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A brawl in Oregon 5

The only definitive fact about the campaign for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, now fewer than four weeks from its finish line, is that it is close.

The limited available polling says so, suggesting the candidates are within the margin of error of each other. Both – and their allies – are spending enough that the election is unlikely to be decided because one candidate swamps the other financially.

And the candidates, Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democratic challenger Janelle Bynum, act as if they think so as well.

Last week, on Tuesday night at KOIN TV in Portland and Thursday night at KTVZ in Bend, they met for two of their three planned debates, which, aside from the flood of paid messaging from their campaigns, may be the main basis on which undecided voters will decide between the two of them.

The debates struck a different tone, with the second more energetic and combative. In Tuesday’s exchange, they walked cautiously while firing occasional shots. On Thursday, both sharpened their game, and fireworks exploded in nearly every exchange. Both candidates said the other cannot be trusted, Bynum drilling that point more frequently across a wider range of subjects, even addressing her opponent directly: “We can’t trust you.”

The debates reveal a difference between this race and others across the country. In many congressional districts, Republicans attack the Biden administration at nearly every opportunity, but Chavez-DeRemer has done so sparingly. Her stronger emphasis, especially at the KTVZ debate in Bend, was on bipartisanship, noting that of the 300 bills she has backed in Congress, 84% were bipartisan. She fired occasional shots at Oregon’s Legislature, where Bynum is in her fourth term, but not often directly at Democrats, who account for nearly 32% registered voters in the 5th District compared with 27% for Republicans.

One of Chavez-DeRemer’s stronger moments in both debates came after Bynum cited close work on public safety legislation in the House Judiciary Committee with former Republican Rep. Ron Noble of McMinnville. Chavez-DeRemer fired back that Noble has given a very different account. On Thursday, she even cited a letter she said Noble had written to her describing the relationship very differently.

Bynum replied, “Ron Noble is a man of the cloth. I’m quite surprised he would lie to you.”

Bynum lashed back, blasting Chavez-DeRemer for part of the majority in the U.S. House: “It’s chaotic, it’s confusing and it’s the least productive Congress we’ve had.”

She frequently linked Chavez-DeRemer with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress. She tied her to proposals in Project 2025, to proposals extending abortion bans and changing or limiting Social Security – which Chavez-DeRemer sharply denied – and said her opponent is looking out for the top 1% of the country while ignoring the concerns of others.

The 5th Congressional District has, in recent elections, leaned slightly Democratic, and that seems to have hemmed in Chavez-DeRemer from either firing broad partisan arguments or even making full-throated defenses of either Republicans in Congress or the presidential ticket she’s backing.

In the Tuesday debate, the candidates seemed relatively closely matched, but on Thursday, DeRemer spent more time on the defensive while Bynum appeared relaxed and better able to make broader points, many of them sharply barbed.

There were exceptions. DeRemer focused on crime, inflation and fentanyl, and the two candidates contested those closely.

Anchors asked the candidates specifically about Measure 110, the drug decriminalization measure, which Bynum supported – and voters approved – but Chavez-DeRemer opposed. Bynum acknowledged it hadn’t worked, but said that was largely because the agency infrastructure needed to implement it wasn’t in place, and that she’s worked on that since.

Chavez-DeRemer replied that “when you’re a visionary, you don’t put something on the board if you can’t finish it.”

Another Chavez-DeRemer effort, however, backfired on Thursday.

On Tuesday, she spoke about Bynum’s role in a sexual harassment case, about which Bynum said she had acted appropriately, appearing to tie off the question.

On Thursday, Chavez-DeRemer brought it up again at the end of the debate as the centerpiece of her closing statement. This time Bynum replied amid some self-description, “I’ve been the person who doesn’t take the bait.” She followed that with: “Don’t take the bait, Oregonians. She’s trying to make you forget who her man is” – namely Trump, who in 2020 lost what is now the 5th District.

