"Oregon's Future is Not a Spectator Sport." The Need for Oregon's Missing Third.
Thirty years ago, Governor Barbara Roberts challenged Oregonians to get involved. Today, too many of us are still on the sidelines.
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Kevin Frazier edits The Oregon Way. He’s a proud Duck and thankful to call Oregon home. His days are presently spent doing “zoom” law school at UC Berkeley.
In 1991, Governor Barbara Roberts issued a clarion call in her inaugural address:
One hundred and fifty years from now, as future generations look back on our journey, how will they see us?
Will they see us as pioneers?
Will they marvel at our ingenuity?
Or will they scoff at our feeble attempts to keep our balance as the old and new Oregon collide and spin into the 21st century? Will they speak of our courage, our creativity, our care and stewardship of the future? Or will they see us as short-sighted, self-centered, greedy, timid? For each generation has but one chance to be judged by future generations and this is our time.
We don’t need to speculate about how future Oregonians will reflect on the current state of affairs. When compared to our neighbors, our state government looks more “short-sighted” than courageous, more “self-centered” than creative, and more “greedy” than acting as stewards of the future.
Reporting by OPB suggests that it’s our northern neighbors who have figured out how to reach Governor Roberts’ reasonable expectations for what Oregonians deserve from their legislators. When historians in 2171 read the reporting from Dirk VanderHart and Austin Jenkins, they’ll discover objective indicators of why many Oregonians have the sense that the current governing generation has missed its chance.
Both Oregon and Washington face immense barriers to good governance: an urban-rural divide, stark partisan differences, and each of the two major parties with a procedural option at their disposal to throw a wrench in the other obtaining any sort of political victory. Yet, Washington alone has managed not to let its barriers become nearly obstacles to progress.
Historians will not report favorable on the actions in Salem. As outlined by OPB:
In years past, repeated Republican walkouts denied Oregon Democrats the quorum they needed to pass legislation similar to the cap-and-trade policy Washington is considering. This year, with that proposal off the table, Republicans in the Oregon House have chosen to waylay Democrats’ entire agenda.
The party has used a constitutional rule to require that all bills be read in full prior to a vote, grinding the gears of governance to a crawl. The delay tactic finally led Democrats to use a computer program to read bills for the first time in state history, its robotic drone sounding through the chamber for hours on end while lawmakers turned their attention elsewhere.
Comparatively, in Washington:
[T]he two parties have found ways to navigate their differences respectfully. Senate Majority Floor Leader Marko Liias thinks it helps that Senate Democrats remember what it was like when they weren’t in power.
“We’ve tried to really learn from what it was like to serve in the minority and bring those experiences with us to the majority and work collaboratively across the aisle,” Liias said.
To that end, Liias said, he tries to ensure that Republican bills that Democrats agree with don’t languish. He also noted the majority party has the power to close debate in the Senate, but that they try to use that “sparingly.”
Additionally, this year, because of the mostly remote session, the Senate fashioned emergency rules which allow for more advance notice to Republicans about what’s coming up on the floor. Liias said he and his Republican counterpart, state Sen. Shelly Short, also consult weekly.
Surely Oregon’s Democrats would argue that they’ve tried their best to accommodate Republican desires and demands, while still advancing the will of the electorate. And, Oregon’s Republicans have already stated that those accomodations simply are not enough. One hundred and fifty years from now, Oregonians won’t care much about which side was right. Instead, they’ll question why Washington alone was able to accomplish a “historic session,” including the:
adoption a long-sought-after, and controversial, new tax aimed at wealthy Washingtonians. A raft of police accountability measures are on a path to final passage, including restrictions on police tactics and creation of a new state office to investigate deadly force incidents.
That’s not all Washington may do. According to OPB, the Washington Legislature also has a chance of passing “criminal justice reform measures, a low-carbon fuel standard and . . . a cap-and-trade system . . . “
Even if you may not agree with all or any of those policies, surely you can agree that action is preferable to an acrimonious and adversarial style of politics that has diminished how many Oregonians view their state government. To meet Govenror Roberts’ call to action, the current way of doing things in Salem must come to an end. Washington does not offer all the answers. Our neighbors have experienced walk-offs of their own and plenty of partisan gridlock. Thankfully, Governor Roberts offered a broad solution:
Oregon's future is not a spectator sport. We're all in this together. This is our time. We must not be afraid of change.
The easiest way to get off the sidelines in a democracy is to vote and to vote for candidates unafraid of change.
Yet, in the last decade, as much as 32.2% of the electorate has missed the opportunity to change the political calculus for our elected officials. Based on research from Jim Moore, this missing third could be the difference in pressuring officials to act a little more like Washington and a little bit more like what Oregonians deserve. Those most likely to sit on the sidelines are also those most likely to pressure officials to act creatively and collaboratively:
Republicans and Democrats vote at much higher rates than any other voters. In 2020, 91.3% of Republicans and 90.9% of Democrats voted.
Of the six minor parties, turnouts ranged from 84.3% (Independents) to 59.1% (Working Families).
Unaffiliated voters came in at 64.8%.
Future Oregonians are counting on us. Can they count on your vote?
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