Jim Moore: Happy Birthday, Oregon. Let’s Talk Party.
If demographics are political destiny, then Oregon's future looks blue for decades to come.
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Longtime observer of Oregon and west coast politics. Political analyst for various media outlets, professor at Pacific University.
Oregon turns 162 this Sunday. During those seventeen decades, the state has been remarkably consistent in its political party makeup. It is only in the last decades that we have seen the rise of the Democratic Party and the decline of the Republicans.
From 1859 to 1878, Oregon was actually bipartisan over the years. Democrats held all four statewide elective offices for six biennia; Republicans held them all for four. The state legislature followed the same pattern.
But beginning in 1880, something different happened. From 1880 to 1931, the Republicans controlled both houses of the legislature. And, they not only controlled; they dominated. It was not uncommon for the ninety seats of the House and the Senate to consist of more than eighty Republicans—Democrats could be counted on the fingers of one or two hands. Among statewide offices, there was a mix of Democrats among Republicans in the governor’s office, but the other statewide offices were consistently held by Republicans.
During the Great Depression, a Democrat and an Independent won the governorship and Democrats controlled the Oregon House, but Republicans kept everything else. Then from 1939 to 1955, Republicans reasserted their primacy in controlling most statewide offices and the legislature. Democrats were once again counted in single or low double digits among the ninety legislative seats. There were exceptions—Democrat Rex Putnam was the Superintendent of Public Instruction from 1937 to 1961, but this was an era of Republican dominance.
Finally, in 1957, meaningful bipartisanship reasserted itself for the first time in about seventy-five years. Democrats controlled the legislature (in numbers that would be familiar to us today, 31-29 in the House, for example, and 19-11 in the Senate, for another example) while the statewide offices stayed in Republican hands. This was the era of the moderate and liberal Republicans in statewide office, led off by Gov. Mark Hatfield, followed by Gov. Tom McCall, with Gov. Vic Atiyeh finishing out the era when he left office in 1987.
When Republicans did gain control of the House in 1965, the Republican legislative leaders (Monte Montgomery and Bob Smith) were the conservative balance to liberal and moderate governors Hatfield and McCall.
Since the late 1980s, Democrats have asserted their control over the legislature and statewide offices. There was a moment in the early 1990s when Republicans, as they were in the process of losing any of the statewide offices, regained a majority in the legislature (this was the era when Democrat John Kitzhaber was called ‘Dr. No’ for all his vetoes of Republican legislation), but that was done by 2007.
We see similar patterns in Oregon’s votes for President over the decades. From 1860 to 1908, Oregon voted for the Republican candidate almost every time (twelve out of thirteen—Oregon supported Horatio Seymour over Republican U.S. Grant in 1868. Who on earth is Horatio Seymour?). Same thing from 1948 to 1984 (nine out of ten, with the exception of Barry Goldwater’s spectacular defeat in 1964). Here in 2021, we have had an unbroken line of support for the Democratic presidential candidate for nine straight elections.
Oregon’s party history is a history of long periods of single-party dominance interspersed with some bipartisan years. I count about one hundred years of single-party dominance and about sixty-two years of bipartisan control of Oregon’s state government.
What does all this mean?
A big reason for partisan change over time is simply who Oregonians are. Big shifts in the 1950s were within the dominant Republican Party—it became split between a conservative wing and a progressive wing over issues like civil rights, taxation (a constant issue in Oregon politics), and the role of the state in regulating business. That shift also reflected a quickly growing population spurred by the Baby Boom and by people moving to Oregon for jobs and the lifestyle.
This last group has been crucial ever since. Those immigrants to Oregon bring with them the political identities of where they came from. When Oregon’s economy began to shift away from timber toward more diverse industries—especially the high tech sector—Oregon’s politics began to shift from Republican to Democrat.
When Vic Atiyeh aggressively sought investment from other states and other countries in the 1980s, he, the last Republican governor, was laying the groundwork for the eclipsing of Republican power in the state and the rise of Democratic dominance. There were some bumps along the way (that 1990s revival of the Oregon Republican Party in the legislature was pretty remarkable), but demographics are political destiny.
As Oregon celebrates turning 162, its future looks like its past. Democratic dominance will continue. My count shows that Republican dominance in our history lasted for about seventy years—at that rate, Democrats still have about forty years to go to match that record.
Looking at our state population growth and political identity, I wouldn’t bet against it.
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I'd be wary of demographic determinism. Ask John Judis and Ruy Teixeira how their prediction of an "Emerging Democratic Majority" on the national level turned out since 2002. I agree Oregon will continue to benefit from in-migration of well-educated young people and families, and that the state will become less white as well. But as Judis and Texiera learned, groups defined by race or ethnicity can change in their political views as their socio-economic status changes over time. There are known unknowns to consider. Granted, education may be a better, more constant predictor of voting patterns. But we have to allow for change both in the attitudes of demographic groups and in the behavior of political parties. I'm less certain that Democratic dominance will continue as Jim predicts.