The Red Wave Cometh . . . Even in Oregon

2022 should bring good news to long-suffering Beaver State Republicans

In 2010, Republican Chris Dudley came within 22,000 votes of becoming Oregon governor. (Photo courtesy NY Times).

Oregon Republicans have spent the past decade-plus playing Chris Rock to the Democrats’ Will Smith. Republicans languish impotently in super-minorities in both houses of the legislature, their influence confined largely to their ability, when sufficiently provoked, to flee the capitol and deprive the majority of a quorum. Republicans hold no statewide elected positions and failed, twice, to gather enough signatures to recall the least popular governor in America. In sum, the Oregon GOP has dutifully gotten the name “victory” out its mouth.

Republicans’ response to this prolonged period in the wilderness and Oregon’s corresponding leftward policy march has run the gamut from getting weird to up and leaving the state. Talking to people who work on the Republican side of politics inside whatever the Salem version of the beltway might be is kind of like talking to a New York Jets fan. All the losing has, understandably, concussed them.

There is, however, reason for Oregon Republicans, and for other Oregonians who think the state’s swung too far left, to be optimistic about this year’s midterm elections. Oregonians this year will elect a new governor, a new Labor Commissioner, at least one new member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and have the opportunity to replace all the members of the state House and half the members of the state Senate. Things can change, and quickly, in politics, and this year has a number of factors that point toward a potential Republican surge in Oregon.

Let’s start with the national political environment. The party that holds the White House almost always gets clobbered in the midterm election of the president’s first term. The president’s party has lost House seats in 17 out of 19 midterm elections since World War II. It suffered a net loss of governor’s races in 16 of those elections. Since 1922, only two presidents (Franklin Roosevelt and George W. Bush) saw their party gain state legislature seats in the first midterm election of their presidency. All the rest of them lost legislative seats.

The environment around the 2022 election thus begins from a place of presumed Republican advantage because a Democrat is president. But the news gets worse for Democrats because the worse a president’s approval rating at the time of the midterm election, the worse his party does. Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics and the American Enterprise Institute observes, “In our increasingly polarized and nationalized politics, the single most determinative factor in midterm outcomes is the president’s job approval.”

Trende developed a model that predicts the outcome of U.S. Senate races in 2022 based on Joe Biden’s approval rating. As I write this, Biden’s approval rating average is 40.4%. If his approval is the same in November, the model predicts an average Democrat loss of four seats in the Senate, which would flip control of that chamber to the Republicans with a few seats to spare. A low presidential approval rating is a very heavy burden for down-ballot candidates from his party, and Biden’s polling is, at present, historically bad.

Of course, every state is different and Oregon is nothing if not different, so let’s look at how the national political environment has translated into outcomes in the state previously. I’ll use 2010 as a case study because it was the last time there was a midterm election in the first term of a Democratic presidency. Barack Obama’s national approval rating in November 2010 was 45.6%. His approval rating in Oregon that year was 47.8%. Voters nationally in that midterm election handed Democrats a huge defeat, handing six Senate seats and 63 House seats to the GOP. The latter was the largest seat shift in a single election since 1948.

In Oregon, Democrat John Kitzhaber, who had previously served two terms as governor, beat Republican Chris Dudley by a mere 22,000 votes statewide. Democrats lost their super-majorities in both houses of the legislature, retaining a one-seat majority in the Senate and a tie in the House. Republicans, while lamenting Dudley’s near-miss, rightly considered the 2010 election a good one.

Using 2010 as a baseline, then, we can expect Republicans to perform well in Oregon in 2022. In fact, there are reasons to believe they might do better than they did in 2010. Biden’s approval rating in the state was, as of April 2022, only 41%. Oregon voters have turned on the current Democratic president in a way they didn’t in 2010.

Meanwhile, following two years of COVID restrictions, riots and a burgeoning homeless population, most Oregonians are none too happy with the direction of the state is headed. Fifty-four percent of Oregonians think the state is headed in the wrong direction, while only 33% think it’s on the right track. Relatedly, outgoing Democratic Governor Kate Brown is, arguably, the least popular governor in the country, with only 43% of Oregonians approving of the job she’s doing.

Beyond the polling, there have been cracks in the Democratic establishment that has long ruled Oregon. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof was prepared to run a well-funded primary campaign that appeared likely to challenge the poor results establishment Democrats have achieved in the state. The Oregon Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Kristof lacked the requisite residency to appear on the ballot.

However, former longtime Democrat state senator Betsy Johnson is running as an independent for governor. She bucked Democrat leadership often in the legislature, and her campaign is focused on making a change from the Democratic establishment. Kristof was, and Johnson is, betting that Oregon voters have had enough of business-as-usual in Salem. Republicans should benefit,. in statewide, legislative and congressional races, if that bet is right.

All of those factors point toward a very good year for Oregon Republicans. Of course, there are headwinds. Compared with 2010, Oregon is a much more blue state today in terms of voter registration. In November 2010, there were 196,952 more Democrats than Republicans in Oregon; today, the gap has grown to 293,295. In essence, statewide, Republicans are starting from 100,000 votes farther behind Democrats than they did in 2010. That’s significant.

And Republicans are entirely capable of getting, as I mentioned earlier, weird in a way that would reduce their appeal as a sane alternative to the Democrats of whom Oregon voters appear to be tiring.

The X factor in 2022, that factor that I think has to have an impact but I have no idea how much, is that Oregon’s biggest challenges are pretty clearly related to Oregon policies. Unlike in 2010, when a lot of the discussion was about Obamacare and the Great Recession, voters today are focused on homelessness, crime, school closures and, generally speaking, the urban decay occurring in Portland and other cities around the state. The mom in Beaverton who voted for Kitzhaber in 2010 may well be motivated to vote for the Republican, or for Betsy Johnson, in 2022 because she can’t take her kids to downtown Portland anymore. The issues Oregonians face today are much more immediate, more local, and harder to ignore than they were in 2010.

The result? Oregon voters are looking for a change, a fact that should instill vigor, and urgency. in the state’s long-suffering Republicans.