Two-time former Gov. John Kitzhaber pulled out a squeaker this week, defeating Republican newcomer Chris Dudley by fewer than 20,000 votes on the strength of 70 percent support in Multnomah County. We congratulate Kitzhaber on his victory, but he’ll begin his third term with the knowledge that he was swept into office on a great wave of ambivalence. That’s not what we’d call a strong mandate.

Further complicating Kitzhaber’s task, at least in the short run, will be a split Legislature. The House will be divvied up equally between Democrats and Republicans, and the Senate is likely to see the slimmest of Democratic majorities. For someone who reportedly entered the gubernatorial race with the expectation of working with healthy Democratic majorities, this week’s results must have been a little disheartening. The man who once called Oregon ungovernable faces a daunting governing challenge.

But great challenges create great opportunities. At the heart of Kitzhaber’s campaign was the claim that circumstances demand experience, which he has in abundance. So often in the past, however, Kitzhaber failed to work constructively with difficult Legislatures. This isn’t all his fault, to be sure, but some if it certainly is. Working with next year’s split Legislature will give Kitzhaber an opportunity to demonstrate that he’s learned from his own mistakes.

Kitzhaber will succeed only if he recognizes his mandate, such as it is: Seek the political center. Though Kitzhaber prevailed this week, many Oregonians were impressed by his opponent’s commitment to strengthen the private sector, just as many were fed up with legislators who’ve catered to public employee unions even as they’ve raised taxes on businesses. Oregonians know perfectly well that creating private-sector jobs and boosting wages are necessary to generate the money that fuels the state’s public sector. And to this end, Oregonians also know that tax and regulatory policies can help — or hurt. That, in part, is why the Legislature will look very different in 2011 than it did in 2009.

Meanwhile, members of both major parties agree that the cost of government is rising at an unsustainable rate, and that public employee benefits are a contributing factor. These costs must be controlled, as Kitzhaber himself acknowledges, and accomplishing that would be difficult no matter who had won Tuesday’s legislative and gubernatorial races. Kitzhaber argues that his relationship with public employee unions will serve him well in this regard. Yet that relationship in recent months has been one of candidate and campaign contributor. Will he be willing to seek necessary concessions from the very people who’ve just paid for his third term in the state’s highest office?

If Kitzhaber wants to correct Oregon’s course, he’ll have no choice. He’ll have to control government costs in ways that might anger his allies. To improve the state’s business climate, meanwhile, he’ll have to consider some changes that might anger fellow Democrats. Cutting capital gains taxes and reconsidering the more damaging aspects of Measures 66 and 67 would be a start. The Legislature, given its composition, might even ask him to do just that.

Kitzhaber will be remembered as a very good governor if he does no more than preside over a resurgence in Oregon’s economy and balance the state’s books without raising taxes. He won’t be remembered as a great governor, though, unless he shoots a little higher. When it comes to policies that desperately need improvement, Oregon’s a target-rich environment. For the sake of brevity, we’ll focus on two areas.

The first is land use. Oregon’s system — as Bend’s recent experience demonstrates so dramatically — is one that pretends to consider local desires, but really lodges power in the hands of a small group of state officials. Ideally, people who actually live in a city would have a greater say in how it looks and grows. But if that isn’t possible — if state officials will simply do what they want in the end — there must be a way to proceed more quickly and cheaply. Cities like Bend shouldn’t have to spend millions of dollars over a period of several years to gather input and conduct studies that ultimately mean next to nothing.

The second is school reform. Public schools claim roughly half of Oregon’s general fund, yet lawmakers have shown little interest (if any) in the kinds of reforms the Obama administration has supported through its Race to the Top initiative. That must change. Oregon’s Race to the Top application didn’t win the state any money (in fact, Gov. Kulongoski pulled it out of embarrassment), but it did give us something even more valuable: a rude awakening. When it comes to policies that ensure accountability and connect compensation with performance, the rest of the country is leaving Oregon far behind.

Fortunately, Kitzhaber seems to recognize the kind of leadership the times — and this week’s election — require. Speaking yesterday in Portland, he said that “having an election as close as this one gives us a historic opportunity to create that kind of operational center that cuts across partisan lines …” As for the closely divided Legislature that election produced, he characterized it as “a unique opportunity … to create that political center.”

We wish him luck and urge him to seize the opportunity to govern from the center. If he does, his next election probably won’t be so close.