Writer’s Notebook: State Republicans running out of gas

Published 12:15 am Thursday, June 11, 2020

Jo Rae Perkins’ victory in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in May announces that the Oregon Republican Party is running out of gas.

It is understandable that no big name would line up to compete with Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley in November. But the larger question is whether the state GOP even has a big name with big ideas.

Perkins is an indicator species. She is a disciple of the QAnon conspiracy cult, which looks for coded messages in what President Donald Trump says. Having run for office on previous occasions, Perkins had more name familiarity.

Oregon party leaders did not bother to recruit a candidate and the national party didn’t care. Of course, the same thing occurred decades ago when Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield was at the apex of his career. The Democrats who challenged Hatfield were a hapless lot.

Kerry Tymchuk is another indicator species. Tymchuk grew up in Tillamook, worked for the Republican Sen. Gordon Smith and co-authored a book with former Sen. Bob Dole, of Kansas. Tymchuk left the party upon Trump’s becoming the Republican nominee for president in 2016. He is now among the former Republicans to support the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

It would be easy to say that Perkins’ nomination is one more example of Oregon’s becoming a lopsided one-party state. But that ignores another aspect of the recent election.

Tymchuk said, “The saddest thing that happened was Mark Hass losing the Democratic primary for secretary of state.” Hass had shown the courage of a Democrat willing to support reforming the Public Employees Retirement System, which is leeching money from school classrooms across Oregon. Labor put its chips on Hass’ opponent, state Sen. Shemia Fagan.

“Republicans send a message that if you go against Trump, you lose,” Tymchuk said. “Labor sends a message that if you go against PERS, you get punished.”

The late Republican Secretary of State Dennis Richardson put it most bluntly when he told me: “The public employees unions run the statehouse.” When I asked state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a Scappoose Democrat, what she thought of Richardson’s description, she agreed with it.

One of the most fertile periods of the Oregon Legislature occurred when neither party dominated in overwhelming numbers.

Significantly, Republicans were the inspiration of some of Oregon’s most progressive acts. As a state representative in 1953, Hatfield authored the Civil Rights Bill. The prime movers of statewide land use planning were two Republican farmers from Eastern Oregon and the Willamette Valley. The Bottle Bill was championed by the Republican governor, Tom McCall. Republicans were the initial promoters of vote by mail.

In the first half of the 20th century, Richard Neuberger was the indicator of a new species — the liberal Oregon Democrat. At a time when Oregon was known as “the Vermont of the West,” because it was reliably Republican, Neuberger was badly outnumbered in the Oregon Legislature.

But in floor debate and through a torrent of newspaper and magazine articles, Neuberger defined a conservationist and social welfare agenda. He also spawned a set of successors such as Les AuCoin, Earl Blumenauer and Vera Katz.

When Neuberger went to the U.S. Senate in 1954, the Republican president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a chief executive whom history has treated exceedingly well. Out of fear, too many Republicans have mortgaged their brains and integrity to Trump.

In Oregon, that is an insult to the heritage of the state’s Republican Party.