The second debate especially (less so in the first) found Bynum relaxed, confident and operating mostly on comfortable terrain, drawing broader strokes and more effectively bringing home larger themes.

This is a close race, but the debate suggests that Chavez-DeRemer has the more difficult job to do in winning it.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Ever more heat in the 5th district race

The only definitive fact about the campaign for Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, now fewer than four weeks from its finish line, is that it is close.

The limited available polling says so, suggesting the candidates are within the margin of error of each other. Both – and their allies – are spending enough that the election is unlikely to be decided because one candidate swamps the other financially.

And the candidates, Republican incumbent Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democratic challenger Janelle Bynum, act as if they think so as well.

Last week, on Tuesday night at KOIN TV in Portland and Thursday night at KTVZ in Bend, they met for two of their three planned debates, which, aside from the flood of paid messaging from their campaigns, may be the main basis on which undecided voters will decide between the two of them.

The debates struck a different tone, with the second more energetic and combative. In Tuesday’s exchange, they walked cautiously while firing occasional shots. On Thursday, both sharpened their game, and fireworks exploded in nearly every exchange. Both candidates said the other cannot be trusted, Bynum drilling that point more frequently across a wider range of subjects, even addressing her opponent directly: “We can’t trust you.”

The debates reveal a difference between this race and others across the country. In many congressional districts, Republicans attack the Biden administration at nearly every opportunity, but Chavez-DeRemer has done so sparingly. Her stronger emphasis, especially at the KTVZ debate in Bend, was on bipartisanship, noting that of the 300 bills she has backed in Congress, 84% were bipartisan. She fired occasional shots at Oregon’s Legislature, where Bynum is in her fourth term, but not often directly at Democrats, who account for nearly 32% registered voters in the 5th District compared with 27% for Republicans.

One of Chavez-DeRemer’s stronger moments in both debates came after Bynum cited close work on public safety legislation in the House Judiciary Committee with former Republican Rep. Ron Noble of McMinnville. Chavez-DeRemer fired back that Noble has given a very different account. On Thursday, she even cited a letter she said Noble had written to her describing the relationship very differently.

Bynum replied, “Ron Noble is a man of the cloth. I’m quite surprised he would lie to you.”

Bynum lashed back, blasting Chavez-DeRemer for part of the majority in the U.S. House: “It’s chaotic, it’s confusing and it’s the least productive Congress we’ve had.”

She frequently linked Chavez-DeRemer with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress. She tied her to proposals in Project 2025, to proposals extending abortion bans and changing or limiting Social Security – which Chavez-DeRemer sharply denied – and said her opponent is looking out for the top 1% of the country while ignoring the concerns of others.

The 5th Congressional District has, in recent elections, leaned slightly Democratic, and that seems to have hemmed in Chavez-DeRemer from either firing broad partisan arguments or even making full-throated defenses of either Republicans in Congress or the presidential ticket she’s backing.

In the Tuesday debate, the candidates seemed relatively closely matched, but on Thursday, DeRemer spent more time on the defensive while Bynum appeared relaxed and better able to make broader points, many of them sharply barbed.

There were exceptions. DeRemer focused on crime, inflation and fentanyl, and the two candidates contested those closely.

Anchors asked the candidates specifically about Measure 110, the drug decriminalization measure, which Bynum supported – and voters approved – but Chavez-DeRemer opposed. Bynum acknowledged it hadn’t worked, but said that was largely because the agency infrastructure needed to implement it wasn’t in place, and that she’s worked on that since.

Chavez-DeRemer replied that “when you’re a visionary, you don’t put something on the board if you can’t finish it.”

Another Chavez-DeRemer effort, however, backfired on Thursday.

On Tuesday, she spoke about Bynum’s role in a sexual harassment case, about which Bynum said she had acted appropriately, appearing to tie off the question.

