Until Dec. 18, Elizabeth Scheeler, 40, was an unassuming voice in the crowd. She was unhappy with a number of governmental directions and had written to her legislators with constructive thoughts for change. Some, like U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, wrote back with interest and encouragement for her ideas. Some wrote back with rote, form letters which were not to her liking.

But on Dec. 18 things changed. On that date she had a guest column published in the East Oregonian in which she publicly confronted Oregon State Senator David Nelson (R) of Pendleton who had previously written a guest column explaining why taxpayers deserved to receive kicker checks.

She disagreed and people listened. A friend told her she should run for the legislature the night the paper came out, and before long the Democratic caucas in Salem was on the phone to the mother of two daughters asking her to run against Greg Smith in the State Representative District 57 race.

“At first I was very unwilling,” said the member of the Pendleton school board. “I’m not a politician.”

But apparently the caucas was persuasive and, because no Democratic candidates were listed on the primary ballot, she was able on March 8 to file on the Democratic ticket to oppose Greg Smith in November’s general election.

In her column she suggested that the kicker money be placed in a Rainy Day fund which she now says could, over a 10-year stretch, reach $1.4 billion. In her column she said, “Sometimes politicians have to do unpopular things because they are the right things to do.”

A similar way of thinking surfaced when she decided to run for office. She says, “I have not got a lot of tolerance for people who complain and do nothing about it.”

And so a woman who was raised in an affluent community in New Jersey and came to Oregon in 1981 to pursue a forestry career by attending Oregon State University now finds herself in a political race for a state representative seat.

Though Smith is the incumbent candidate, he faces the same name familiarity problems as Scheeler because of redistricting. Smith’s previous district did not include Wallowa County. The new district now includes Wallowa, Union, Morrow and the less populated segments of Umatilla County.

Scheeler, like many politicians, lists education and health care as her top two areas of prioritization. She talks intelligently on the issues and agrees that there are no quick fixes. She calls the current school situation in Oregon “disgraceful,” and is not afraid to talk about the publicly despised sales tax issue if the state is willing to back off from income tax pressures which, she says, put Oregon in the second highest bracket in the country. “I see a lot of merit to a sales tax that is dedicated to schools. But it would have to be constructed on a strictly enforceable limit that cannot be increased.”

She argues that her opponent did not vote for education in the recently completed legislative sessions. “Greg Smith had a zero percentage voting record with the Oregon School Employees Association in the first two special sessions and only voted with the OSEA on three of seven issues during the regular session.”

Aware of some problems facing her district, Scheeler advocates creating more incentives to attract doctors and nurses to rural areas.

One novel idea she has is to send less dangerous prison inmates out during the daylight hours to pull noxious weeds, thus attacking an admitted problem facing this state.

The Democrat grew up the daughter of a Wall Street lawyer and briefly worked as a paralegal in that environment after receiving her forestry degree from OSU. She did not like the bustle of the East Coast and jumped at the chance to take a forest technician position in Ukiah in 1985.

She and her husband later moved to the Pendleton area, where he works as a fisheries biologist for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla. She worked part time for the USFS doing some fisheries biologist and hydrologist work, but decided in time that her energies would be better spent being a live at home Mom.

She has two daughters ages 11 and 12, and says that they would state that her most used phrase at home is “life is not fair; get over it.”

Much of her campaign effort to date has been the old fashioned canvassing the district on foot and in her auto, knocking on doors. “People have been very receptive,” she says.

She admits that when she first got into the race she thought she had very little chance of winning. She says that District 57 is very conservative and ,that Smith has more compaign money to work with. Yet she now believes that people who are looking for a change in state government will vote Scheeler instead of Smith.

Scheeler, and hopefully Smith, will be at a candidate’s forum presented by the local chapter of the American Association of University Women Oct. 15 in the courtroom of the county courthouse. It could prove to be a comfortable environment for the lady who lives just inside the border of District 57 between Pendleton and Pilot Rock, because she was branch president of the AAUW for three years and for the last three years has been northeast district director of the same women’s organization.

“I care about the interests of the average Northeast Oregon resident and not the big money campaign contributers,” says a housewife turned political candidate. “I have nothing personal to gain from this campaign. I am not on a power trip.”

Whatever success or shortcomings she may have in her campaign will come to light when the votes are tallied following the Nov. 5 general election.