“Think Out Loud” is joined by the “OPB Politics Now” podcast team on the air and on video livestream. Dirk VanderHart, Lauren Dake, Bryce Dole and Alex Zielinski join us to discuss the outcomes from key races and measures across Oregon and Southwest Washington, what implications they may have and how they might affect the lives of Pacific Northwest residents in the year to come.
We also hear from two young Oregon leaders from both parties. Christopher McMorran is the 26 year-old Democratic Mayor-elect of Philomath. Calvin Bennett is the National Committee Man for the Young Republicans of Oregon.
Watch the stream below.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We are trying something a little different for us today. We’re streaming live on YouTube. We’re going to spend the hour today with a full election wrap-up. At the end of the show, we’ll talk to a young Democrat and a young Republican about the state of their respective parties in Oregon. We start right now with all four members of OPB’s political reporting team: Alex Zielinski, Bryce Dole, Dirk VanderHart and Lauren Dake. It’s great to have all four of you here.
Dirk, let’s start with you. None of the three statewide office wins for Democrats – secretary of state, treasurer and attorney general – were surprises. But which one do you think was most notable?
Dirk VanderHart: Really, the only one of these that we actually had questions about going into the election was attorney general. [In the] treasurer and secretary of state races, the Republicans hadn’t raised a lot of money, hadn’t campaigned very much. So this attorney general race, featuring Will Lathrop, a Republican and former prosecutor, and Dan Rayfield, a state representative and former House speaker, was really the one people were looking at because there was a big law and order focus. This is at a time when Oregon voters aren’t very happy with the law and order vibe of much of the state. And so the question was whether or not really focusing on this was going to give Lathrop a leg up and whether Republicans might be able to be competitive in a statewide office, which they aren’t often very, very competitive.
Miller: Lathrop also didn’t have the baggage of being a lawmaker. This is post-Measure 110, so a lot of reasons why he might have done well. But he still lost by nine percentage points. How do you explain that?
VanderHart: I think it just shows very, very forcefully that Republicans still have headwinds in Oregon, even in this big red wave year where obviously things nationally went very much in the party’s favor. It wasn’t just though that Will Lathrop is a credible candidate. He was also up against a credible candidate in Dan Rayfield – someone very tied in with the establishment, someone who knows the people that are gonna fund his campaign, can spend that money well. So not an easy task to go up against Dan Rayfield.
Also, I just think voters this election weren’t as sort of backlashy on law and order issues as maybe they were back in May. We saw a lot of progressive candidates in the Portland area succeed. I just didn’t see a lot of backlash in the state results.
Miller: So the party affiliations in these three offices didn’t change. But are you expecting either, say, meaningful policy shifts or even just changes in emphasis from secretary of state, treasurer or attorney general?
VanderHart: People might say this is unfair … Nothing I have seen from the people that prevailed suggests to me that anything is going to be profoundly different. We will see Dan Rayfield be trying to act as a bulwark, a Democratic bulwark, I’m sure, against the Trump administration in the way that Ellen Rosenblum once was. Tobias Read wants to bring trust back to the secretary of state’s office after former Shemia Fagan resigned. We have not been told to expect anything radically new, though, from any of these folks.
Miller: Bryce, let’s turn to Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. This is one that attracted national attention in the lead up to the election, and I should say national money as well. Why?
Bryce Dole: This was one of the most competitive swing districts in the country. And in the last election, in 2022, it was decided by a really narrow margin with Republican Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer flipping the district for Republicans. But this was considered a true toss up all the way until the end. And both parties saw it that way. They flooded this race with millions of dollars. Outside groups spent a huge amount of money. I’m sure most Oregonians saw on their TV’s the huge amount of attention that was coming into this race, through endless amounts of attack ads and also in their mailboxes. It was one of the most expensive races in the country. But the National Democratic Party, especially, clearly saw this as an opportunity here and they focused a lot of their efforts toward Democratic State Representative Janelle Bynum.
This district has more Democrats than Republicans, but the majority were not affiliated with either major political party. So, much like the presidential race, this ultimately came down to swing voters – people who were undecided and could go with either party.
Miller: What stood out to you in the tactics of Janelle Bynum and Chavez-DeRemer, in terms of their attempts to pick off these either moderate affiliated voters or unaffiliated voters?
Dole: I think both candidates knew that they would need to appeal to those middle-of-the-road voters and really try to portray their opponent as being a political extremist. But again, like the presidential race, they had their own messages. Bynum really focused a lot on her work in the legislature, talking about how she passed bipartisan bills around police reform which happened in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd – clearly, a really politically tense moment. She tried to portray Chavez-DeRemer as being a threat to not only democracy but abortion rights, and trying to tie the incumbent to President-elect Donald Trump, who she endorsed.
Chavez-DeRemer, meanwhile, also focused on kitchen table issues. She focused on crime and public safety, the economy. And she tried to appear moderate on abortion rights, while trying to blame Bynum as being one of the top Democrats who was partly to blame for the struggles that the state had with Measure 110 and fentanyl over the last couple of years.