On Thursday, Chavez-DeRemer brought it up again at the end of the debate as the centerpiece of her closing statement. This time Bynum replied amid some self-description, “I’ve been the person who doesn’t take the bait.” She followed that with: “Don’t take the bait, Oregonians. She’s trying to make you forget who her man is” – namely Trump, who in 2020 lost what is now the 5th District.

The second debate especially (less so in the first) found Bynum relaxed, confident and operating mostly on comfortable terrain, drawing broader strokes and more effectively bringing home larger themes.

This is a close race, but the debate suggests that Chavez-DeRemer has the more difficult job to do in winning it.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Four legislative hotspots

More than three-quarters of Oregon’s legislative races are not likely to be competitive this year. But that still leaves some serious competition.

The odds are that nearly all of Oregon’s competitive legislative races in November will happen in four areas around the state: the coast, Salem area, eastern Portland suburbs and the Bend area. They accounted for nearly all of the tight races of 2022, and they happen to be the parts of Oregon in political transition.

In the last Senate race in 2020 and the last House race in 2022, the coast accounted for two close races in which the winner had less than 55% of the vote. Republican state Sen. Dick Anderson won in the 5th Senate District, with 49.3% of the vote, while Republican Rep. Cyrus Javadi won with 51.1% of the vote. Both of those incumbents are running again this year against new Democratic opponents. As incumbents, they’re probably favored, but not by much.

The southern coast has trended Republican for many years, but the northern coast was largely Democratic until recently. The Senate tenure of former Democrat Betsy Johnson, who ran as an unaffiliated candidate for governor in 2022, may have been a bridge for a transition.

The area has even drawn national attention for a political shift. Nationally, Tillamook County is  included among the 206 “pivot counties” which voted for Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and switched to Republican Donald Trump in 2016. Columbia County was also included and stayed red along with Tillamook in 2020.

This election may tell us to what degree that change is hardening.

The Salem area in the last cycle accounted for five close races. One of those, the 10th Senate District, isn’t on the ballot because incumbent Democrat Deb Patterson won a four-year term in 2022. But the four House races could be close again, with all four of the 2022 winners –Republicans Kevin Mannix and Tracy Cramer, and Democrats Paul Evans and Tom Andersen –  back again and facing new opponents.

Salem, once Oregon’s largest clearly Republican city, has become its most hotly contested piece of real estate. In the last election, Anderson and Evans won by just over 54% each, which was more than Mannix and Cramer garnered. Spending and other indicators suggest those two face a  slightly higher risk this time around, compared with Anderson and Evans.

But all four races are clearly competitive, in Oregon’s capital city that neither Democrats nor Republicans can safely call their own.

The suburban area east of Portland, from Troutdale to Hood River in the north and down to Oregon City and Wilsonville in the south, is not a vast area but it includes a lot of people. In the last cycle –2020 for the Senate and 2022 for the House – it was home to at least eight close races.

Just one is a Senate seat: the 25th District, which was won by Democrat Chris Gorsek. Five of the House races were won by Democrats: Courtney Neron was elected in the 26th District, Janelle Bynum won the 39th,  Annessa Hartman took the 40th, Hoa Nguyen won the 48th, Zach Hudson was elected in the 49th and Ricki Ruiz won the 50th. The 52th District stood apart, with voters there electing Republican Jeff Helfrich, who is the House minority leader.

Except for Bynum, who is now running for the U.S. House, all are seeking reelection. And except Nguyen, who again is facing Republican John Masterman, the rest have new opponents.

This area trended Republican a generation ago, but shifted toward a purplish hue and seems to have stayed there.

Finally, the Bend area, which also has been in political transition, accounts for two other seats that were close calls last time and could be again. One, the Bend-centered 27th Senate District, is held by Republican Tim Knopp. But after participating in the 2023 Republican Senate walkout, he is blocked from serving another term by a constitutional provision on legislative absences. Knopp won four years ago by a thin 50.7% of the vote, less than what Republicans once received in that area. Given shifts in the population and a strong campaign, Democrat Anthony Broadman looks like a probable winner this time over Republican Michael Summers, but the margins are not likely to be large.

