Posts published in “Stapilus”

Visit Hood River, as so many people do, and you’ll see on the front windows of many downtown businesses a sign saying: “We are immigrants,” and sometimes next to them signs saying, “No trespassing — no federal agents — agents lacking judicial warrants will be turned away.”

Many took care to advertise an April 23 community town hall about the “impacts of ICE actions in our communities.”

Politically and socially, Hood River closely resembles pieces of central Portland or Corvallis.

Travel about 20 miles down the highway to the other major Columbia Gorge community, The Dalles, and you’d have to search hard to find any such signs about immigration or other public policy. I couldn’t find one.

These two communities theoretically ought to be twins.  The Dalles has a formal population about twice as large as Hood River, but the cities’ urbanized areas feel comparable in size. Both rely on their Columbia River location for strong tourism sectors, while each still depends considerably on agriculture. Both cities exude some prosperity (a little more obviously, maybe, in the case of Hood River). Even the cities’ road plans, and mix of commercial, industrial and residential areas are laid out similarly.

And yet to walk around these two cities is to get an entirely different feel. Hood River is packed solid on weekends — parking is hard to find — its popularity as a tourist destination spot (sporting activities, notably windsurfing, are a major draw). The Dalles draws tourists but seems more reliant on traditional resource businesses and its massive new data centers, a subject of some local controversy.

But the politics of the area is clear and reflects the overall feel of the communities. Hood River city, and the county around it, is strongly Democratic, while The Dalles area leans very slightly Republican and Wasco County around it mostly is strongly so.

The reasons for this, and the impact of recent economic developments, suggest a small but clear current movement toward Democrats, which may have an effect on one of the handful of closely contested Oregon legislative seats.

The Gorge, or at least the Oregon side of it, has been politically fluid over the decades. In the half-century up to 1988, you could argue that Wasco was more Democratic than Hood River; certainly it voted more often for Democrats for president. Since then — around the time Oregon became a consistent Democratic vote on the presidential level — Hood River has become clearly bluer, and Wasco more purplish.

Hood River County overall in 2024 voted 65.8% Democratic for president (well short of Multnomah but close to the margins in Washington and Benton), most strongly in Hood River city (four of those precincts went Democratic by more than 70%), but generally county-wide as well.

Wasco County barely voted Republican for president, 51.1%, and that close split reflected a wide range of views around the county’s 12 precincts. Four precincts in and just to the west of The Dalles voted Democratic, two more nearby were closely split, and the remaining rural precincts, with smaller populations, were strong Donald Trump bases.

The one rural precinct which went for Kamala Harris, Rowena-Mosier, lies on the old Highway 30 directly between The Dalles and Hood River. Many of the residences there are relatively new, suggesting that some of the same population moves and cultures that have influenced Hood River and to a lesser degree The Dalles had an effect in between them as well.

These geographic and voting pattern details matter when it comes to one of the region’s most closely-fought legislative seats.

In the decade before the 2022 election, all of Hood River County (along with mostly Republican slices of Multnomah and Clackamas) was located in the 52nd House District, and all of Wasco County (along with several other north-central Oregon counties, generally strongly Republican) in the 57th District.

The 2021 redistricting nudged the 57th District toward the southeast, expelling the precincts around The Dalles. Those are in the redistricted 52nd District, which was already closely split between the parties and lost some marginally Democratic territory in the Portland metro area.

This put the balance in this swing district in the new territory of The Dalles. In the 2022 election Republican Jeff Helfrich won three of the four counties in the 52nd District but lost Hood River overwhelmingly, for a narrow district-wide win of 52.5%. In 2024, he won again but by even less, 51.8%; the Wasco County precincts edged a little more Democratic that year.

This year, Helfrich is running instead for the Senate in the 26th District, where Republican margins are a little stronger. The two major candidates to replace him in the House are Republican Scott Hege and Democrat Hank Sanders, both winners of contested primaries.

Not much of a demographic change would be needed in this district to create an almost perfectly even playing field. This could turn out to be one of the last legislative seats in Oregon decided after election day in November.

 

What Oregon voters are thinking right now can sometimes be derived from the top-level election results.

But those opinions are often subject to misinterpretation, another way of saying: Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions. Results from lower-level sections of the ballotts can be as useful. Dozens of local ballot issues were on the May primary election ballot (the secretary of state’s office has a convenient rundown of them on its website), in which voters got to speak directly on a range of subjects.

As an expression of attitude, the massive statewide turndown of the state transportation funding plan — for example — isn’t all Oregon voters had to say on the subjects of taxes, public services and attitudes toward government.

Consider the high-profile indicator question cutting across a bunch of issues and ideologies: Whether people (or how many of them) in Oregon would like to break off and join more conservative and Republican Idaho instead.

Over the last decade or so, a long string of eastern Oregon counties passed ballot issues in favor of Greater Idaho. These ballot issues tended variously either to discuss the split or actually try to push the local jurisdiction to leave Oregon and join the state of Idaho, which politically was closer to their preferences.

