Gordon H. Smith

Before his election, Oregon had not elected a senator from the eastern part of the state since 1938.

Gordon Harold Smith (born May 25, 1952) is an American politician, businessman, and academic administrator who served as a United States Senator from the state of Oregon.

Smith was born in Pendleton, Oregon, to Jessica (Udall) and Milan Dale Smith on May 25, 1952.

Smith's family moved to Bethesda, Maryland during his childhood, when his father became an Assistant United States Secretary of Agriculture.

He was involved with the Boy Scouts of America and earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

Smith is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

After graduating from high school, Smith served for two years as an LDS Church missionary in New Zealand.

Smith then went to college at Brigham Young University, received his Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law, and became an attorney in New Mexico and Arizona.

He moved back to Oregon in the 1980s to become director of the family owned Smith Frozen Foods company in Weston, Oregon.

Smith and his wife, Sharon, adopted three children in the 1980s, including two sons (Morgan and Garrett) and a daughter (Brittany).

Smith entered politics with his election to the Oregon State Senate in 1992, and became president of that body in 1995.

Later in 1995, he ran in a special election for a Senate seat vacated by the resignation of Bob Packwood, but was narrowly defeated in the January 1996 special election by then-Congressman Ron Wyden.

Smith carried all but eight counties, but could not overcome an 89,000-vote deficit in Multnomah County, home to Portland–far exceeding the overall margin of 18,200 votes.

United States Senator Mark Hatfield, a fellow Republican, announced his retirement later in 1996.

Smith became the first person to run for the Senate twice in one year.

This time he won, easily defeating Lon Mabon (whose organization, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, had previously endorsed Smith over Wyden) in the Republican primary and Democrat Tom Bruggere in the general election by a close margin.

In 1996 Smith was endorsed by the conservative political activist group the Oregon Citizens Alliance in his race against Wyden.

After losing that initial race for Packwood's seat, Smith then renounced the OCA endorsement and won in his subsequent race for the seat being vacated by Senator Hatfield.

A Republican, he served two terms in the Senate from 1997 to 2009.

In October 1999, Smith was one of four Republicans to vote in favor of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The treaty was designed to ban underground nuclear testing and was the first major international security pact to be defeated in the Senate since the Treaty of Versailles.

Smith was re-elected in 2002, defeating Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury by 57% to 39%.

Smith's approval rating was 52 percent, with 38 percent disapproving.

On September 8, 2003, Garrett, then a 21-year-old college student majoring in culinary arts, died by suicide.

Smith is pro-life, and in 2003 he voted in favor of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, legislation that prohibits the intact dilation and extraction procedure.

Smith wrote a book entitled Remembering Garrett, One Family’s Battle with a Child’s Depression. In 2004, President George W. Bush signed the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, authorizing $82 million for suicide-prevention and awareness programs at colleges.

Smith is also a member of the Udall political family.

His mother was a cousin of the late Representatives Mo Udall (D-AZ) and Stewart Udall (D-AZ), and Smith is a second cousin of Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Tom Udall (D-NM).

He is a double second cousin of both of them, as their great-grandparents were a pair of brothers and a pair of sisters who married.

Smith's brother, Milan Dale Smith, Jr., is a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006.

Smith is a member of the board of directors of the International Republican Institute.

In 2006, he voted to pass another controversial bill, this time crossing party lines to vote for the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act.

The measure, which would have expanded federal funding of stem cell research to cell lines extracted from embryos discarded during fertility treatment, became the first bill to be vetoed by President George W. Bush.

All three of them were candidates for Senate in the 2008 elections.

Smith was the only Republican and incumbent senator of the group, and the only one of the three to lose his electoral bid.

On September 18, 2009, he was appointed president of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

, he is the last Republican to represent Oregon in the Senate.

In 2010, another second cousin, fellow Republican Mike Lee of Utah, was elected to the Senate.

On March 31, 2012, Smith was called as an area seventy in the LDS Church.

He was released from this assignment in August 2022.