The 53rd House District, which Democrat Emerson Levy won last time by only about 500 votes, again looks like it might be one of the closest races in Oregon.

Outside these four regions, only one legislative seat, the 7th House District around Springfield, which is held by Democrat John Lively, could be a competitive race. His Republican opponent, Cory Burket, raised nearly $78,000 as of Tuesday, compared with about $112,000 for Lively, and is running an active campaign.

Still, Lively probably has the edge.

The only other close contest last time, the 29th House District that covers Hillsboro and Forest Grove, now has a winner. Democratic incumbent Susan McLain is running unopposed this time.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

A mistake, not a policy choice

A reader reacting to the news of noncitizens being registered to vote in Oregon recently sent me an email, saying: “Oregon does such a great job they register illegals to vote. That’s democracy for sure the Democrat way.”

Wrong registrations did happen: First, state officials reported 306, and then on Monday, they said the number was really 1,259 and that nine people who were not U.S. citizens had voted.

This latest announcement is likely to fuel a bigger political uproar among a number of  Republican legislators. Republican secretary of state candidate Dennis Linthicum said, “It’s no longer a conspiracy that illegal immigrants can successfully register to vote in Oregon. But now they actually have, so our conspiracy theory has turned from hot air to fact.”

The subject of noncitizens voting has national resonance, with Republicans in the U.S. House considering a shutdown of the federal government over the subject of noncitizen voting in elections.

Federal law passed in 1996 specifically bans noncitizens from voting in federal elections, for president or Congress. A few local jurisdictions, mainly in Maryland and Vermont, do allow noncitizen voting in some cases, mainly when property taxes, which may be paid by noncitizens, are at stake. But repeated studies have found that actual illegal voting is rare. One study by the Georgia secretary of state found a total of 1,634 cases of noncitizens “potentially” registering to vote over 25 years – but it found no illegal votes.

The policy in Oregon is clear. According to the Secretary of State’s Office: “Only U.S. citizens may vote in Oregon elections. People must verify and attest they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote, and only voters who have registered in Oregon will have their ballot counted. Providing false information when registering to vote is a felony.???”

So what happened in the case of those 1,259 noncitizens?

Oregon’s voter registration system provides for automatically registering people to vote when they obtain a driver’s license or state identity card. There are exceptions. Some people are not included, including those too young to vote and others who are barred, including noncitizens. The first group is flagged by birth date, and the second by the type of identification people provide – as they must – when they obtain the license.

Since 2021, Oregon officials have accepted a wider range of identity documents at the Driver and Motor Vehicle division, including foreign passports and birth certificates. State officials said in September that the 306 noncitizens registered to vote had presented foreign passports that were marked as U.S. passports. The other 953 people who were wrongly registered to vote had presented foreign birth certificates as proof of ID. The nine people who actually voted were referred to the Department of Justice for investigation.

In the context of Oregon’s 3 million registered voters, this is not a massive mistake. It’s the kind of error a bureaucracy usually can handle, and state elections officials said they’ve change their procedures to prevent more mishaps.

It isn’t a policy decision, either: What happened is actually directly counter to the state’s stated policy.

My email correspondent implied that a mistake was made and that it was intentional. The first suggestion was on target. The second isn’t, and that’s worth bearing in mind when considering how much weight to give in the case of the improper registrations.

 

It shouldn’t be this competitive

By most political rules of thumb, Oregon’s 6th Congressional District race this year shouldn’t be particularly competitive.

But both the Democratic and Republican national political parties have declared the district a priority, a place where significant money and support will be sent.

There’s a case for why that shouldn’t be so.

Two years ago, when the brand new district had no incumbent, neither party had an incumbent’s advantage. The winner then, Democrat Andrea Salinas, is running as an incumbent now, and she has the advantages most incumbents can have. She has visited her district rigorously, worked on constituent projects and requests, kept in touch with key constituencies and raised plenty of money, typically an incumbent advantage.