For many reasons, this never has been within the range of the realistic, but it does serve as a measure of dissatisfaction. Douglas and Josephine counties voters, who live a very long distance from Boise, have flatly rejected the idea, but most eastern Oregon counties have approved it.

Wallowa County, which borders Idaho, in 2020 turned thumbs down by a margin of 41 votes, but then in 2023 by seven votes approved it.  This year it was back on the ballot in the form of a measure aimed at eliminating the requirement that county commissioners engage in Greater Idaho discussions. This time the result was not close at all: 60.7% of the voters favored calling off the whole idea.

Is the greater Idaho bubble leaking air? There’s now some concrete reason to think so.

Another recent political trend, in many places nationally at least, has been diminished support for educational and cultural funding, but Portland voters seem to run in the other direction. Multnomah County’s Measure 26-261, which sought to renew a 2021 levy backing the Oregon Historical Society (based in downtown Portland), passed overwhelmingly, with 62.6% of the vote. Eugene voters acted similarly on a library ballot measure.

Okay, that’s Portland and Eugene (and Veneta and Scappoose). But over in Baker County, library district patrons opted with a 70.3% vote, to renew a five-year local option tax to benefit the library.

A bigger deal happened in Grant County, where 58.6% of the voters chose (Measure 12-97) to create a new Grant County library district, along with taxing authority for it. The library had been run out of county government, and county officials had talked about zeroing-out the library budget due to a budget deficit. The Oregon Arts Watch group noted, “With the tax district generating stable, dedicated funding for the library, advocates hope the library will be able to be open more hours and that programs cut in the past will be reinstated, including youth programs, community outreach, and a bookmobile.”

Funding for law enforcement, too, got some help in places where that hasn’t always been a given.

True, Clackamas County voters decisively (with more than 60% in opposition) rejected Measure 3-633, a proposed five-year local option levy to provide funding for the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office released a statement saying, “Without this dedicated funding source, the level of Sheriff’s Office services our community has come to rely on will change significantly. Patrol staffing, jail operations, investigations, and other critical public safety services will all be impacted. And Sutherlin city voters did opt to repeal a public safety fee.

But beyond that, law enforcement did well around the state. North Bend voters by 49 votes favored (in Measure 6-228) a police safety property tax increase. At Port Orford, 58.7% of voters decide to establish a clear five-year property tax levy to replace a more complicated system involving a monthly “public safety fee.” Voters turned down a five-year fire safety levy in Vernonia but passed one in Warrenton (61.0% favorable).

The message is, don’t judge the intent of voters in a whole state by a single vote. There’s actually more sophistication than such an approach would suggest.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

A couple of decades ago, the comedian Chris Rock led a TV series called “Everybody Hates Chris,” its name a spin on “Everybody Loves Raymond”.

Not to pile on too much, but did Oregon just see the “Everybody Hates ODOT” election?

The context is that practically everyone in the state seemed to expect the transportation tax and fee law passed last year by the legislature to be given the boot by the voters; the only question was how strong that vote would be.

It turned out to be overwhelming: as of mid-evening on Tuesday, 83.1% of Oregon voters opted to throw out the taxes and fees (which already were on hold pending the election).

And it was as across-the-board a decision as you could imagine. No county voted for the package, and none even came close. You could note that the three counties with the highest pro-transportation tax votes were all Democratic places: Benton, Hood River and Multnomah. But look at the percentages in favor even there: 29.3%. 28.1%, and 25% respectively.

In Harney, Lake, Morrow and Sherman counties, the tax plan couldn’t even crack 4% favorable, and most of eastern Oregon, and many other counties, didn’t generate a lot more support.

The package was passed originally as a cobbled-together effort to save basic services provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation. You have to imagine this kind of a mass repudiation making a big impact around its state offices in the weeks to come. Or at least it should.

There’s another side effect almost as worthy of note, though: The part of this political equation that didn’t translate into everybody loving someone else, at least not as much as some people might have thought.

The candidate in question is Ed Diehl, a state legislator from Stayton running for the Republican nomination for governor. Last fall, before he got into the gubernatorial race, he led an effort to put a referendum about the newly-passed transportation revenue plan on the statewide ballot. That effort not only worked but succeeded spectacularly: Within just a few weeks a quarter-million petition signatures were delivered, and the momentum to kill the transportation plan was massive and building.

That kind of success apparently got Diehl looking toward statewide horizons, and he filed for governor. His connection to the referendum was front and center, and his signs made sure to identify him as Ed “No Tax” Diehl. That labeling may have given him a slightly more focused identity than any of the other Republican candidates had, though most if not all of them were on his side in the issue.

To be fair, Diehl did a fair job campaigning and spoke with some depth about other subjects as well. But his identification with the referendum was so strong that it’s hard to imagine he would have been running were it not on the ballot.

So the question was, could it be enough to lift him to the Republican nomination?

You probably can’t say it didn’t help.

As of mid-Tuesday evening, Diehl was at 32.2% of the vote in a 14-candidate field, well behind expected front-runner Christine Drazan (the party’s 2022 nominee for the job) with 42.8% and well ahead of Chris Dudley, who had 15.6% (he was the nominee in 2010). No one else cracked  5%.

