Over the past month, the Oregon Senate has begun its daily proceedings by sending out a search party.
Unable to call a quorum to vote on any legislation, the Senate President orders the sergeant-at-arms to locate the missing senators for the day, largely Republicans who are now in their fifth week of a boycott. The sergeant climbs the steps of the Capitol, knocks on closed doors, questions staff members who coyly assert that their bosses are not present. When he returns empty-handed, the Senate rises, leaving untouched hundreds of bills stored in a growing pile of blue and yellow folders.
“I’m saddened to be on the front lines of watching democracy crumble,” Senate Democratic Majority Leader Kate Lieber said after another fruitless day of trying to keep Oregon’s government running.
Oregon has long had a pronounced political divide, reflecting the natural divisions between its rural farm and timber counties and its liberal cities like Portland and Eugene. But the state historically prided itself on the way its politicians usually seemed to find ground to collaborate.
This political spirit, often referred to as the “Oregon Way,” allowed a Republican governor like Tom McCall to work through the 1960s and 1970s, negotiating pioneering land-use and environmental deals with Democratic lawmakers.
Even as late as 2009, Oregon had a Democratic U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, and a Republican, Gordon Smith, who worked so closely that they were sometimes called Washington’s odd couple. Both United States Senators are now Democrats, as are all statewide elected officials, and there is a Democratic majority in both houses of the State Legislature. A Republican hasn’t won the governor’s race in 40 years.
The Republican boycott that has blocked the Senate since May 3, one of a series of boycotts since 2019, indicates the degree to which bipartisanship has taken a backseat to strategic dysfunction.
The showdown comes amid a particularly tumultuous year in state capitals across the country, with tensions stoked by a wave of abortion legislation — proposed in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision to strike down lar Roe v. issues, gun control and voting rights.
Nebraska’s legislature passed no bills in the first two-thirds of its 90-day session after a progressive lawmaker filibustered every bill, including some she supported, to protest the Republican efforts to pass ban on gender discrimination. affirming attention to minors.
That was also an issue in Montana, where Republicans banned a transgender lawmaker from the House chamber after she vocally opposed a similar bill.
In April, Tennessee Republicans expelled two Democratic lawmakers who had joined protests calling for gun control in the wake of a mass shooting in Nashville. The lawmakers were reinstated after a national uproar.
And in Texas, the acrimony between the moderate and conservative factions of the Republican Party played out in the May 26 bipartisan vote to oust the conservative attorney general, Ken Paxton, with conservative members strongly backing Mr. Paxton.
The discord shows no signs of abating, as red and blue states run in opposite directions on social issues and posture to combat each other’s policies across state lines. While Idaho lawmakers have moved to make it illegal to bring minors to another state for an abortion without parental consent, Oregon has moved to increase access to such care for patients who come from out of state
Republicans in Oregon’s capital have vowed to derail almost all legislation unless Democrats agree to new direction, though they have not laid out precisely what that direction might be. They have highlighted legislation on abortion and transgender issues, but have also targeted bills on drug and gun policy. Ten senators have continued their walkout despite a new voter-approved law barring lawmakers with 10 or more absences from being re-elected, and Democrats are now seeking to fine lawmakers for each day they are absent. So far, neither threat has worked.
“Senate Republicans will not be bullied,” said House Minority Leader Sen. Tim Knopp.
The breakdown comes at a time when the state is facing crises on several fronts. Overdose deaths have nearly doubled in recent years. Wildfires have made devastating inroads through the Cascades. The drought has strained water systems. Portland has seen a record number of homicides. Mass homelessness has spread across the state.
Legislation that could address some of these issues has languished as lawmakers have been embroiled in a pitched battle over a bill that would change state law to increase access to abortion services, protect providers abortion liability and expand Medicaid coverage for transgender medical care.
Republican Senator Daniel Bonham said he was particularly concerned the measure would allow minors to get abortions without their parents’ consent and would say teenagers as young as 15 would be able to seek gender-based care on their own.
“Taking this position was a moral obligation for me,” said Mr. Bonham. He said that when he left the Senate chamber, he intentionally left a Bible on his desk, open to a passage in which Jesus says that anyone who causes a child to stumble should perhaps be drowned with a millstone on the neck
That such crippling division has gridlocked the Senate is a baffling twist to those who have watched Oregon politics for a long time. Past bipartisan cooperation produced pioneering legislation that declared Oregon’s beaches to belong to the people, not private developers, as well as the nation’s first bottle bill that sought to eliminate a growing litter problem by giving people a nickel to return the empties.
Priscilla Southwell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Oregon, said the culture of finding common ground extended from the state’s congressional delegation to communities and family tables.
The change in the political winds has been underway for years. There were battles over the lumber industry in the 1980s and over taxes in the 1990s. In more recent years, the Democrats’ steady increase in numbers encouraged them to pursue more progressive agendas, even as Republicans began to dig in and prepare for conflict.
“This ‘Oregon Way’ has almost disappeared from the scene,” said Ms. Southwell. “The current situation is just poisonous.”
While both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in brief legislative boycotts over the decades, Republicans have stepped up the tactic; the latest boycott has lasted weeks longer than any of the previous ones. Some conservatives have started a movement, with ballot measures passed in a number of counties, to fully explore segregation in Oregon and join Idaho.
All but two Republican senators now face the possibility of being kicked out of the chamber at the end of their terms under the new law, although some party leaders have suggested they plan a legal challenge to the rule.
Boycotting Republicans, along with a former Republican who is now an independent, have continued to attend committee meetings but have made clear that, barring Democratic concessions, they will only return to the Senate floor at the end of the session to pass what they see as to critical bills on homelessness, affordable housing and the state budget, a proposal that Democrats have called unworkable.
Senator Lynn P. Findley, one of those boycotting, said she had seen a steady escalation of polarization as middle-of-the-road lawmakers were challenged by more extreme factions. He recalled his own decision two years ago to remain and vote against a Democratic-sponsored gun control bill, even though some Republicans refused to attend the vote and came close to denying to the democrats the quorum.
The bill was approved and Mr. Findley was attacked with a recall effort by hard-liners in his party, who argued that he should have joined the march. This recall effort failed, but it has contributed to the concern of Mr. Findley that there are a small number of lawmakers who are willing to debate and compromise.
“We can’t all run out the door if we don’t agree with the viewpoints,” he said. Mr Findley said he joined this year’s boycott because of a different concern: his long-standing belief that legislative materials are written in a way that ordinary people cannot understand, in violation of ‘a law requiring them to be written in simple wording.
Democrats are now evaluating what tools they have to force Republicans to back down. After an earlier Republican walkout in 2019, then-governor Kate Brown tried unsuccessfully to have state troopers round up lawmakers and force their return. The current governor, Tina Kotek, has made no such attempt.
The latest tactic, proposed by Democratic lawmakers, is a fine of $325 a day imposed on absentees, equivalent to their daily wages. It’s not clear if it’s a powerful enough stick to produce results.
“Losing his legislative career seemed like a pretty big stick,” Ms. Lieber said. “That was a stick that didn’t work. So I don’t know if we have a bigger stick to bind them with.”