She also is a Democrat running in a district that leans gently Democratic, and isn’t particularly bedeviled in her district by issues or controversies from the Beltway. The Cook Political Report lists the district as leaning Democratic.

And one more thing: She is running against the same candidate she defeated two years ago, Republican Mike Erickson. Reruns are a dynamic that more often than not – unless the candidate has some particular and specific political problem of the sort Salinas seems not to have – usually results in a repeat of the earlier result, even more so. Erickson is an experienced candidate, but his track record doesn’t inspire confidence: He has run for the U.S. House three times, and twice for the Oregon Legislature, and lost all those races.

While the two candidates spent comparable amounts of money, each between $3 million and $4 million, this cycle Salinas has reported raising and spending far more than Erickson. Erickson is, however, wealthy enough to self-fund a substantial campaign, but reports of that haven’t surfaced as of the most recent federal campaign report at the end of June.

These considerations may be one reason why the national Republican congressional committee decided only last month to add Erickson to its priority list of candidates.

Given all that, you have to wonder why the sixth is considered so close. But there are reasons for that, too. Even if you dismiss the recent poll released by the Erickson campaign, the only poll of the race so far that showed the two candidates nearly tied, with Salinas at 45% and Erickson at 43%), there are some reasons to class this race as competitive.

First, the general election of 2022 was close. Salinas took 50% of the vote to Erickson’s 48%, a gap of just 7,210 votes. In 2022, the ballot also included a Constitution Party candidate, who pulled 6,762 votes. If you assume, reasonably, that many of those votes would have gone to Erickson absent that candidate, then the outcome would have been exceedingly close.

There are no third-party candidates on the ballot in the sixth this year, with Salinas cross-nominated by the Independent Party of Oregon.

Second, the voting base of the sixth was close two years ago and seems close and fluid now. For years, the numbers of registered Democrats and Republicans both have been in decline while the number of nonaffiliated voters has picked up significantly. That trend has held in this district in recent years. While the number of registered voters has increased by about 10,000 to 474,332 as  of August according to the  Secretary of State’s Office, the numbers of both Democrats and Republicans have fallen from two years ago by almost identical percentages.

We can only guess at how that will translate to votes in November.

Third, while Erickson’s campaign as such seems lightly funded, it has allies. Pro-Erickson third party mailers have hit the district, at least one blasting Salinas over a lawsuit Erickson has filed against her.

Erickson could also benefit from some name familiarity after his earlier races.

All that said, the advantages Salinas should accrue this year still give her the edge. The changes from last cycle to this one do soften or even eliminate some advantages she had then, but she’s added some new ones from her incumbency.

It’s not a wrapped-up contest. The parties are not wrong to put a priority on it, and Oregonians would be wise to pay it some attention too.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Democracy in Oregon

Oregon has a good track record – one of the strongest among the 50 states – on democracy.

The state makes it relatively easy for Oregonians to participate in elections compared with many other states. But threats to democracy lurk elsewhere – outside the state – and that means Oregon has a special role to play in setting an example.

The 2007 United Nations General Assembly resolution setting up the International Day of Democracy called democracy “a universal value based on the freely expressed will of people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems, and their full participation in all aspects of life.”

Furthering democracy should not only be the work of elected officials but also the public needs to be involved, something that’s good to remember as States Newsroom and other media organizations across the country mark Democracy Day on Sunday.

Oregon has been all over democracy for more than a century.

The sweeping electoral reforms that have been adopted nationally happened early in Oregon, and primarily thanks to a popular movement.

One of its leaders was William U’Ren, a Wisconsin native, came to Oregon looking for work and found it laboring in orchards. He was afire with the idea of politically empowering people like himself. By 1892, he was an activist organization leader, the spark plug behind the state’s Populist Party and the tip of the spear behind Oregon’s initiative, referendum and recall provisions, which are pure popular democracy. And he succeeded because large numbers of Oregonians joined the effort.