Drazan’s win was widespread, taking all but the seven counties Diehl won (Polk, Marion, Linn, Crook, Grant, Harney and Wallowa). Marion and Linn were home turf for Diehl, and the referendum had especially lopsided results in the others.

Put another way, Diehl likely did benefit a little from the association with the referendum, but probably not all that much.

Let’s shift the focus a little now toward November. The big transportation plan pushed by Democratic Governor Tina Kotek now has been dramatically rejected; apparently in anticipation of that, she already has started a process toward planning what to do next.

Will the rejected transportation plan be front and center in the Kotek-Drazan rematch?

Likely, it will be a factor, but its ability to carry its impact into other races may be limited. The governor’s race no doubt will feature talk about transportation funding, and Drazan will quite reasonably talk about the politics and policy of Measure 120. But Kotek likely will come back with other options, and by November the issue may be reframed.

Fury doesn’t seem to be all that transferable. Especially once it’s been given expression and, possibly, has blown itself out.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Does anyone in Oregon think Measure 120, sustaining last year’s legislation on transportation taxes and fees, will pass? Anyone?

Anyone who does seems to be well hidden, just like any supporters of the measure, the substance of which passed just last year with majority support in the legislature and signature by the governor.

The state’s Democratic political leadership appears to have abandoned it completely. And the Oregon Department of Transportation, where most of the money raised is intended to go, likely isn’t one of the most popular in state government.

The only electoral curiosity left seems to be how few voters will opt to uphold the transportation funding package.

This month’s election will not end the story, of course. It already is beginning anew.

The real question now is whether Oregon leaders will try their same policy development process yet again, or approach transportation funding in a different way that might generate more public support.

Actually, passage of Measure 120 wouldn’t end the story either. During the 2025 session, this complicated round of transportation funding started with this base point (from Democrats at least): $14.6 billion over 10 years is what was needed to meet the state’s transportation needs. The eventual passed legislation (now in the form of Measure 120), provided less than a third of that, $4.3 billion over 10 years. That scale down doesn’t seem to be a result of revised estimates of need, but only of what number could clear the legislature (as that one did only barely). So Measure 120, even if passed, would be far from a panacea.

The question remains what should be done now, without even the recent funding bandaid in place.

The essential problem underlying all this is not hard to understand. Inflation has hit road construction, maintenance and repair hard, and that has combined with a squeeze on the top source of revenue for the work: gas taxes, which are under downward pressure from higher-mileage  and new electric vehicles and (especially recently) overall higher gas prices.

On April 30, a group called by Gov. Tina Kotek met to start considering what to do next. The committee is expected to meet monthly until around the end of the year.

At its first session, it heard reports from a variety of transportation professionals. An ODOT speaker warned that soon, without more funding, the agency may be reduced to paving interstate routes and not much else. An Association of Oregon Counties speaker said that, “Without new revenue over about the next five years, more than 4,500 miles of county roads will go without critical maintenance work and then will quickly deteriorate beyond repair.”

Presumably, the group will come up with a new set of numbers — some new collection of taxes and fees — for delivery to the 2027 legislative session. Its mission appears to include finding a new funding model for Oregon transportation, which means shifting but also increasing the state’s taxes, fees or other money sources.

At that point, once such a recommendation surfaces, the legislature presumably will try to do what it did in the last (special) session. After that, some groups of people in Oregon — especially those who might wind up paying more, as someone would have to — will mobilize against it.

That easily could result in another referendum in two years leading to another dead transportation package. And Oregon’s transportation system will continue to deteriorate.

The best route to an answer – and the working group could help lead this – could be to first clearly and specifically, in detail, describe the problem and what will happen without more funding, and initially holding off on the solution.

It’s counterintuitive: The usual and often the best approach for governments — and for columnists too, for that matter — is to link the problem and the solution, lest the problem seem unsolvable.

The deterioration of Oregon’s roads may be an exception, because all of the funding solutions in view seem vulnerable to the same criticisms likely to doom Measure 120.

What if the transportation group were to focus exclusively, at the beginning, on defining the nature of the problem, and at first putting stabs at a solution on a back burner?

And then suppose they took that discussion around the state, from region to region, bringing the receipts: Here is what is likely to happen locally, over the next five or ten years, to roadways in this area if funding isn’t somehow increased significantly. Central to making this work would be conducting these efforts as high-profile and broadly inclusive, as possible, with local voices heard at length. The quarter-million petition signers who put Measure 120 on the ballot should be specifically invited.

Then — and only then — the group should pose the question: Given this situation, what do you want to do? Is it your choice to drive on deteriorating roads? If not, then how do you propose to fix them? Where should the money come from?

If the public (and Republicans) were more broadly and openly brought into this process, legislative candidates – during the upcoming campaign season – might be pressured to weigh in with answers as well. Out of all this, something approaching a solution with public buy-in just might emerge.

It’s worth a try. For now, well-meaning efforts developed from the top down and through committees all seem doomed to failure. Leadership of a different sort seems to be called for here.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.