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The Oregon Political Field Guide Map: From U.S. Census 2 The OREGON POLITICAL FIELD GUIDE Randy Stapilus RIDENBAUGH PRESS RIDENBAUGH PRESS Carlton, Oregon 3 Copyright © 2012 Ridenbaugh Press All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, without prior permission of the publisher. Composition and editing by Ridenbaugh Press, Carlton, Oregon. Cover design by Randy Stapilus. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Stapilus, Randy The Oregon Political Field Guide Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-9824668-2-7(softbound) 1. Oregon. 2. Politics 3. Geography 4. Government-Public Policy. I. Title. Printed in the United States of America. March 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 4 Contents Introduction Federal President Senators U.S. Representatives State Governor Statewide officials Legislature Judiciary Counties Cities Beyond the Majors Reading 5 Introduction The Oregon Blue Book is a classic. For decades it has been one of the finest state references anywhere in the county, one of the most information-packed as well as slickly-produced. It's on my bookshelf (actually, most of the editions from the last few decades crowd my bookshelves), and it (they) get regularly used. But no book can or should try to be all things. As a state publication (and despite its source in the Secretary of State's office), it goes a little light on election results, probably an appropriate decision. Anyone who wants the details, especially as they move toward the microscopic, has to look elsewhere. And that may mean looking in a bunch of places and reorganizing a lot of data, not to mention putting it into some context (definitely an area where a public publication ought not to go). The Oregon Historical Society did, in 1973, publish a now hard-to-find book (one I'm fortunate to have found for my collection) called Oregon Votes: 1858-1972, by Burton W. Onstine (with Krista Adkins, Robbert Drake, Marvin Price and Rick Paulson, foreword by John Swarthout). It's a wonderful compendium of results to the county level for major office races (president, governor, members of Congress) through those years. I've found no updates since, though, and apart from a short introductory section, the material is strictly statistical ± no context. And no sub-major office context. In 1989 two close observers of Oregon politics, David Buchanan and Pam Ferrara, produced The Almanac of Oregon Politics: The history of state legislative elections 1972-88 (published independently at Corvallis; Elaine Cull was noted as editor). As the title indicates, the book focused tightly on legislative elections, not something any book (so far as I can tell) had done before, and providing some contextual analysis as well as statistical background. A second edition of the book came out in 1994, but none since. (Both editions, as with Oregon Votes, were closely read and highly useful in putting together this new volume, and my thanks go to all the people involved with them). My intent here is to cover some of this same territory, bringing it up to date, and rebalancing a bit the statistical and analytical sides. This book, as you can tell from quickly leafing through the pages, is heavily numbers-driven. I don't lack for opinions on politics, policy and politicians, and I write about them in various other places, but not this one: This book is about wins, losses and numbers, and some very direct extrapolations from those. A few general conclusions, some affecting the structure and content of the book, are worth noting up front. Party membership is critical, and party identification has become ever more important. The numbers bear this out. This isn't a conclusion that would have been especially obvious, or maybe even reasonable, a generation ago. One other political book on my shelf is called The Ticket Splitter: A New Force in American Politics, a 1972 book by Walter De Vries and Lance Tarrance, who argued ± with strong reasoning ± 6 that parties were becoming less important, and voters increasingly were splitting their tickets, ever less loyal to parties. That was then. In the 70s and 80s, party adherence (by registration) in Oregon often ran afoul of how voters actually cost their ballots. In the last couple of decades, the matchup has been relatively close. That much became clear early in the research for this book, and influenced how the results are presented. One omission here of what would seem to be an obvious factor is, well, money: Campaign contributions by candidate. In a future edition of this book (if there is one), we may get into that. But not initially, at least, not because financing isn't important in political races (obviously it often is) but