My Fellow Oregonians:
On Thursday, the 14th of March, I withdrew my candidacy for Position 4 on the Oregon Court of Appeals. I apologize that I have taken some time to collect my thoughts, but I needed it.
As an All-American athlete at West Point, as well as an experienced prosecutor, I have never lacked the drive to compete. But while my love for our people remains undiminished, willpower alone couldn’t overcome the advantages of incumbency.
I believe in Oregon absolutely. I grew up in Mount Angel and proudly carried our Oregon values of nonpartisan loyalty and service in my heart as my duties carried me into the wider world. The words of my very first Governor, Tom McCall, accompanied me: “Quality of life is the sum total of the fairness of our tax structure; the caliber of our homes; the cleanliness of our air and water; and the provision of affirmative assistance to those who cannot assist themselves. True quality is absent if we allow social suffering to abide in an otherwise pristine environment.”
As an Airborne Ranger and then a long-serving military lawyer, I have dedicated my life to providing impartial, apolitical, nonpartisan legal services to our people. I served in 40 duty stations over the past 37 years—including several years embedded in the Portland Public Defender’s office caring for Veterans and Veteran Families throughout Oregon who struggle with homelessness, mental illness, and addiction. It has been a joy of my life to serve you, and I continue to do so as a prosecutor in North Central Oregon.
Like every true Oregonian, I am driven by a sincere hope to see justice rendered with the wisdom, mercy, and practicality that our culture exemplifies. But our hopes can only safely rest on a broad base of representation—including the voice of our rural agricultural communities which depend on freedom, conventional transportation, tradition, access to energy, community, and access to government resources – like a legal system – which cannot be provided exclusively from local resources.
I dream of an Oregon re-unified and re-centered on our unique values of Moderation-in-Manner, Consensus-in-Decision, and Live-and-Let-Live in Practice. The fact that some traditional views are increasingly in the minority and seen only in dissenting opinions is concerning.
The American tradition of Constitutional Governance under the Rule of Law is the greatest machine ever invented to enable the highest conceivable percentage to achieve your best life. Diktats from the State can’t secure peace and prosperity for our people, because only freedom leads reliably to peace and prosperity.
Consensual government alone enables the maximization of Individual Autonomy in a manner not inconsistent with the Common Good. But consensual government can only flourish when competing Constitutional priorities are vigorously analyzed and clearly understood, and that process requires a robust capacity to dissent.
Our rural agricultural communities can’t be re-integrated into Oregon public life unless and until dissent is allowed; and I am deeply afraid that there are some uniquely Oregon voices which, if lost, will be lost forever. By showing Oregonians currently in the minority that we love and embrace them as our kindred, we demonstrate to the wider world – and to remote posterity – what Oregon has always believed: Tolerance from thee begins with tolerance from me. And to me, that’s the most Oregon thing ever.
In my experience, true Oregonians have never had a problem with differences of opinion provided that dissent is respectful offered for the purpose of expressing constructive solutions. I have worked in places where the Rule of Law has broken down, and the capacity to dissent is always the first thing to be taken away. But it never stops there. Those places are bastions of political and personal oppression.
Everyday Oregonians have trouble, thank God, even imagining how rare our ways are in the wider world. Our traditions of Constitutional Governance under the Rule of Law and the active encouragement of dissent, which we often take for granted (and even occasionally forget), offer the only solution to the brokenness which seems to be overwhelming human reason these days.
Yet even amidst this seeming brokenness, we get to decide where we go from here. But we must do so together.
I served under six Commanders-in-Chief from Mr. Reagan through both Mr. Bushes and Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump; and, as a soldier oath-bound to our Federal Constitution (and by bonds even deeper to Oregon), I can assure you that when I fly somewhere I follow the pilot. My faith tradition and our political tradition as Oregonians command me to honor elected authority: Our President is my President, just as he is yours; our Governor is my Governor, just as she is yours.
To me, ideals about which we all agree can’t possibly justify civil strife. Instead, our Oregon ideals are points of agreement from which a robust and public debate can occur about how best to achieve the Common Good. We have been handed the dream of a thousand of generations: The freedom to take care of each other; and safeguarding that dream is more important than politics.
So why did I withdraw from the Court of Appeals race? Because the minority will not gain a discernible voice in the Oregon appellate judiciary until the majority and the minority come to a consensus about what Oregon actually is. And that can’t happen until we stop talking past one another.
In 2016, I was the Republican nominee for Oregon Attorney General. I thought I could save the Oregon Republican Party and Oregon, so I ran on a platform of the non-partisan administration of justice and addressing public corruption in Oregon. (West Point grads are programmed to believe no mission is impossible.)
But I failed; I failed in the most public way imaginable; and I come from a profession where second place means you’re dead.
So I spent the next eight years trying to understand why I failed. And here is my conclusion: Positive change won’t happen in Oregon until we decide, together, to move past Grievance Theater and revive what made Oregon special in the first place.
Until then, I can best serve you by prosecuting criminal behavior in North Central Oregon and patiently building the infrastructure of our popular movement to Uncorrupt Oregon.
If these words from my heart resonate with yours, please contact me at:
Crowe for Justice
P.O. Box 850
Mt. Angel, OR 97362
Together, we can achieve
Balance. For Oregon.
/z/
Daniel Zene Crowe
Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Retired
Oregonian
Crowe for Justice 
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