Miller: I should have mentioned this, but Janelle Bynum did win. She announced her victory on Friday, flipping this seat. What do you think made the difference for her?
Dole: I think that people are going to be parsing the results of this election for a while. And I think it’s certainly possible that Oregonians, Oregon voters, were energized by the potential to make history in this race and elect the state’s first Black member of Congress.
But also, Janelle Bynum did not make that a central message in her campaign. So what I think is really important to remember is that this is still a relatively new district. 2022 was actually the first election for this district after the redistricting process. The two major population centers in this district – Clackamas and Deschutes counties – they’re changing a lot. They’re growing a lot. Clackamas County is still politically purple, but it is becoming increasingly Democrat. Deschutes County has had some really notable political shifts and the city of Bend is becoming increasingly liberal as it’s growing too. So I think those two areas made a huge difference in this race.
Miller: Let’s stick with you. What happened with Measure 117? This would have instituted a system of ranked choice voting to determine all statewide and federal races in Oregon, starting in just four years.
Dole: About 58% of Oregon voters rejected this measure. It received really dismal results in most of rural Oregon. But even some of the state’s largest counties like Washington, Clackamas, Lane, Deschutes County, they all rejected it. The proponents of this measure said over and over again that ranked choice voting can be the antidote to political polarization, that it gives people more say. And they really thought that they had the support that they needed from a whole bunch of labor groups and advocacy groups. They raised a ton of money. Out-of-state groups spent a huge amount of money on this race, millions of dollars. But all of this clearly did not resonate with those red and purple counties.
So the opponents of this measure, especially Republicans, claimed that ranked choice voting would be costly.
But I think one big issue for the campaign was the pushback that they faced from county clerks. These are the nonpartisan election officials that Oregonians turned to, to trust their election process. And yet, nearly half of the state’s county clerks raised a whole bunch of opposition to this measure around how much it would cost, where the money would come from and how the system would work.
Miller: What did you see in the votes in places where versions of ranked choice voting already exists? I’m thinking about Portland where it’s happening now, Multnomah County where it’s going to be instituted soon, and then Corvallis and Benton County?
Dole: This part fascinates me because Multnomah County, which is, like you said, going to use ranked choice voting in 2026, and Benton County which has been using it, if I remember correctly, for a few years now – both of those counties supported the measure. Hood River County also did, but they don’t, as far as I know, have any form of ranked choice voting. But the two counties that have approved it previously, approved at this time.
And there were even some city officials in Corvallis, like the mayor, who endorsed Measure 117. So it’ll be really interesting to see how things go with these two counties in the next couple of years, and if the state looks at that and says, “things went well there” or “things didn’t go well there.” And we’ll see if it ends up back on the ballot.
Miller: Alex, speaking of things going well or not, let’s turn to what we now know about what happened in Portland, where we had ranked choice voting for the first time ever. There had been a lot of talk about potential confusion among voters who were going to be dealing with ranked choice ballots and multi-member districts, very long ballots for city council races, actually pretty long ones for mayor as well. What do we know now about what happened?
Alex Zielinski: Well, in terms of turnout, it was much lower than anticipated. I think the county as a whole had anticipated about 85% voter turnout and it’s closer to 72%, at least today. To be fair, voter turnout was low across the state in different cities, cities that weren’t experimenting with a new type of voting like ranked choice.
One big piece of data that stands out to me … The Oregonian did some number crunching and found that just about 20% of people who voted in Portland didn’t vote in the city council ranked choice races. So they just stuck to the county races, state, federal. That’s higher than the percentage of voters who cast ballots, but sat out in voting and council races in previous presidential elections. So that stands out. What makes it extra interesting is that turnout was especially low in District 1, which is Portland’s newest district in the east side. About 30% of people who cast a ballot didn’t vote in the council race. And that’s pretty striking.
Miller: Is the assumption here that it was the complexity of the ballot that depressed particular voting for particular races?
Dole: That’s my assumption. But it’s also what people who are smarter than me and who study this stuff are saying. From speaking with political science researchers, there’s a few theories. One is that yes, this is a new ballot with a ton of names, a complex or just a new way of voting for folks. And that might have left voters overwhelmed and a little confused, and maybe they just wanted to make sure they get their presidential vote in and move on. It also takes time for voters to get used to big changes like this.
Also, to focus on the east side data that I pointed out, it’s worth noting that Portland’s eastern neighborhoods have been largely ignored and under-represented in City Hall for decades. Only two city commissioners in the past have lived there. Usually, since we’ve had citywide elections, folks are kind of clustered closer in, in the city. And if you don’t live in a neighborhood, maybe you don’t really think about what’s going on in that neighborhood. This is the first time now we’re going to have three people elected specifically for those neighborhoods.
