The so-called takings measure requires governments to pay landowners when regulations "take" some of a property's value by putting restrictions on the property's use. Foes of the measure contend it will crush the state's vaunted land-use planning system because government officials could not afford to enforce the regulations.

Opponents raised more than $1.5 million to fight the measure, more than four times what Oregonians in Action reported spending to pass it. For that reason and the fact that a number of newspapers have printed editorials against the measure, nobody expected the measure to be very close – until last week. That's when a poll for The Oregonian and KATU with a 4% margin of error showed 49 percent of voters supported the measure and 46 percent were against.

The news prompted the state's chief land-use planning watchdog group, 1000 Friends of Oregon, to stage eleventh-hour press events, including a band of farmers who drove their tractors the Capitol in Salem in opposition to the measure. Some farmers, planners and environmentalists see the measure as a veiled attempt to wipe out the state's land use measure's and gobble up rural farm land for urban development. Regardless, the effort appears too little, too late.