During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, he wrote the ban to stop Interior Secretary James Watt's plan to open the Pacific Outer Continental Shelf to oil exploration.

[7] AuCoin was an early advocate of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China[8] and arms control with the Soviet Union,[9] and a critic of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan Contras and the rightist government of El Salvador in the 1980s.

[16] He also joined the staff of the school newspaper, where he discovered an aptitude for writing—a skill that would help propel him into journalism, Congress and, in political retirement, life as a writer.

While stationed in the segregated South, AuCoin was caught up in a near race riot in reaction to a sit-in by blacks at an all-white lunch counter, an event that crystallized his zeal for progressive politics.

[14] Following his Army career, AuCoin worked for one summer at The Redmond Spokesman newspaper,[18] then returned to Pacific University, where he was hired as the director of the school's public information department[17][18] and simultaneously completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1969.

[18] In 1968, AuCoin's opposition to the Vietnam War led him to co-chair Eugene McCarthy's Presidential campaign in Oregon's Washington County, west of Portland.

[25] AuCoin won a five-way Democratic primary with more than 50% of the vote[26] and then faced Republican state public utility commissioner Diarmuid O'Scannlain in the general election.

[30] AuCoin became a legislative critic of weaponizing space, opposing the Strategic Defense Initiative,[31] basing his opposition on probability theory, holding that it could not fully defend the United States in the event of an attack.

[32][33] AuCoin supported the nuclear freeze movement[32][34] and was a leading critic of President Reagan's proposed MX missile,[35][36] arguing that such "first strike" weapons would prompt the Soviet Union to match them, and, since a first strike ability favored the aggressor, reasoning that such an event would increase the vulnerability of the U.S.[34] Although he opposed the Reagan administration on strategic weapons, AuCoin used his position on the defense subcommittee to improve U.S. conventional arms.

[37] AuCoin's legislation resulted in the adoption of the FGM-148 Javelin missile, which put its homing device in the round rather than the launcher to allow its operator to fire and immediately seek cover.

[38] The Javelin was first used in the 2003 Iraq War and is considered by some military scholars to be "revolutionary" in its potential to put infantry on a more equal footing against armor in conventional land warfare.

In 1987, a constituent of AuCoin's named Ben Linder was killed by Contra forces while helping build a small hydroelectric electricity generator for Nicaraguan villagers.

[55] Although the Port of Portland shipyards, a major Oregon employer, stood to benefit from oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, AuCoin opposed the plan on environmental grounds.

[56] He also helped preserve Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast,[57] supported the Columbia Gorge Scenic Protection Act,[58] helped stop the construction of Salt Caves Dam on the last free-flowing stretch of the Klamath River,[59] co-authored the 1988 bill quadrupling the designation of National Wild and Scenic Rivers in Oregon,[60] and fought the construction of a plant at the Umatilla Chemical Depot to incinerate excess chemical weapons.

[5] Soon after the decades-long effort to expand wilderness was resolved, annual timber harvests on Forest Service lands in Oregon and Washington had increased to reach a crisis point in the late 1980s.

[62][64] AuCoin was also criticized for working with Senator Hatfield, Washington Representative Norman D. Dicks, and House Speaker Tom Foley for legislating a special timber sales program in 1990.

[66] Responding to the imminent collapse of jobs in timber and related industries, the amendment legislated a harvest, but also gave old-growth forests statutory status for the first time,[67] directed that fragmentation of them be minimized, and banned logging of them in designated spotted owl habitat areas identified in the environmental impact statement., effectively overruling Judge Dwyer's order.

[74] AuCoin switched his position during his legislative career, emphasized with an essay in The Washington Post,[75] supporting what would become the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act which passed after he left office in 1993.

"[78] But the state's largest newspaper, The Oregonian, had described AuCoin (Packwood's presumed main challenger) as having "persistence, imagination and clout [that] have made him the most powerful congressman in Oregon and one of the most influential members from the Northwest.

[84] In a race the Seattle Times called "as negative as many voters can remember,"[80] Lonsdale attacked AuCoin as "corrupt"[80] and tied to the timber industry.

[87] AuCoin turned accusations of undue influence back on Lonsdale, pointing out that his company (Bend Research) had received millions in federal defense contracts.

The socially conservative Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA) was at the apex of its statewide prominence with 1992's anti-gay Measure 9 and its newly formed American Heritage Party (AHP).

[101] AuCoin opposed weakening the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to erase the northern spotted owl's impact on the timber industry, but Packwood ("one of the timber industry's chief allies," according to Oregon State University political scientist William Lunch[102]) assailed "environmental extremists" and introduced legislation to convene a presidential cabinet committee to exempt the endangered owl from the ESA.

"[109] Magnifying the controversy of the race was a decision by the Washington Post to delay until after the election[110][111] coverage of its year-long investigation into detailed claims of sexual abuse and assault made by 10 women against Packwood.

He also stated that he would not engage in professional lobbying, but was criticized the next year for becoming the chairman of the government relations practice group in the law firm Bogle & Gates.

[120][121][122] AuCoin went into higher education five years after leaving the Congress, joining the faculty at Southern Oregon University in Ashland as a visiting professor of political science and business ethics.

[125] AuCoin writes on national issues for the Huffington Post,[126] freelances magazine articles, and publishes book reviews for regional newspapers.

[129] AuCoin is a corporate director at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle[130] and Teton Heritage Builders, Inc.,[110] a high-end residential housing contractor located in Jackson, Wyoming, and Bozeman, Montana.