So suffice to say that voters in those districts, feeling ignored for so long, might not feel like their vote counts still. Sure, we’ve changed the way that we represent votes in city council, but it’s not happening immediately. It’s not like a light switching on and suddenly everyone on the east side is saying, “oh, great, we’re represented, we’re going to vote now.” I think it will take time to prove that you have people who are representing you in the city council. Maybe it’s worth it to actually cast your vote. So folks that I’ve spoken to who study this stuff say that it might take some time to start seeing actual stronger numbers out there.
Miller: Alex, just sticking with this for a second. Are there ways to tweak this system? I appreciate your point, which is separate from a sense of being ignored for a long time, which could take a while for that to not feel that way. But is the complexity baked into the system? Or are there tweaks that could actually keep the basics of what we’re talking about – in the city council case here, ranked choice voting in combination with multi-member districts? Is it just forever going to be long and complicated?
Zielinski: I don’t know if I can say “yes” or “no” to that specifically. I can say it’s in the city charter, the complex pieces of it, the parts of getting rid of primary elections, which means we have so many candidates running in the general election, the piece where we have multi-member folks in the same ballot – that’s part of the city charter. [It] can be changed with another vote, if the city council decides to change something. Really, what can be done to tweak around the edges is focusing on just more voter education, I’d say.
Miller: Dirk, to go back to you – I want you to turn to Measure 118. Just first, briefly, remind us what it would have done?
VanderHart: Yeah, it would have put a 3% tax on business sales above $25 million in the state. It would have been the largest business tax hike the state has ever seen, about $6 billion a year, and almost all that money would have flowed back to Oregon residents in the form of yearly payments. We were told roughly $1600 per person – kids, elderly, everyone, not just voters.
Miller: It went down in flames, arguably very well funded flames. Can you give us a sense for what the campaign spending was like, on the “Yes” side and on the “No” side?
VanderHart: Yeah, I checked today. The “Yes” side spent around $636,000. The “No” side spent almost $16 million. So yes, very, very lopsided spending there. And you certainly saw that in the TV ads, the mailers, the messaging. It was omnipresent, warnings against this thing.
Miller: And as we’ve talked about in the past, it was a combination of groups that we often see opposing business tax increases, business-funded groups. But also, there was a huge backlash by members of the Democratic establishment, the Democratic Party establishment. Do you think that we can read anything in these results about the future appetite in Oregon’s voting population for big redistributive policies? Or is this too specific to this one measure?
VanderHart: It feels too specific. This thing didn’t really have a champion. Like you’re saying, every weighty political group in the state was coming out against this thing. So we didn’t have the battle for the soul of Oregonians, or whatever you want to call it, that we’ve seen on past business tax measures that also failed. Now, a question I have is whether or not a redistributive measure like this can get that kind of support in the future. Will people always find reason enough to say “no” to this kind of bold experiment in Oregon? Or were we really just not in a mood to experiment much this year, as we also saw with the ranked choice measure? And so that also doubly doomed this thing. I don’t know.
Miller: Lauren, there were two other statewide ballot measures that voters split on, even though you and others have argued that they are connected. So first of all, what are these two measures: 115 and 116?
Lauren Dake: They’re both pretty straightforward, really. Measure 115 creates this process to impeach and then remove statewide elected officials. Oregon is the only, or one of the only states that does not have a process to impeach officials. So the way that would work is the House would vote to start an impeachment process. The Senate would hold a trial to consider convicting a person. And then removing them from office would need a two-thirds vote in order to actually do that. So that’s impeachment.
The idea behind Measure 116 was to create an independent commission so that somebody else could set salaries for state elected officials, so for the governor, secretary of state, the judges. And that was 116.
Miller: How are these connected?
Dake: So they were connected, but to be clear, both of these ideas have been floating around and talked about for years. But they certainly became more urgent when former Secretary of State Shamia Fagan resigned. Our listeners know she was a Democratic rising star. Many believe she was next in line to be governor. She was serving as secretary of state when Willamette Week reported that she had this lucrative side hustle with a very problematic cannabis company. At the time, when that was revealed, she started to lose a lot of public support. And Republicans certainly lamented the fact that they did not have the ability to impeach her. So that was how it was tied to the impeachment measure.
And then to the salary measure, she said, “Hey, I’m a single mom. I’m working as secretary of state. I make $77,000 a year. It is not enough to live on, which is why I took this contract with this cannabis company.” And so that is kind of what prompted the salary discussion.
Miller: So the impeachment measure did pass. So now, there will be an official mechanism for the legislature to remove state-elected officials from office. You mentioned the Shamia Fagan example. Before that, there was John Kitzhaber in 2015, who also, like Fagan, resigned. That was pre-impeachment. This is guessing, but it’s been an inescapable question for me, how those situations might have been different if there had been … and I should say both of those officials, they resigned because they lost support from their own party. How might that have been different if impeachment had been on the table?
