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Despite the conservative label, Atiyeh supported and implemented McCall’s initiatives as governor and was key to implementing the state’s revolutionary land-use laws. 

But Moore says that Atiyeh’s greatest accomplishment was his work to change Oregon’s economy, which was mired in both a nationwide recession and the start of the decline of the timber industry that had been the state’s economic backbone for decades. He found a solution in the growing high-tech industry.

“Trader Vic” went on numerous trade missions to the Bay Area and Asia, courting companies to join the likes of Tektronix, Intel and Hewlett-Packard to become the seedlings for the Silicon Forest. He opened a trade office in Tokyo, making connections for Oregon right in the heart of Japan’s booming economy.

“If you live in the Portland area, you continue to live in Vic Atiyeh’s economy,” Moore said. “Vic did the triage on how to deal with this. He purposely said, ‘We need to build on high-tech stuff.’ He was building for a future there.”

While the evolution to a high-tech economy helped put Oregon on better financial footing, Moore notes that the effort had one ironic side effect: Turning his home Washington County from red to blue.

“He changed the economy. That was biggest in Washington County and it killed forever Washington County as being the heart of the Republican Party in the state,” Moore said. “When I nailed that down, I talked to his chief of staff and she said, ‘Oh, I wish he were around to hear that because he was such a staunch Republican.’”

Moore conducted four formal interviews with Atiyeh before his death in 2014. Additional research for the book included a lengthy oral history given to the Oregon Historical Society in the early 1990s and the treasure trove of papers as part of his archive at Pacific.

Others had tried to write about Atiyeh, but the governor’s personal invitation went a long way to helping those close to him accept that Moore was the right person for the job.

“He had a brain trust around him and people who were really possessive of him,” Moore said. “There had been another attempt to write a biography that just didn’t go anywhere, and there were all sorts of hurt feeling about that. I was not party to any of it, but there were discussions, and I would occasionally hear from people who were part of those discussions.”

While the political scientist asked all of the questions around his political policy, Moore was more intrigued by what made Atiyeh such a successful figure both in the capital and with the public. Those come through in a series of guiding principles that Moore identifies in the book. 

“He gave me a gift, and the gift was that he talked really carefully and powerfully, not all at once, but in pieces about his principles,” Moore said. “And using that gift, I wanted to find out what happened when those principles collided. What did he do? Vic was a nice guy. Did he ever get angry? When did you really see him push the limits?”

Those principles helped make Atiyeh an effective, principled leader for Oregon. Moore hopes that his book will help restore interest in his legacy and the contributions that continue to shape Oregon.

“It’s been fun to put it all together for this part of the world,” Moore said. “There’s so much that goes on today that has its roots with Vic Atiyeh.”