Christian Science Monitor Profiles Jason Atkinson’s Bipartisan Crusade

Check out this wonderful piece in the Christian Science Monitor that chronicles the efforts being made by contributing RP and Oregon State Senator Jason Atkinson to promote bipartisanship in American politics:

There’s something unnervingly genuine about Jason Atkinson. Unnerving because he’s a politician – once a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, today a member of its Senate, in between a determined but failed candidate for governor – but he doesn’t sound anything like one.

His speech lacks curated sound bites, and he tends to talk about solving problems, rather than who’s to blame for them.

This could be subjective. I met Mr. Atkinson only once; we had several conversations over four days this summer at the Aspen Global Leadership Network’s ACT II conference. (The AGLN paid for my travel and accommodations.)

He is an Oregonian, and I’m an East Coaster, far more comfortable with irony than sincerity.

But with all the blather on cable news, what explains his reasons for practicing politics in a time of intense partisanship like this?

“I used to tell people that I was the guy who actually believed the commencement speech,” he says.

Atkinson, a Republican, has taken some stands considered controversial in Oregon political circles; by his account, that’s at least in part because he thinks of public service before politics. For a long time, these were important but mostly invisible battles guys like him waged in their hearts and souls – or in the proverbial back rooms where political deals are cut.

That changed, for Atkinson, in January, when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) of Arizona was shot at a “town hall” style meeting. Atkinson knew Ms. Giffords – the two had been in the inaugural class of the ALGN’s Rodel Fellowship in Public Service.

 

Click here to read the entire piece.