Dake: Yeah, this is an interesting thought exercise because, obviously, who’s to say for sure. But I think that with both Kitzhaber and Fagan, it moved very quickly. They lost public support so fast. And in politics, public support is everything. You start to lose that and then you lose your colleagues. I think that if there was an impeachment process, the House would have had to vote, then the Senate would have had to go through this whole trial. The momentum would have slowed down. Maybe the end result would have been the same. But I think that it would have allowed for a more thoughtful and perhaps even nuanced process.
Miller: Meanwhile, voters said “no” to Measure 116 – that would have created the compensation board. So it wouldn’t be lawmakers who would be deciding the salaries for themselves and for statewide elected officials. So you could read the implicit message from voters as being, “hey if you think these salaries are too low, including your own salaries, then raise them yourself.” Do you think they’re going to do that?
Dake: Well, they have certainly tried and failed because the idea of lawmakers giving themselves a raise is also, as we were talking about, public optics, not a good look. They don’t like to do that. I think the other reason though, that’s probably worth mentioning here, that this measure failed is because there were a lot of concerns around how independent this commission would actually be. So I think that also is part of the reason why it went down. Will lawmakers eventually raise their own salaries? I don’t know. They have tried for a long time. And I think the compelling argument to do so is that if the salaries remain too low, the only people who can serve, remain semi-wealthy, independently wealthy, retired people. And then that keeps making up the majority of our state legislature.
Miller: Dirk, what happened with the Oregon Legislature?
VanderHart: Not a lot that was all that dramatic. The Democrats still have majorities in both chambers. Actually, the makeup of the House is exactly the same: 35 Democrat, 25 Republican. What we did see was some movement in the Senate, where Democrats claimed another seat, giving them a three-fifths supermajority in the Senate. That is somewhat crucial in the legislature because that gives the party the opportunity to pass taxes on their own without a single minority vote. But relatively unchanged.
Miller: We’ve got a question for you. I think you’re the best person to tackle this. Jonah Liden says, “Could you tell me why there wasn’t a quorum requirement measure on my ballot this season? After so much chatter post walkouts, I’m surprised.”
VanderHart: No one has wanted to take this thing up. We had Measure 113 a couple of years ago that said if you have 10 unexcused absences in the Legislature, you don’t get to run again. That got bolstered by the state supreme court, which really ruled on how it works. For whatever reason, people that don’t want to see walkouts – which manipulate quorum rules and the two-thirds quorum rule in both chambers – have not wanted to make the case to voters that they need to change the state constitution to actually manipulate those to a simple majority. I think maybe they think it’s too wonky. People are going to tune out. And there may also be a vibe that Democrats who run the legislature might not be in the majority for all that long. And maybe they want to reserve that option for themselves if they go out of power.
Miller: The way no big party right now wants to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, besides Jeff Merkley, who seems to be consistent even when his party could use it right now.
So sticking with this issue, Dirk – the seat the Democrats flipped to gain their supermajority in the state Senate was in Bend and it had been held by Republican Tim Knopp, who was barred from running for reelection because of that voter-passed measure, because of his unexcused absences. Could you make the argument that the Democrats gained that supermajority because of this voter-passed law intended to prevent walkouts? Is that a direct result?
VanderHart: It’s not as clean as that because I think Knopp had as good a shot at winning that as any Republican. But this is also a district that changed in redistricting. Four years ago, I think Republicans had a 5-point voter registration disadvantage. This year they had about a 10-point voter registration disadvantage. That’s tough for any Republican, anyone, to get over, obviously. So, not clear Knopp was a slam dunk, but probably could have taken a good shot at it.
Miller: Bryce, I want to go back to you. We talked earlier about Janelle Bynum’s win in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District. That was a Democratic flip – Republican to Democrat. But the Democratic hold in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, which is Southwest Washington, seems just as significant. Remind us who was in this race?
Dole: Sure. This race was between Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican Joe Kent. This race was actually a rematch. Kent lost in the last election as well. Gluesenkamp Perez won the election with about 51% of the vote, which, like you said [about] the 5th Congressional District in Oregon, was a big win for Democrats as they’re increasingly at risk of losing control of Congress.
Miller: How has Marie Gluesenkamp Perez positioned herself over the last two years?
Dole: She’s taken a pretty moderate stance as a Democrat and has been widely known to criticize her own party as being out of touch with working class people, like the people who live in her district. As part of this, for example, she didn’t endorse Vice President Kamala Harris or other Democrats in Southwest Washington. She voted against student debt forgiveness and she showed support for Israel during its war during its war in Gaza. And it’s really striking that she continues to win in a pretty Republican district, while Republicans elsewhere in the country are flipping districts, and taking back control of Congress and the White House. She continues to make the argument that national partisan politics are just not what her district is about. And she focused a lot of her campaign on those economic issues, which clearly a lot of voters cared about during this election.
Miller: We’re going to be talking with her on this show tomorrow. But what do you think her success in her district – a district that went for Trump in 2020 – suggests for possible Democratic strategies going forward?
