Oregon

[A] statewide Libertarian candidate received 5% in Oregon and maintained party status there ... In some cases, notably Oregon, the Clark campaign could choose either to qualify Clark alone via a relatively easy ballot access method, or the entire party via a relatively more difficult route. By choosing the party route in Oregon, the combined Clark-Oregon LP effort spent at least $20,000 more than necessary to qualify Clark alone ... but the result was automatic ballot status for the party in 1982, thanks to the fine showing of one of its statewide candidates.

The Small Business Survival Committee just released its 2003 Small Business Survival Index, which ranks states according to how friendly their policies are for small business and entrepreneurship. Oregon falls close to the bottom; only eight states and the District of Columbia are worse. ... Oregon is highly dependent on small business economic activity. Thus, given the state's unfriendly ranking, perhaps it's the governor and tax-and-regulate politicians who need a reality check.

In the early 1990s, Steve Buckstein realized there was no free-market public policy institute in Oregon ... [That] led him to launch the Cascade Policy Institute ... In 1997, "Cascade played an instrumental role in getting the Oregon legislature to pass a resolution asking the federal government to let Oregon opt out of the Social Security system—and allow our residents to set up their own individual retirement accounts," he said ... In 1998, [a] Cascade ... policy paper advocating more competition in the taxi cab market [in Portland] "led to the city's approval of two new cab companies—the first in over 20 years," he said.