because it's only occasionally very enlightening without a close microscope. Incumbents tend to be well-funded, even when they're lightly challenged; challengers (or candidates for open seats) who have for reasons apart from funding a strong case for why they might might win, tend to be well-funded too. Other candidates, typically, not so much. Money tends to follow probability, or at least strong possibility, of winning. But we may revisit this. Beyond that ¼ here's the data and the background. We hope it's useful. Let us know what you think. Randy Stapilus Carlton, Oregon March 2012 Acknowledging Lots of people helped with putting all this together. Some of them helped with gathering the statistics, some helping with providing an understanding of what they mean, some with helping point to other useful directions. The Oregon Secretary of State's office was highly helpful, and county clerk's offices from one end of the state to the other helped a great deal in providing information and, within the limits of their professional responsibilities, helping me make sense of it. Some of the people I'd most specifically like to thank: Steve Bagwell, Susan Morgan, Molly Walker, Dana Jenkins, Sal Peralta, Josh Balloch, Carla Axtman, Bobbi Childers, Jan Waitt, Barrett Rainey, Wayne Kinney, Chuck Butcher, Shelley Denny, Liz Toy, Chris Walker, Jill VanBuren, Derrin (Dag) Robinson, Linda Smith, Patty Hitt, Linda Brown, John McColgan And of course, Linda Watkins at Ridenbaugh Press. 7 Federal President Oregon once had a well-earned reputation as the most Republican of western states; in many of its elections, it was a holdout even against the New Deal sweep of the 30s. That has changed. It became a bipartisan state in the mid-50s, and stayed so through various shifts until the most recent decade, when Democrats showed clear signs of pulling firmly ahead. Created by a Democratic administration and Congress in 1859, Oregon cast its first electoral votes in 1860 for Republican Abraham Lincoln, and repeated in 1864. It continued to vote for every Republican nominee for president through 1908. The chain broke with the unusual election of 1912, when William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican vote and Woodrow Wilson won Oregon. But Oregon returned to the Republican column in 1916, and stayed there through the 20s. Like most of the rest of the nation, Oregon switched to Democrat Franklin Roosevelt for his four elections, but then turned to Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948 and stayed a Republican electoral state (with the lone exception of the 1964 Lyndon Johnson landslide) through the Reagan years. Even after Democrats had begun winning a substantial number of offices within the state, Oregon remained Republican for the presidential. And then, somewhere in the mid-80s, Oregon commenced a gradual but definite shift toward the Democrats. The first clear evidence was the Oregon win for Democrat Michael Dukakis, but since then whether in close elections (2000) or near-landslides (2008), Democrats have been prevailing. Democrat Republican 2008 Barack Obama 1,037,291 56.75% John McCain 738,475 40.40% 2004 John Kerry 943,163 51.35% George W Bush 866,831 47.19% 2000 Al Gore 720,342 47.01% George W Bush 713,577 46.46% 1996 Bill Clinton 649,641 47.15% Robert Dole 538,152 39.06% 1992 Bill Clinton 621,314 42.48% George Bush 475,757 32.53% 1988 Michael Dukakis 616,206 51.28% George Bush 560,126 46.61% 1984 Walter Mondale 536,479 43.74% Ronald Reagan 685,700 55.91% 1980 Jimmy Carter 456,890 38.67% Ronald Reagan 571,044 48.33% 1976 Jimmy Carter 490,407 47.62% Gerald Ford 492,120 47.78% 1972 George McGovern 392,760 42.33% Richard Nixon 486,686 52.45% 1968 Hubert Humphrey 358,866 43.78% Richard Nixon 408,433 49.83% 1964 Lyndon Johnson 501,017 63.72% Barry Goldwater 282,779 35.96% 1960 John Kennedy 367,402 47.32% Richard Nixon 408,060 52.56% 8 Counties. For all their recent wins, few Democrats in recent times have actually won a majority of Oregon's counties. About half of Oregon's counties (depending on how you count) are small-population counties east of the Cascades, and all lean Republican, most of them very strongly. Several southwest Oregon counties (most notably Douglas, Josephine and Curry) have similar patterns. When Democratic wins have occurred, they usually have involved strong bases in Multnomah and Lane counties, wins in several smaller counties and sufficiently strong votes in the large suburban counties of Washington and Clackamas to offset the large Republican geography. In 1964, Democrat Lyndon Johnson won 34 of Oregon's 36 counties, all except for Malheur and Josephine. Multnomah County last voted Republican for president in 1960, for Richard Nixon ± though only barely (Nixon won 50.5%).