Dole: I think the Democratic Party is going to be doing a lot of soul searching in the next couple of weeks. They obviously already are, about what they got wrong during this election. But Gluesenkamp Perez’s win clearly indicates that focusing on working class issues like inflation and the economy really resonates with those swing voters in moderate areas that are really critical for this party. And I’ll be interested to see if the Democrats continue to have their candidates focus on national issues or if we see kind of a swing back to more of the blue dog, centrist democrat style, like what we had with Kurt Schrader in the 5th Congressional District for a long time. I mean, if you were to judge solely around how Gluesenkamp Perez is performing, they certainly should take a note of it.
Miller: Alex, I want to go back to Portland city politics. As we talked about on a Friday, we now have clarity on who’s going to be the new mayor, Keith Wilson, and most of the seats on the enlarged city council. I’m curious what stands out to you so far in the way Keith Wilson has been approaching this transition?
Zielinski: So he has a really clear agenda. He wants to end unsheltered homelessness by 2026 – so within a year. And my understanding is that he’s making sure that path is clear before he enters the City Hall. He’s meeting with the governor, he’s meeting with the County Chair Vega Pederson. He’s meeting with the incoming council members to make sure that, what he says is “everyone’s rowing in the same direction.”
I think he’s really not interested in any kind of divisive politics. He’s trying to make sure everyone’s on the same page, make sure they’re in lockstep when he enters City Hall. He’s going to really need council support, and the support of other folks in political positions in the city and the state to reach these goals.
Miller: When I asked him on Friday on this show how much support he has from members of the new council to actually enact his big idea – 20 to 25 nighttime shelters in places like churches or community centers – he didn’t give a direct answer. He did say that he’s talking with them, he’s meeting with them. Do you have a sense for how much support there is on this new council? I think there’s real clarity on 10 of the 12 positions right now and a pretty good sense for the other two. Do you have a sense for how a majority of those folks want to respond to homelessness?
Zielinski: One way to measure how they feel about homelessness in general is just how they talked about it on the campaign trail, not specific to his policy, but their general ideas about how to address the city’s largest issue. And the majority of folks who’ve been elected do not want to use arrests to penalize homelessness and they have boosted the need for more shelter, which is Wilson’s pitch.
The majority also wants to continue to work with the county to provide homeless services, which Wilson also wants to do. So there seems to be openness from council that they’ll work with him on his proposal. I think the big question is just the details and how these gaps in his pitch will be filled, if you’ll have enough churches, community centers, and folks on board. And I think the council’s looking for details. I think candidates are looking. I think the public is also looking for details.
Miller: One member of the public looking for details is Sarah YesPDX, who is on YouTube and asked this question for you about the way we’re getting information about the tabulation. She said this: “Why are they tabulating Portland’s ranked choice voting ballots while mail-in ballots are still being received? They need to wait until all are received to start scoring.” This is actually an issue we’ve talked about in the newsroom. That is why I think let’s ask Alex, right?
Zielinski: So the arguments, there’s pros and cons for both. The idea of waiting until we get all of the ballots and then just doing one big tabulation of all the rankings – that is one way that some places operate. We might have to wait a week to get the results there. The other option is what we did this election, which is whenever ballots come in, the elections office starts from scratch and recounts all the ballots. The argument for not waiting is really an argument around transparency and trusting the elections office.
If I recall, in Alaska, which actually rejected its ranked choice voting system last week, they have a process where they wait a week to get all the results. And that led to a lot of distress within voters who want answers at the same time that they get state and federal results. So I think it comes down to transparency, at a time where we have this brand new system, where people have a lot of questions. They want to see how it’s being done. So the city and county elections office really leaned into showing as much data as possible, as often as possible. But, at the same time, it’s adding to some confusion.
Miller: I just want to make sure that Sarah YesPDX, but other people understand what you’re saying, because there’s a key point here which went quickly: every time they get even just one new vote, then they completely retabulate. So let’s say that some candidate was eliminated in round four. It doesn’t matter, when they get another vote and they release the new results tomorrow based on the new tabulations, that candidate is back in there from the beginning and they do everything again.
So what we’re seeing sequentially is almost like a whole new set of election results every day. But what you’re saying is that they made the decision to show us each version sequentially, instead of waiting until the very end to show everything all at once.
Zielinski: Yes.
Miller: OK, I want to go around the table because we’re almost out of time. But I’m just curious, there’s so much that we’ve covered. But there’s a lot more all four of you are going to be covering in the weeks, and let’s just say months to come. Who knows what’s going to happen in years. I’m just curious what you’re excited to report on?
Lauren, first – what’s on your docket?
Dake: I’m excited to get back to reporting on how these officials govern. Now that they’ve been elected, let’s see how they govern. I’m eager to see what Governor Tina Kotek does under a Trump administration. And the state recently settled a huge child welfare civil lawsuit in which the judge and many other people said they really think that the governor needs to get involved, in order to overhaul the broken child welfare system. So I’m eager to see what she does on that front.