Ever since, Oregon has been among the most active states with ballot initiatives backed by signatures – though the Legislature refers measures to the ballot, too – and it has above average participation in elections generally. The state has been aggressive in making voting easy, through the Motor Voter law and adopting mail balloss along with other efforts that other states often have replicated.

Not all states have these tools: Oregon is among 24 that allow initiatives on the ballot.

Oregon and California were the first to adopt automatic voter registration through the Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2016, Oregon expanded th “Motor Voter” law to make voter registration automatic unless the person opts out of registration. That eliminates the need to fill out a voter registration card. Today, Oregon is one of 24 states with some form of automatic voter registration.

All this may matter more in Oregon as a factor in politics than in some states in part because the election margins often are close. Landslide wins are less common in Oregon than in many states, and really close elections are not unusual. Two and maybe three of Oregon’s congressional races this year are expected to be close, which would reflect what happened two years ago.

How many people participate in democracy by voting and in other ways affects the results, and not everyone is in favor of strong voting. Some other states, like Ohio, Arizona and Idaho have faced efforts against widening voter access and allowing public initiatives, reserving that power for  legislatures.

Such efforts easily could arise in Oregon.

There are also political arguments, such as Utah’s U.S. Sen. Mike Lee’s well-known 2020 tweet, “We’re not a democracy,” arguing that the U.S. is a republic, with the implicit assumption that self-government is not a positive idea. The Heritage Foundation, which is operating as a central planning arm for a prospective second Trump administration, has argued likewise.

The common rebuttal to statements like Lee’s is that the U.S. is both a democracy and a republic – the latter being the mechanism through which the former works. But this has not sunk in in all quarters.

Anti-democratic ideas like those from Lee and the Heritage Foundation may find less interest in Oregon than in some places. But that doesn’t mean democracy isn’t under threat nationally and internationally.

That means Oregon has a chance to make its longstanding perspective felt in what is increasingly becoming a political debate.

When the United Nations set up the International Day of Democracy, it was intended partly to celebrate self-government but also to “review the state of democracy in the world.”

Americans generally, and Oregonians specifically, need to weigh in on the state of democracy. Oregon’s long history with democratic activism gives it special cachet in pushing for an easier process for the public.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Short coattails

Political prognosticators for months have talked about the nation’s battleground states, and Oregon has not been included in the mix.

That’s because Oregonians almost certainly will vote in November for Democrat Kamala Harris for president, judging from recent election history.

Oregon was once a Republican bastion in presidential elections, but no Republican presidential candidate has taken the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Most of Oregon’s presidential elections have not been especially close since then, either. Donald Trump only pulled in 39% of the vote in 2016 and 40% in 2020, giving a landslide to Democrats. Other Republican presidential candidates in the last three decades haven’t done much better.

Presidential victories often help lower-ballot candidates from the same party, which could matter in Oregon where several key races are competitive.

The highest-profile race is in the 5th Congressional District between incumbent Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democrat Janelle Bynum. The 6th District rematch contest, between incumbent Democrat Andrea Salinas and Republican challenger Mike Erickson, could feel the ripple effects, too, and so might a few legislative races.

But the local record of top candidates helping lower-ballot contenders win by riding on their coattails is mixed, and even nationally, research has been inconclusive.

The statistics-oriented 538 website cited studies finding an advantage from a fifth to half of a percentage point for a down-ballot candidates if their party’s candidate for president is ahead by 1 point, with the advantage growing as the lead increases. Those amounts might not be large enough to matter in most cases, but if the local race is close – as it was in the Oregon 5th and 6th districts in 2022 – it can be decisive.

After evaluating numbers from 1992 to 2016, the 538 site reported, “We found a strong correlation (0.655) between the national margins for presidential and House races.” Earlier studies have found that popular presidential candidates tend to add to the number of U.S. House seats their party wins, though results can vary depending on the local conditions.

