Robert W. Straub

Robert William Straub (born May 6, 1920 in San Francisco , California , †  November 27, 2002 in Springfield , Oregon ) was an American politician and from 1975 to 1979 the 31st governor of the state of Oregon.

Early years and political advancement

Robert Straub attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire . During the Second World War he was a soldier in the US Army . In 1946 he moved to Eugene , Oregon. There he first worked for a wood company, then he founded his own construction company.

Straub was a member of the Democratic Party and had been politically active since 1954. That year he became a member of a Lane County Administrative Committee . Between 1959 and 1963 he was a member of the Oregon Senate . There he campaigned for environmental protection; He was primarily concerned with air and water pollution. Between 1964 and 1972 Straub was State Treasurer of Oregon. In 1966 and 1970 he applied unsuccessfully for the office of governor. In the 1974 elections, however, he did manage to be elected governor against the Republican Victor G. Atiyeh .

Governor of Oregon

Robert Straub took up his new office on January 13, 1975. During his four-year term in office, he managed to reduce the unemployment rate from 12% to 5%. Oregon's laws on energy use and land use have been improved for the benefit of the environment. Older citizens received some perks. Straub employed more women, the disabled and members of minorities in the civil service than any governor before him. Governor Straub also sponsored education. This mainly affected primary schools, but schools for the disabled have also been improved. The administration itself was streamlined and unnecessary departments either abolished or integrated into other departments. Straub also succeeded in persuading companies from outside Oregon to invest in Oregon. That was one of the reasons for the decline in the unemployment rate. In 1978 the governor lost to Victor Atiyeh, whom he had defeated four years earlier.

Another résumé

After being voted out of office, he resigned on January 8, 1979. He then ran a few farms in the Salem , Curtin and Willamina area . He owned a ranch in Wheeler County . In 1999, Straub announced that he had Alzheimer's disease . The former governor passed away three years later in a nursing home in Springfield. He was married to Patricia S. Stroud, with whom he had five children.

In 1987 Nestucca Spit State Park near Pacific City was renamed Bob Straub State Park in his honor .

literature

• Charles Johnson: Standing at the Water's Edge: Bob Straub's Battle for the Soul of Oregon. Oregon State University, Corvallis 2012, ISBN 978-0-87071-669-0 .
• Richard A. Clucas: The Political Legacy of Robert W. Straub . In: Oregon Historical Quarterly , Winter 2003 edition ( online access ( July 14, 2004 memento in the Internet Archive ), last accessed November 17, 2008)

Web links

• Robert W. Straub in nndb (English)
• Robert Straub in the National Governors Association (English)
• Oregon State Library ( Memento November 25, 2004 on the Internet Archive )
• Robert W. Straub in the database of Find a Grave (English)