Miller: Bryce, what about you?
Dole: I’m excited to cover how the state plans to reform its transportation system. This is a really big ticket item in the legislature this session. There’s a huge budget crunch going on with the Department of Transportation right now and some serious needs, especially in rural Oregon in the transportation system there. This is just a big, giant thing and I’m really curious to see how lawmakers navigate it.
Miller: Alex?
Zielinski: We’re entering a whole new chapter of Portland government and being able to watch the mechanisms that play on in real time. We’ve heard about what it could do, and what it might do, and being able to see what this brand new city council of 12 people and brand new mayor brings to the table. Being able to watch that is what I’m looking forward to the most.
Miller: Dirk, you’re last.
VanderHart: I’m going to put “excited” in quotes here, Dave. No, I’m really interested to see how the new personalities we will have in Salem are able to come together. We have a former House majority leader in Christine Drazan back in the House. She could be the leader again by the time next week rolls around. She put a lot of delay tactics and other sort of forceful mechanisms into play. We saw a Senate that could not function two years ago with a lot of different players. Can they come together and get things done at a time, all evidence suggests, we are really gonna need to get some things done in Salem?
Miller: Dirk, Lauren, Bryce and Alex, thanks very much.
All: Thank you.
Miller: That was Dirk VanderHart, Lauren Dake, Alex Zielinski and Bryce Dole – all four members of OPB’s reporting team.
We turn now to two young members of Oregon’s Republican and Democratic parties. Christopher McMorran is 26 years old. He is the Mayor-elect of Philomath and a Democratic staffer in the Oregon Legislature. Calvin Bennett is 22 years old. He is a recent graduate of Eastern Oregon University, who has just begun work as a Republican staffer in the Oregon Legislature. He’s also the National Committee Man for the Young Republicans of Oregon. It’s great to have both of you on the show.
Calvin Bennett: Glad to be here.
Christopher McMorran: Likewise.
Miller: Calvin, first – what was going through your mind on election night as the country shifted to the right and Oregon stayed very blue?
Bennett: It was really interesting to watch and, personally, disappointing. I was working on some campaigns in the East Multnomah County, Gresham area, and there was a lot of hope. You saw Georgia flip, you saw North Carolina hold for President Trump and the numbers looked really good across the country. And then it comes to Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, and those trends did not happen here. It’s not like we lost, but we held and it stayed about the same as what was projected.
Miller: There’s a lot to dig into there, in terms of your expectations and your read on why that was. But just the same question first, to you, Christopher. I mean, what was going through your mind on Tuesday night into Wednesday?
McMorran: Well, I think a similar but sort of opposite answer. I was feeling pretty good about my own race. I was really excited to officially become Mayor-elect of my hometown. That was very meaningful.
Miller: I should say for people who aren’t totally aware of Philomath politics, correct me if I’m wrong …
McMorran: I think everyone knows.
Miller: Everybody knows that, all over the world. [Laughter] But after the voter guides were put out, the previous mayor stepped out of the race and endorsed you. And so he was still on the ballot, but you essentially ran unopposed. So I imagine that you weren’t too nervous about whether or not you would win the election to be mayor. Is that accurate?
McMorran: It’s accurate. I think also, as anyone who’s ever been in a race would tell you, you’re still pretty nervous until you actually see the results drop at 8 p.m.
Miller: I guess it also would have been embarrassing if you had not won convincingly with no opponent?
McMorran: I was saying, I think if I had lost against someone who dropped out, I think I would have never been able to show my face in town again. So I’m lucky I can still show my face.
Miller: So that’s your race. But you were paying attention, I imagine, to a lot of other things?
McMorran: I think there was a lot of unease about the national results and of course, we didn’t quite know exactly what would happen that evening. But it was this weird dichotomy, where folks were very anxious about the very top of the federal ticket. But at the same time, everything was going quite well for Democrats in the state and even locally. So it was this very sort of mixed emotion. I told people I just felt numb, where I was really happy about some things and really concerned about some things. And I think those emotions kind of canceled each other out and I was just sitting there. But it gave us a lot to think about, moving forward.
Miller: Calvin, in most blue states, Donald Trump did better in 2024 than he did in 2020 – significantly so in some of them. That’s been one of the big stories of the last week, the rightward shift in Rhode Island, or Massachusetts, or New York – and those are all still blue states – not to mention Midwestern states, where they were actually flipped. In Oregon, the vote was essentially the same for Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024. Why do you think that is?
Bennett: I have a couple of main reasons. And the first one is that Trump didn’t campaign here in the Pacific Northwest. I mean, we never saw a rally in Portland, Bend or Eugene. And so I think that’s a big reason, because he wasn’t actively trying to get the vote because he knew he would never win here.
