AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Berman
This weekend, Joe Biden is off to campaign in, of all states, Oregon. Oregon is not a swing state – Biden won it by 16% in 2020. Instead, Biden’s visit, intended to prop up the flagging campaign of the Democratic nominee for Governor, House Speaker Tina Kotek, is a sign that for all the talk about how abortion and “extremist” GOP candidates have somehow led to an alleged Democratic resurgence, Democrats have been unable to paper-over failures in governance when it comes to crime and inflation.
Oregon, which has not elected a GOP governor since 1982, and where Democrats have held 80% of the congressional delegation for the past two decades, is ground zero for this backlash. Every poll released over the last month has shown Republican gubernatorial nominee Christine Drazan leading Kotek, and Democrats at risk of losing up to three of their U.S. House seats.
A few months ago, I profiled how Oregon’s drift from light-blue to “left coast” bulwark had been driven by the increasing dominance of Portland and its metropolitan area over the rest of the state. Whereas George W. Bush came within a whisker of winning the state in 2000, and Republicans held one of the state’s U.S. Senate seats until 2009, the raw margins Democratic candidates gained out of Portland meant that presidential races began to become blowouts for Democrats.
This led many, including the state’s Democratic leadership, to conclude that a Republican could not win election in Oregon. But pride commeth before the fall, and that old nemesis seems to have come for Oregon’s Democrats.
The Democratic Party has maintained a stranglehold on state politics in Salem since long before Oregon became a “blue” state on the federal level. This was done through a shrewd recognition that while the growth of Portland provided them with a substantial advantage, they needed to maintain a minimal level of support outside of the city and its environs in order to win. Until recently, Democrats generally chose representatives of their contingent of candidates from outside Portland to run for statewide office. This approach was abandoned with the accidental elevation of Secretary of State Kate Brown to the governorship in 2015 following the resignation of Governor John Kitzhaber. Brown, the first LGBT individual to serve as governor of any state, had only represented safely Democratic Portland districts in the legislature before becoming Secretary of State. Her underperformances when she ran for election (50.5% in 2016, 50% in the landslide year of 2018) should have caused Democrats to worry.
Instead, they chose a clone of Brown this time around. Kotek, their nominee, was the first LGBT speaker of the Oregon House, represented a safely Democratic Portland seat, and was best known for her hardball tactics during redistricting, in which she intimidated GOP lawmakers who had tried to flee the state into passing a congressional map which divided up Portland in an effort to create five Democratic districts and only one Republican one. One victim of her hardball redistricting tactics was State Senator Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat who was drawn out of her seat and is now running for governor as an Independent, mounting a strong challenge. Johnson was endorsed by yet another redistricting victim, longtime Democratic congressman Kurt Schrader who lost his primary to an AOC-backed challenger, along with former Democratic governor Ted Kulongoski (2003-2011), and the co-founder of Nike, the state’s largest corporation.
Faced with polls showing Kotek in a close race with Drazan, the Republican nominee, as well as with Johnson, Democrats, rather than trying to make a positive case for Kotek, decided to go hard negative on Johnson, painting the life-long Democrat as a “machine-gun toting nut” in the hope that if they discredited her, Johnson’s support would flow to Kotek. Central to this strategy was a delusional belief that Oregon voters could not possibly actually support a Republican becoming governor, and therefore the only explanation for why they were trailing was that Johnson was splitting what Democrats regarded as their vote.
Only too late have Democrats realized the horrifying truth. Voters quite simply did not want to vote for Kotek, and if anything, Johnson was helping the Democrats. Recent polls have shown Drazan leading a two-way race by larger margins than a three-way race. In the third week of September, Clout Research found Republican Drazan leading a three-way race by a margin of 39%-35%-16% over Kotek and Johnson, similar to the 35%-33%-21% split DHM Research found the same week, and the 36%-34%-19% split Emerson College found a week later. However, in a two-way race, Drazan led Kotek by a margin of 53%-47%.
The explanation for these trends lies not just in voter opinions of the candidates, as is evident in the DHM polling. They hold toxic views of Kotek, and incumbent governor Kate Brown to be sure, but neither is hated in the same way as the city from which they both hail. No less than 72% of Oregon voters have an unfavorable view of Portland, and half have a very unfavorable view. By contrast, less than a fourth rate it positively.
Far from being outliers, these numbers are reflected across pollsters. Clout Research found Drazan at 42%/41% favorable/unfavorable, while Kotek languished at 37%/56%. Emerson found Drazan at 41%/40% and Kotek at 38%/50%, respectively. It is hardly surprising that in this climate, Democrats are desperate enough to beg Joe Biden for help, as his own underwater numbers, at 44%/47% in the state according to Emerson, make him a beloved figure when compared to Kotek.
The result of the Democrats’ strategy was that their attacks on Johnson, rather than bringing Johnson’s voters to Kotek, have only increased support for Drazan. It is not only voters who have been alienated. Phil Knight, the Nike co-founder who was Johnson’s largest financial supporter, has switched to backing Drazan in recent weeks as polls show her best placed to beat Kotek. Rather than uniting the anti-Republican vote, Democrats have inadvertently united the anti-Portland vote, with dire implications not just for Kotek, but for every Portland-linked candidate on the ticket.
Kotek is not the only Democrat in trouble in Oregon. In the 5th House District, where incumbent Kurt Schrader lost his primary to far-left challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner, Clout Research found Republican Lori Chavez-Remier leading 44%-34% in August, while Democratic-leaning PPP found Chavez-Remier leading 42%-41% in June. McLeod-Skinner’s own internal pollster only managed to find her up, 41%-38% in September, and as those were internal numbers we can assume that was the best she did on any given day over the course of the month.
Meanwhile, in the 6th District, which Kotek used such hardball tactics to draw as a safe Democratic seat, Democrat Andrea Salinas is struggling against Republican Mike Erickson. Clout found Erickson leading 43%-34% in August, while Cygnal found him leading 44%-39%, in September. Salinas’ own pollster was only able to produce numbers with her up 45%-44% in October.
Even the 4th Congressional district, where Republican Alek Skarlatos, who with three fellow Army soldiers helped stop a gunman on a Brussels-bound train, is seeking a rematch after his 6% loss in 2020, is far from safe for Democrats. Polls have the race within 5%.
In effect, not only do Democrats stand to lose the Oregon governorship for the first time in 36 years, but potentially more than half of their House seats in the state. They could well go from a 4-1 majority to a 4-2 minority in the delegation.
There is a touch of irony that the problems afflicting Democrats come back to the same place, the much-maligned city of Portland, whose descent into anarchy since 2020 helped fuel that 23%/73% favorability. Kotek is a product of Portland, and it was her efforts during redistricting to maximize Portland’s power by drawing it into as many districts as possible which triggered the revolt. It forced Betsy Johnson out of the Democratic Party, and ousted Schrader in his primary. Now, both are campaigning against her, and the race has become a referendum on whether the entire state of Oregon is to become Portland, just as the Oregon Democratic Party has under Kotek become the Portland Democratic committee.
Oregon Democrats may pray that Joe Biden will be able to turn their fortunes around with talk of the dangers of “insurrection,” but the problem they face is that the “insurrection” Oregon voters seem most concerned with is the one that has been occurring in Portland for the last three years. The greatest threat to democracy is Portland’s efforts to subjugate the state the way it has the Democratic Party. Without providing answers to those fears, Biden can only remind Oregon voters of what he has failed to do. And they have a preview of what their state, and the entire country, may look like if those failures continue.
Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman.