Golden Considers Challenging Smith

Portlanders Steve Novick and Ty Pettit have both already formally launched their campaigns.

Jeff Golden Courtesy: forestblood.com

(ASHLAND, Ore.) - Jeff Golden, a talk show host on Southern Oregon's Jefferson Public Radio, is weighing a bid for the U.S. Senate against Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, the Ashland Daily Tidings is reporting Wedneday.

Golden, 57, is an author and host of JPR's weekday radio show "The Jefferson Exchange," and was a Jackson County commissioner from 1987 through 1990.

He was the target of an unsuccessful recall attempt spearheaded by logging interests in 1989.

Golden left the county executive board in 1990 to run for state Senate, narrowly losing to fourth-term Republican incumbent Lenn Hannon of Ashland. Soon after, he took a job as chief of staff for then-state Senate President Bill Bradbury, D-Bandon.

The Tidings says chief among Golden's political liabilities is his role in a 2003 feature-length documentary, "The Same River Twice," which chronicles a mostly naked 35-day rafting trip that Golden and 16 others made in 1978 down the Colorado River.

Also interested in running in the May 2008 Democratic primary is businesswoman Eileen Brady, who co-founded New Seasons Markets, a Portland-based chain of seven natural food stores, and state Sen. Alan Bates, D-Ashland.

Portlanders attorney Steve Novick and businessman Ty Pettit have both already formally launched their campaigns.