Miller: He did, though, for example, campaign in the Bronx and people said, “why are you doing this?” And there were big gains in New York state.
Bennett: And they were big gains and that’s exactly to my point, I believe so.
Miller: You think that if he had come here and had had a big rally in Portland or wherever, that he would have made bigger gains?
Bennett: I do believe so. What we see with these rallies is it really boosts engagement and people turning out to vote. The Republican vote, obviously, was not 100% turnout here in Oregon. And if he had come, I think that the turnout would have been higher. You get people engaged, you get him knocking doors, you get making phone calls, you got them giving money, you got him posting on social, saying “go vote.” And if he was here, that engagement would have happened.
Miller: Christopher, I’m curious if you agree? And I should say that it wasn’t just Oregon. Washington and Colorado also stand out as states that I see as relatively good analogs in some ways to Oregon. California is so big, it’s like a country unto its own. And they’re so slow at counting votes that there’s less clarity there. But in Oregon, Washington and Colorado it was essentially unchanged, the percentage of voters who went for Trump in 2020 and in 2024. Do you think, like Calvin, that it’s a question of a lack of rallies here?
McMorran: I think perhaps, it’s a little broader than that too. The main thing I agree with is that Oregon and Washington, in general – and I’m not as sure about Colorado – are just sort of separate from a lot of the federal political discourse. I think folks in Oregon vote a lot of times for their party in federal elections, but then may get a little more nuanced in state and local elections. There’s a lot more give and take. There’s differences from the national Democratic Party on local levels. But I think, because we don’t feel a lot of inclusion and are really being cared about that much at a federal level, then folks give the energy that they receive. And I just don’t think voters saw a compelling reason to vote for Donald Trump, for sure, in Oregon. We talk about a lot, “the Oregon way” of working together, of trying to find common ground. And that’s certainly not something that Donald Trump really presented in this election.
Miller: Calvin, do you want to respond to that?
Bennett: Yeah, and I was just going to add one other point to the question earlier. I think Trump’s winning coalition is not a coalition that necessarily represents Oregon. If we look at the numbers, where did he really gain? He gained with young people bigtime. He also gained with Latinos, African Americans and a couple of other groups. And what we see here in Oregon is those guys do not make up a massive part of the electorate that’s going to shift the state one way or the other. You know, they’re here, but it’s not as big as states like Georgia, states like Pennsylvania and whatnot. And so I think something else is that Trump’s winning coalition is not reflective of the Pacific Northwest.
Miller: Let’s turn more squarely to what happened Oregonwise on Tuesday and last week. First, with the legislature – this is your day jobs, working for state representatives or state senators. Christopher, what do you think it’s going to mean that Democrats regained a supermajority in the state Senate?
McMorran: I think that’s the question. I think, obviously, as you know and were talking a bit about earlier and has been discussed at length, there will be a really big transportation package coming up. There’s a lot of discussion around K-12 funding. Having that one extra vote in the Senate does allow Democrats to pass revenue measures. However, the fact that they can’t do it in the House sort of makes that a little bit moot.
Miller: How helpful is a supermajority in just one of the two chambers? I guess that’s what you’re getting at?
McMorran: I think so. I think the focus should be a little bit less on the supermajority piece, as much as it is that the margins in the Senate, because the Senate is smaller, are low. So when you only have 17 Democratic senators, if one or two Democratic senators decide to not vote with the party, that essentially kills a bill or can put it in jeopardy. So any kind of cushion that a party can have, can help get things across the finish line.
Miller: Calvin, I’m curious what you see as the state of the Republican party in Oregon right now. I don’t think it came as a surprise to any political watchers that the three statewide offices that were on the ballot stayed in Democratic control. It would have been a real political earthquake if that changed, given Oregon’s recent history. So just broadly, where do you see Republicans in the state right now?
Bennett: Yeah, and I’d like to address the Senate real quick first. Yeah, I think quite frankly that we lost that seat, it’s quite sad. It’s another step towards Oregon’s just being dominated by one party. It’s becoming a one party state and it doesn’t bring people to the table. Thank goodness we were able to retain in the House and hold. But I just think it’s sad. And it goes to that fact that Oregon is currently kind of dominated by the Democratic Party. And we’ve seen for the last decade, and maybe even more, just kind of a decline in this state. Economically, we see Portland and people there not being happy, and people are moving out, and we’re actually losing people living in Oregon for the first time in 30 years. Right now, we’re seeing that. So it’s really quite sad and I’d love to see more people brought to the table.
That’s why I’m a Republican is because of representation. I’m a kid from Eastern Oregon. I grew up in the town of Mitchell. I graduated in a class of two, a very small town. And I’d love to see those guys get represented more prominently in the legislature because they feel like they are not being represented, so much so that we have people in Eastern Oregon trying to move to Idaho. And Idaho is great, but Oregon’s better in my opinion. And I’d love Eastern Oregon to stay a part of the fold here and want to represent it.
