commissioners this year have withheld the local add-on, mainly at the doing of Commission Chair Richard Lee. Lee and Marquis have a hard-core battle going on.
The underlying reasons may have to do with decisions about which and how many cases Marquis files, or to do with Marquis' wife's 2006 campaign against Lee (which almost unseated the commissioner), or a dog-licensure case Marquis filed against Lee, or maybe something else. Its latest manifestation is a local ballot issue (Measure 4-123) whose sole purpose, if it passes, would be restoring the county bonus to Marquis' pay. (It has a heck of campaign, and a heck of a multi-media web site too.)