What's going on in Oregon?
“Traditional” Oregon is pretty rural and as things have aligned nationally “red”. It’s seen itself as a sort of free soil-free labor utopia and been wary of outsiders wrecking it, which since the 70s has mostly been aimed towards California, and a fear that Oregon would follow its path, by giving up country virtue for city flash.
Oregon has a lot of internal cohesion though, so after the decline of the lumber industry (which was read by “Red” Oregon as engineered by extralocal big gubmint under the influence of urbanites alienated from rural life) and through the rise of “Portlandia” care was taken to preserve the interests of rural Oregon
As “red” and “blue” became more all-encompassing in the late 2000s with rural sorted to red, there was a narrow D majority but a spirit of bipartisanship and cross-cutting loyalties remained; when a gun control bill looked to pass on a party-line vote a D from eastern Oregon defected, and so on. Revenue bills further required a 3/5 supermajority.
But that’s worn off as things progress. In 2018 the Dems got that supermajority, (people noting already that quorum monkeying was an option) and forces internal to the legislature have undermined bipartisanship.
Now, Oregon only recently (2012) and partially moved away from an every-other-year “citizen assembly”. Features of this system are 1) that legislators tend to be local big wheels with extensive ties and ongoing business in their districts and 2) a vs.-the-clock setup where legislative tactics focus on delay past the end of session, when all unpassed bills are killed.
There was already a walkout earlier this year over gun control and something else that the Dems folded to but what made this one more critical is (like I keep saying of Wendy Davis’ 2013 “pink shoes” Texas filibuster) that it ate up time close to end of session and if upheld a few more days would have killed lots of critical bills like the one just passed to end urban single-family zoning statewide.
The “militia” thing was a sideshow to all that, but like the legislator in question is in fact a rural baron operating a private network of military logistics and special forces trainers in a hinterpand filled with disillusioned veterans! All those cute Cascadian and State of Jefferson flags do mean there is a strong sense of local particularism that takes the idiom of secessionist movements! In the form of those “Patriot Prayer” marches, Red Cascadia has been sending warriors on raids into Blue Portland!
On my trip I got a real Red Vienna/Black Austria sense, that they saw the Portland metro swollen with non-Oregonians arrogantly telling Oregon what to do, and were proud of their legislators, glad that someone was finally doing something about it. That’s a real thing.
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