Oregon: Bridgetown vs. Treasure Valley
"Far right-wingers will be deliberately excluded."
Topline Takeaways
Joe Biden received the most votes for any presidential candidate in Oregon’s history, building on Hillary Clinton’s margin by 5 points.
Liberals dominate in Oregon but have shown a historical willingness to vote for members of either party, as long as the candidate matches their ideological lean.
Conservatives, both within the state in Eastern Oregon and outside of the state in the national party, have crowded out moderate Republicans, largely dooming Republican prospects in Oregon.
In-Depth Insights
Statewide elections in Oregon are won and lost in the Willamette Valley, home to Portland. Three million of the state’s four million residents live in the region. Much like Washington, the state regularly supported Republican candidates throughout its early history and was disinterested in the national GOP’s shift toward conservatives in the early 90s. As a result, Democrats have won Oregon’s electoral votes in every single election since 1988, building on their gains every cycle. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden scored the highest vote total in Oregon history and posted the highest percentage of any presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
This transformation into a Democratic stronghold is largely due to the extinction of the liberal Republican, an identity once prominent in the Pacific Northwest. Following Oregon’s admission to statehood in 1859, many of the settlers who moved to the new state were liberal Republicans from northern states. This group eventually morphed into what was known as “Rockefeller Republicans,” named after Nelson Rockefeller, former Governor of New York. These members of the GOP were known for supporting policies that moderated a blend of economic conservatism and social liberalism like an efficient welfare system, protections for labor unions and increased investment into civic infrastructure like schools and hospitals. While they were often also dubbed the “Eastern Establishment” of the Republican party (as they were commonly found in the urban Northeast) there was a strong presence of these voters in Oregon throughout the mid-1900s. The coalition was put to the test in the 1964 Republican primary, pitting Nelson Rockefeller himself against Barry Goldwater who was running on the prototype of the “Southern Strategy.” While conservative Republicans across the nation supported Barry Goldwater’s candidacy, Oregon Republicans chose Rockefeller over Goldwater by a margin of 2-to-1.
This deviation from the national party was a harbinger of Republican losses in the state. Voters in Oregon held tight to their political leanings as the parties shifted around them and Bill Clinton’s emergence with the centrist New Democrat Coalition helped Democrats occupy the lane Republicans held for nearly a century.
Since the state flipped toward Democrats in presidential races, Republican candidates have struggled to run within a 10-point margin of their opponents. (The only candidate to do so was George W. Bush, who lost Oregon by less than 7,000 votes in 2000.) While Trump ran well behind Biden in 2020, he still captured the attention of rural voters isolated from the Willamette Valley.
Oregon politics has an explicit east-west divide as many voters in the east feel left out of the prosperous development seen in the western portion of the state. (This is also due to the geological divide in the state created by the Cascade Range.) As a result, these voters regularly elect Republicans to counterbalance Democratic control from Portland and its surrounding areas. The problem for these voters in statewide elections is that they’re vastly outnumbered; barely 20% of the state’s voters live in counties east of the Cascades. This forces the state’s Republican party to reckon with their struggles among Oregon’s more liberal base in the west if they wish to hold power within the state.
Forecasting the Future: Today, the Oregon Republican party is still reckoning with the differences between the state’s electorate and the direction of the national party. This decades-old struggle helped birth the Dorchester Conference in 1964: an annual political conference convened by moderate Republicans. The impetus for the first conference was Barry Goldwater’s nomination and subsequent defeat by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Oregon Republicans were fed up with their inability to fight the surging conservative wing of the national party and created a forum to allow debate on topics that conservatives had deemed “settled,” including same sex marriage, abortion and gun control. The current Dorchester website states that the original invitations for the 1964 conference vowed, “Far right-wingers will be deliberately excluded.”(I’m not sure how strongly this still holds up today as they’ve invited controversial figures like Tucker Carlson in recent years. Feel free to check out their website and make your own judgements.)
In 2016, Dorchester president Tom Simpson stressed that the event is not explicitly for Republicans and encouraged voters of all backgrounds to attend and engage:
If Republicans want any chance at retaking Oregon, they need to continue forward with this mindset, remaining open to more moderate views that sit at odds with divisive national players in today’s Republican Party. Donald Trump’s unfavorable campaigns pushed more Oregon voters than ever toward Democrats. Inevitably, some of these voters will grow dissatisfied with Democratic leadership and it’s up to Republicans to provide a palatable alternative to voters if they want to win.