SALEM, Ore. — Enough Republicans showed up in the Oregon Senate Thursday to end a six-week walkout that stalled the Legislature and blocked hundreds of bills, including some on abortion, health care transgender and gun safety.
The boycott, which prevented the Senate from reaching the two-thirds quorum needed to pass bills, was prompted by a sweeping measure on abortion and gender affirmation that Republicans said was too extreme.
The walkout also blocked passage of the two-year state budget and a gun safety measure opposed by the GOP that would raise the purchase age for semi-automatic rifles to 21.
Republican Minority Leader Sen. Tim Knopp had said the boycott would end only on the last day of the session, June 25, to pass “bipartisan” legislation and budgets. But an upbeat mood gripped Capitol Hill this week as Republican and Democratic leaders met to negotiate compromises.
“We asked for legal, we asked for constitutional, we asked for a compromise, and I see it from your side,” Knopp said as he addressed Democratic Senate President Rob Wagner after Thursday’s roll call. “Thank you to everyone who participated.”
Republicans particularly objected to a provision in the measure on abortion and transgender health care that would allow doctors to perform abortions regardless of the patient’s age, with medical providers not required to notify a child’s parents , especially when doing so could endanger the child, such as in cases of incest.
The gun control measure originally would have punished the manufacture or transfer of undetectable firearms with a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $250,000 fine. Republicans opposed amendments that would limit concealed carry rights and raise the purchase age to 21 for semi-automatic rifles like AR-15s.
The longest absence in the Legislature’s history came despite voters passing a 2022 ballot measure that disqualifies lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences from re-election. Republican senators are likely to seek the measure if they are not allowed to register as candidates, starting in September, for the 2024 election. Republicans also walked away in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
On June 1, Senate Democrats voted to fine senators $325 each time their absence denied a quorum.
On Wednesday, more than 40 Democratic members of the Oregon House and Senate sponsored a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the state Constitution to require a majority of each house of the Legislature to carry out the business If approved by the Legislature, it would go before Oregon voters on a ballot in the 2024 election.
Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek can bring lawmakers back for a special session if the House and Senate don’t pass budgets by the end of the regular session.
Republicans had initially said they were boycotting because summaries of the bills did not comply with a long-forgotten state law requiring them to be written at a level an eighth grader could understand.
The walkout, which began May 3, is the longest in the 163-year history of the Oregon Legislature and the second-longest of any U.S. state, behind Rhode Island, according to a list by Ballotpedia.
In 1924, Rhode Island’s Republican senators fled to Rutland, Massachusetts, and stayed away for six months, ending Democratic efforts to hold a popular referendum on holding a constitutional convention.
That self-imposed exile followed the detonation of a gas bomb in the Senate chamber. Democrats and Republicans accused each other of causing it.