Miller: This is such an important point and it’s also a place where the specifics really matter. So Calvin, first – when you say that folks that you grew up with don’t see themselves or that they don’t feel represented, what are the issues where you think that that is most salient?
Bennett: Yeah, I’d say number one is agriculture. Eastern Oregon is a very agronomy-based economy out there. And there’s issues that come up here in Salem where they have a vote in it, and people in Eastern Oregon just do not understand how it’s going. Like the wolf issue, which is super complicated. We won’t get into that now, but people in Wallowa County, Wheeler County, the places where I’m from, just don’t feel that people in the Valley and in Portland have their best interests in mind. They think that people in Salem think [that] the wolves are more important than the people. And that’s the problem. It’s issues like that, where legislators are perceived to value others more than the people of Eastern Oregon. And that’s the really big thing. So, like agriculture, the economy, stuff like that – that’s what really comes into play.
Miller: Christopher, I’m curious about your thoughts on the extent to which more rural, more conservative voices and concerns are either being ignored or not being taken seriously enough in Salem? This is an issue that obviously we have heard about for decades. But you’re both young. You haven’t been living for too many decades.
McMorran: That is true. It’s a good question and I think a lot about rural voters the same way I think about young voters. They are both groups that I think politicians like to talk about, but not necessarily actually talk with. It’s a lot of, sort of, talking to. And I think the Democrats, to their credit, have recognized that young voters are an important voting block. But I don’t think they’ve lived up to that in the actual engagement with young voters.
And I think it’s similar with rural voters, where folks want to feel like they’re a part of something. They want to feel like they are helping build a movement. And I don’t think that we did a great job of that this cycle. I think the Democrats did not give folks a seat at the table in a way that felt like they were really included. The danger with that is if you don’t give folks a seat at the table, they’re gonna find another table. And I think that is a bit of a warning sign for Democrats in Oregon. We’re doing well right now. The elections largely went our way in Oregon. But I think the national picture should be a little bit of a warning bell. We can’t get complacent. We need to be more proactive about bringing young people in, bringing rural folks in.
Miller: Are you talking about policy right now or about rhetoric style?
McMorran: It’s a great question because this is something I love to talk about. I think objectively the Democrats don’t necessarily have a policy problem. When you poll Kamala Harris’s economic policies versus Donald Trump’s economic policies in a blind poll, Republican voters preferred Kamala Harris' when they don’t know that it’s attached to her or the Democrats. So I think it is much more of a communications and messaging problem than a sort of factual, policy-based problem.
I think one of my examples on the economy, Democrats like to talk about, the economy being really good. Inflation is down, wages are up, that kind of stuff. But that doesn’t pay your rent. The amount of money you have in your bank account pays your rent. So I think it comes across wrong to people sometimes when they’re like, “hey, I’m having trouble making my ends meet.” And we point to some graph and we’re like, “oh, no, you’re actually fine.” I mean, would you not feel a little bit condescended if someone said that to you? And I think that’s an example of talking to people but not with people.
Miller: Calvin, I want to go back to the statewide office issue. The conventional wisdom is that, given the registration advantage that Democrats hold in the state and then the realities of the GOP base, that the kind of Republican who’s most likely to win in a primary is less likely to win in a general election. [They] might be just too conservative to win in a general election. Do you agree with that as just conventional wisdom?
Bennett: Yeah, I’d agree with that. I agree with that. We saw a more moderate Republican in Christine Drazan’s run for governor last cycle and she came very close. I think we can all agree on that and at points she was projected to win. 5:30 had her actually projected to win. And so I would agree with that because I think if there was an Oregon Trump, for instance, I don’t think they would have done nearly as well as a Christine Drazan. And it’s the same thing every cycle. So I would agree with that.
Miller: Not to put you both on the spot, but you had 40 minutes just to talk with each other it seemed, when I came in to talk to our political team and you guys were sitting there. Sometimes guests have their own little rooms. You guys were together. Where did you find agreement when you were hanging out there? You have about 40 seconds for this.
Bennett: Do we want to talk about the presidential primary thing?
McMorran: I’ll say one thing, first, which I think we both agreed that young people especially, we actually get along pretty well. And so a lot of the divisiveness is coming from the top, not the bottom. And I think again, that’s that problem with inclusion. But we did also find some agreement on ranked choice voting for primaries.
Bennett: Yes, I can’t agree more, on what you just said. So we were talking about ranked choice voting and the pros and the cons and Prop 117, how that failed. And we were talking about an idea where we have ranked choice voting for the primaries, for presidential races. And it’s all-state, same-day presidential race and it’s ranked choice voting.
Miller: Calvin Bennett and Christopher McMorran, I look forward to talking again. Thanks very much.
McMorran / Bennett: Thank you so much.
Miller: Calvin Bennett is National Committee Man for the Young Republicans of Oregon. Christopher McMorran is the Democratic Mayor-elect of Philomath. It is a nonpartisan position.
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