Scott Bruun: Oregon’s Path Away From One Party Rule

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Reince Priebus visited Portland last Friday night. Priebus is the thrice-elected chairman of the Republican National Committee, or “RNC.” He was in town as the keynote speaker for a fundraising dinner for the Oregon Republican Party.

The audience for the event was actively engaged, and a good portion of the attendees were twenty-somethings. In other words, many of the people in the room last Friday night have never experienced anything but one party rule in Oregon.

Looking at the current condition of governance in Oregon. Looking at Oregon’s perpetual mediocrity in public policy. Looking at the polite and quiet complicity that has festered, as we saw with Kitzhaber, to the point where insiders no longer ask hard questions of each other until the damage is done. Looking at all this, it becomes easy to understand why decades of one party rule is slowly sinking our state. Easy to understand why so many of those twenty-somethings, and thousands upon thousands of others across our state, are ready to end the one party strangle-hold on Oregon.

That’s why folks in Portland were eager to hear Priebus.

As an unpaid volunteer in Wisconsin, Priebus worked his way up to serve as that state’s Republican chairman. Under his leadership, the party was able to break the Democrats’ lock on Wisconsin – a lock that looks much like the current one in Oregon. During Priebus’ tenure, Wisconsinites elected a Republican governor, gained congressional seats, and took back both of their legislative chambers.

As Chairman of the RNC since 2011, the national Republican Party has seen a dramatic turnaround in financial condition, technology, and strategic “ground-game” infrastructure. These efforts were vital in helping push the wave that in 2014 flipped control of the U.S. Senate, expanded historic majorities in the U.S. House, and solidified control of governorships (to 31) across the country.

A wave that hit everywhere. Everywhere except Oregon.

You have to hand it to Democrat leaders and their party organization in Oregon. They know how to win elections. The current strength of the Democrat Party machine in Oregon is a result, primarily, of the 2000 presidential race. That year, George W. Bush – while winning the White House – lost Oregon by only a few votes per precinct. Way too close for comfort for Democrat leaders, so they did something about it.

Democrat leaders raised money, purchased new technologies, re-organized their efforts at voters’ doors, expanded new voter registration efforts, and mobilized third-party surrogates like the “Bus Project” and public-employee unions. The results, for the Democrat Party machine in Oregon, have been outstanding.

For Oregon’s schools, working families, roads and businesses? Not so much.

But no excuses. While Democrats were focusing on making improvements to win elections, Oregon Republicans were stuck in neutral. Republicans tended to re-invent the wheel every two years, pulling together make-shift call centers and dialing outdated voter lists.

At the same time, too much focus by party insiders on a given candidate’s philosophical purity, rather than electability, meant we were often failing to bring our own people together – let alone attract independent voters and disaffected Democrats. Conservative Republicans often forgot the “viable” part of William F. Buckley’s maxim to nominate the rightward-most viable candidate. While moderate to liberal Republicans often couldn’t bring themselves to support a candidate who happened to be, gasp, pro-life or rural.

So we’ve lost. Yet if conversations around the tables at the Reince Priebus event last week are any indication, we’ve also learned.

Oregon’s newly-elected Republican state chairman, Bill Currier, acknowledged that it is the job of the party to elect candidates. Period. Of course the party should stand for the broad principals of freedom and economic opportunity, but it should avoid the fractious micro-policy debates that invariably leave Oregon voters cold.

Let the candidates debate. Let Republican candidates talk about the need for longer school days and longer school years in Oregon. Let candidates talk about building roads, lowering college costs, and creating better career opportunities for Oregonians.

Let the candidates debate. Let the party win elections.

As RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was finishing his remarks last Friday night, he brought all this together in as many words. Come together, speak with confidence and positivism, embrace new technologies, and do the hard work necessary to finally stop one party rule in Oregon.

Do the really hard work, that is. After all, as Priebus concluded by quoting Vince Lombardi, “the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs', yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living in public affairs with Hubbell Communications.