Oregon Dems are in real trouble
And it's not just because of Betsy Johnson or Phil Knight
Oregon is in the political news nationally in a way it has not been since the fate of the 1876 presidential race teetered on the outcome of the “Oregon muddle,” a case of disputed presidential electors from the state that plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.* To the degree people outside of Oregon are aware of Oregon politics, they know of it as a deep blue, progressive state. The novelty of Republican Christine Drazan polling a bit ahead of Democrat Tina Kotek as election day approaches has gotten their attention.
How could this be? The New York Times crawled into its safe space in an article bearing the sub-headline:
In a wild governor’s race, an independent candidate is siphoning Democratic votes and a billionaire Nike co-founder is pouring in money — giving an anti-abortion Republican a path to victory.
The theory that a potential Republican victory in Oregon is the result of non-affiliated, former Democrat Betsy Johnson taking Democrat votes and Phil Knight’s $1 million donation to Drazan was surely a comforting one to the Times editor who wrote it, but it is also inaccurate. The truth is, Democrat candidates are in trouble up and down the Oregon ballot because those candidates and the progressive base that nominated them have moved left while Oregon voters have moved closer to the center.
While the governor race has gotten the lion’s share of attention, it is entirely possible that Oregon will go from Democrats holding four of its five U.S. House seats this year to Republicans holding four of the six seats it will have in 2023 (Oregon is gaining a House seat due to redistricting). RealClearPolitics categorizes the races in the state’s 4th (currently held by a Democrat), 5th (currently held by a Democrat) and 6th (the new district) as “toss-ups.” If Republicans run the table on these three toss-up districts, on top of the surefire retention of the deep red 2nd District, they would hold a majority of Oregon’s U.S. House seats. The GOP has held only one district, the 2nd, since 1997.
Democrats hold significant voter registration advantages in each of the three competitive districts:
4th District: 172,144 Democrats - 131,187 Republicans = 40,957 Democrat advantage
5th District: 170,279 Democrats - 145,513 Republicans = 24,766 Democrat advantage
6th District: 147,734 Democrats - 121,762 Republicans = 25,792 Democrat advantage
The Republican candidate in each of these districts, which were meticulously drawn by Democrats in the recent redistricting process to be seats that Democrats would win, is polling approximately even with the Democrat. There are no meaningful third-party or non-affiliated candidates in any of these races. Phil Knight is not bankrolling the Republican candidates in any of these races. And yet, here we are with tossup races in half of Oregon’s congressional districts. Just like in the governor race.
Down ballot, Republicans stand a solid chance of taking the majority in the state senate (the GOP currently trails 18 seats to 11 for the Democrats), and will likely at least claw itself out of super-minority status in the state house.
The point is not that Republicans will win all these races, or even most of them. The point is that polls suggest Republicans will do historically well in Oregon in 2022 in races involving Betsy Johnson and Phil Knight and races in which they are not a factor. Something beside Betsy and Phil is going on in Oregon.
Or two somethings. First, Democrat candidates have moved left. Over the past eight years or so - roughly spanning the governorship of term-limited incumbent Kate Brown - Democrat candidates and elected officials in Oregon have moved sharply left, raising taxes on small businesses, creating a pandemic grant program available only to Black small business owners, condoning months of destructive and violent rioting in Portland, releasing hundreds of convicted felons, and, in some cases, literally defunding the police. Gone are the days of the relative moderation of Brown’s predecessor as governor, John Kitzhaber. Today’s Oregon Democratic Party is as hardline progressive as any in the country.
That leftward lurch has led, or at least contributed, to very obvious problems in the state. Drug use and homelessness is rampant and plain to see on a daily basis, statewide. Crime has spiked; Portland is on its way to breaking, for the second year in a row, its murder record. As I write this, the average gallon of gas in Oregon costs $5.20/gallon; nationally it’s $3.84. Polling repeatedly demonstrates that Oregonians are most concerned about homelessness, crime and the economy/cost of living.
Which brings us to the second something. Having lived the above-referenced unpleasantness, some Democrats have moved toward the center and many non-affiliated voters have moved to the right. It’s not that they love Republicans - it’s that they’ve seen enough, at least for now, of Oregon’s experiment with California-style progressivism.
To put this in a national context, voters across the country generally hold Joe Biden and Democrats in low regard. This is common leading into a midterm election for the party that holds the White House. But this year that national historic trend is amplified by inflation, high gas prices and crime. The result is Republicans holding a three point lead in the RealClearPolitics average of congressional generic ballot polls (in which pollsters ask Americans if they’d rather vote for a generic Republican or generic Democrat for Congress). In 2014, when Republicans nationally picked up nine seats in Senate and strengthened their majority in the House by 13 seats, the GOP had a 2.4% generic ballot lead.
Which is to say, nationally, things are going Republicans’ way. Those trends are on steroids in Oregon. We have higher gas prices, higher housing prices, more homelessness, more drug addiction, worse schools, a worse business environment and worst, worst, worst in so many ways. Voters are ready to jettison that.
What is happening in Oregon is an amplification of what’s happening nationally, because the powers that be in Oregon have more fully embraced progressivism than have most national Democrats. Tina Kotek is leaking Democrat votes because they know extreme progressivism, and there is no elected official in the state who better stands for extreme progressivism, just doubles down. But she has lost moderate Dems, and has definitely lost non-affiliated voters because she promises more of the same.
In Oregon, this is not an election defined by Betsy Johnson or Phil Knight. It is defined by hardcore, reality denying, progressives who reflexively want and/or need to do the same thing until our state implodes.
May they fail.
*The Oregon muddle-afflicted 1876 presidential race gave rise to the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which sought to clarify the procedure of appointing electors and counting their votes. That Act provided the basis, 153 years later, for the exotic legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, culminating in the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.