Not all voters respond the same way. Columbia University Professor Robert Erikson has noted the impact of “balancing” when voters choose candidates across party lines – such as a president from one party and a member of Congress from another – to keep each party in check.

And, of course, different states and regions have different records. In Oregon, there’s very limited evidence of a coattail effect in congressional races. For example, in the last four general elections, Republicans continued to win by landslides in the heavily Republican 2nd Congressional District in eastern Oregon in both the 2016 presidential year and in the 2022 midyear election. Democratic wins in other congressional races also showed no coattail effect in presidential years compared with midterm elections.

And presidential races have not appeared to have much of an impact on the Legislature. From the election of 2006 to present, each general election has yielded between 22 and 30 Republican House members. The Republican high spot came with the midterm elections of 2010 and 2006, which would indicate a little advantage for the party in nonpresidential years. The Republican low spots fell in the midterm of 2018 and the presidential of 2020. Overall, the shifts have been minor and subtle over the last dozen years.

In a looser sense, if one of the parties has significantly more energy and enthusiasm – which may derive in part from national politics – that can filter down to local candidates and party organizations. Oregon Democrats may be feeling some of that with Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy in recent weeks.

But a true presidential coattail effect is likely to be short, if anything, in Oregon.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Reasons and ranked choice

In November 2022, Democrat Tina Kotek was elected governor of Oregon with 47% of the vote. That was enough to win the general election, since her total was slightly higher than that of her leading opponent, Republican Christine Drazan.

She was able to win with less than a majority of support because other candidates siphoned off votes. But what might have happened if the rules said no one could be elected governor with less than half – 50% – of the vote?

What often happens in this case in places with ranked choice voting is that a runoff election is held between the top two contenders.

The runoff decision could be made in the general election if voters could select their second or third choices. That’s what Oregon Measure 117, setting up ranked-choice voting, would do. When voters pick their preferred candidate for governor or for other designated offices, they would also be able to choose a second-place choice.

The result could have been different – or not – had Oregon already had a ranked choice voting system in place when Kotek was elected. Oregon has enough close elections, which usually are won by Democrats, that you might expect Democrats to put up a brick wall against ranked choice voting. Not so: The large number of legislators who signed on in public support all are Democrats, and the large list of organizations backing it as well are Democratic-leaning, with Democratic lawmakers in the Legislature providing the votes to refer the measure to the ballot.

The measure would apply to national and statewide offices but it would exclude legislative races, which would still be won by the top vote-getter. It also would allow cities, counties, school districts and special districts to use ranked choice voting if they preferred.

Nevertheless, Oregon Republicans have generally opposed the measure.

One reason might be the situation in Idaho, where a ranked choice initiative on the ballot this year has been far more publicly controversial than it has in Oregon, causing a split within the Republican Party.

Idaho’s proposal, which made it to the ballot through grassroots organizing and signature gathering, would create ranked choice elections and also change the primary election system. Right now, only registered Republicans can vote in Republican primaries, while Democratic primaries are open to all. If the ranked choice measure were adopted, all primaries would be open.

Republicans in the Idaho Legislature oppose the proposition and so does the state party organization. Idaho Republican Chair Dorothy Moon, in arguing against the initiative, said, “Leftists have long been frustrated that Idaho is a conservative state. Having given up on changing hearts and minds with persuasive arguments, they now want to change the rules of the game. This is part of a long pattern of an insatiable thirst for power: mass mail-in ballots, gerrymandering, unmonitored drop boxes and even allowing noncitizens to vote.”

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador is also against it, but this week his attempt to squash it through the courts failed with the Idaho Supreme Court dismissing his petition on procedural grounds.

Ranked choice voting – and open primaries – has become one of the hottest political issues of the year in Idaho. But it is less a battle between Republicans and Democrats and more between the Trump-oriented Republicans who lead the state party organization, and more traditional and moderate Republicans. That latter group supports ranked choice voting.

