Anti-tax fever breaks.

Byline: The Register-Guard

No wonder Don McIntire is thinking of taking up a new hobby. His old one, sponsoring initiatives that cut taxes and limit government, has become singularly unrewarding.

McIntire was the sponsor of the Measure 5 property tax limitation in 1990 that has shaped Oregon politics and budgets ever since, but anti-tax initiatives were spectacular failures this year. Anti-tax sentiment in Oregon has reached its limit.

Measure 41 would have cut Oregonians' income taxes by $400 million a year. It failed, 63 percent to 37 percent. Measure 48, the most destructive proposal on Tuesday's ballot, would have imposed a new limit on state spending, reducing the amount of revenue available in the coming two-year budget period by an estimated $2.2 billion. It failed, 71 percent to 29 percent.

These defeats mark a departure. Since the approval of Measure 5, Oregon voters have been inclined to take opportunities to reduce taxes or make it harder to increase them.

In 1995, voters backed a measure requiring a three-fifths supermajority for legislatively approved tax increases. In 1996, voters approved a further property tax limitation initiative. In 1998, they approved a measure requiring a 50 percent voter turnout for the approval of property tax increases. In 2000, they added the kicker law, which rebates higher-than-projected tax revenues to taxpayers, to the state constitution.

Such results follow a familiar pattern. Tax limitation measures have been defeated in the urban counties of the Willamette Valley and a handful of others, but enjoyed strong support in most of the rest of the state and found their winning margins in Portland area suburban counties.

Not this time. Measures 41 and 48 lost everywhere. They lost big in Lane and Multnomah counties, as might be expected. But they also lost in Clackamas and Washington counties, near Portland. They lost in Jackson and Josephine counties in Southern Oregon. They lost in deep-red Eastern Oregon counties such as Harney, Malheur and Grant.

Defeats of this magnitude have more than one cause. Among them was the involvement of Howard Rich, the wealthy New York libertarian who bankrolled the campaigns for Measures 41, 48 and others. Oregonians resent such interference in their politics. The campaign to defeat the measures skillfully yoked the two together, so that Colorado's unhappy experience with a spending limit similar to the one in Measure 48 helped drag down Measure 41. And it was a bad year for Republicans, who are more closely identified with anti-tax sentiment.

Ron Saxton, the Republican candidate for governor, supported Measure 41, and his position on Measure 48 was in doubt until he announced his opposition midway through the campaign. Both measures lost heavily in counties Saxton carried, such as Linn, Deschutes and Douglas. Many Republicans across the state marked their ballots for Saxton, then gave the boot to anti-tax measures - including the one supported by their candidate.

The chief reason for the resounding defeats, however, may be that voters have had enough of wrecking-ball measures. Oregonians want someone to answer the phone when they call the state police. They want to send their children to schools that don't have the nation's biggest classes and shortest school years. They want universities they can afford to attend, and that are worth attending.

Tuesday's results are evidence that the anti-tax movement that began in 1990 is a spent force.