The Oregon Republican Party’s opposition to ranked choice voting has been framed more as concern about the process than about an ideological or partisan advantage. A GOP newsletter in Oregon described it as “a snake oil sales pitch that sounds reasonable until you realize too late that you have been flim-flammed out of your vote and the public has been manipulated into a computer-derived configuration of the vote.”

Its main argument is that ranked choice voting is too complex and might exhaust voters with options. But that hasn’t been reported as a significant problem in Maine, Alaska or other jurisdictions that have tried it.

Ranked choice voting does have a bias: toward candidates who are at least generally acceptable to at least half of the voters. Candidates who appeal to the extremes are disadvantaged. The same would apply, generally, to political parties: If your candidates are likely to appeal to more people in any given area, they’ll do better. If not, they won’t.

In both Oregon and Idaho, Democrats figure their candidates will appeal to a broader spectrum of voters. But the Republicans – at least the Donald Trump-based Republicans like those leading the political parties in each state – sense they need to rely on a smaller support base, at least in smaller places.

Watch the election results on the ballot issue in both Oregon and Idaho to see who prevails.

This column and photo were originally published in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

More than money

Oregon’s public defender problems have been getting much better and much worse at the same time.

Finding a solution that makes sense doesn’t involve doing what most people have long argued: spending more money on legal services. The answer lies in how the money is managed and spent, and how the workload is organized.

In all, it resembles any of several serious Oregon problems – drug abuse and homelessness among them – where the willingness to do the right thing, and the ability to pay for it, are not the bottleneck. The problem lies in smartly managing the problem-solving.

The problems with the public defense of people charged with a crime who cannot afford an attorney but have the right to one is not new, and legislators and the state executive branch actively have been working on it for years.

The Oregon Legislature has responded. The Oregon Public Defense Commission, which is assigned to manage and deliver public attorneys for at-need defendants, has been given a massive infusion of new money, its budget more than doubling in the past seven years.

The larger picture in defense caseloads looks better than even a couple of years ago. In January 2022, the American Bar Association produced a report called The Oregon Project: An Analysis of the Oregon Public Defense System and Attorney Workloads Standards, which found that Oregon had fewer than a third of the attorneys, or more exactly attorney work-hours, needed to meet the the demand and  and ought to have the full-time equivalent of about 1,300 more attorneys.

Since then, other states have studied exactly how much attorney time is needed in public defense, and when variations in the types of cases are factored in – a simple misdemeanor versus a knot of complex felonies, for example – it turns out Oregon’s need is far smaller than estimated by the bar association. Those studies indicate it needs about 600 attorneys.

But the problem is more complicated than that.

There’s been more focus on providing counsel for in-custody defendants, but the problem seems to have worsened among the larger group of out-of-custody defendants, with the lack of counsel problem worsening overall.

Their ranks have swelled after a federal judge last October ordered that any inmate not assigned an attorney within a week had to be released from county jails. (The legal debate about the judge’s action is ongoing.)

On top of that, the average time an out-of-custody felony defendant now is without counsel is running upward of 100 days.

This has been happening even at a time when the numbers of Oregon crimes, notably property crime, have been trending downward.

Under terms of the state-attorney contracts awarded in June 2022, the defense attorneys are limited in the number of cases they can accept. By April of 2023, however, many attorneys already had hit those ceilings and could not take on new clients as new defendants entered the system. In Multnomah County, private lawyers overall reported hitting 122% of the maximum caseload in recent months. So in the spring of 2023, the state throttled back the number of cases defense attorneys could take.

There have also been serious problems with billing by the commission. The amount of time elapsed for payment to attorneys has grown from just over a week in 2016 to more than 45 days this year – a situation bound to become unacceptable to many attorneys and other contractors, such as private investigators.

More flexible rules for attorney contracting could help, along with a sharper focus on problem-solving and less on rule-making. But there’s a larger systemic block getting in the way of solving many state problems that both agency directors and the governor, and the Legislature, should start to consider more broadly.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.