10) Oregon Sen. Ted Ferrioli (R) Oregon Senate Minority Leader

“We got out tails handed to us, no question about it,” Sen. Jeff Kruse (R) said of Oregon’s Republican legislators after the election.

No one may feel the effects of GOP’s Oregon defeat in as much as Sen. Ted Ferrioli, the State Senate Minority Leader.

It will be interesting to see how Sen. Ted Ferrioli reacts during the upcoming Oregon Legislative Assembly. Will he become so apathetic that he’s no longer very involved, or will he become a crusader for the (increasingly smaller) Republican  opposition?

According to Sen. Kruse, it may not matter.

“(Republicans) will be unable to stop anything,” Sen. Kruse said, “except for certain things having to do with taxes.”

9) Cylvia Hayes

Cylvia Hayes, the “first lady” of Oregon was signifiantly dragged through the mud during the 2014 election. 

From wild revelations about her past, to allegations against her personally of ethical misconduct in her role as advisor to her fiancé, Gov. John Kitzhaber and bad press surrounding her firm 3EStrategies - no one took a public beating quite like Hayes.

By the time revelations surfaced that she operated a pot-farm in Washington State (before it was legal) and also facilitated a green card marriage, voters were questioning her judgement. Hayes was safe enough, however, since she wasn’t actually running for office. Now that her fiancé has earned another term, some voters are uneasy about Hayes being included in the governor’s inner-circle. 

After months of media scrutiny against her and ethics probes against Gov. Kitzhaber set to begin, would any firms in the private sector like to hire Hayes as a consultant?

8) Josh Marquis, District Attorney of Clatsop County

Voters approved the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes by passing Measure 91. The opposition to legalization received strong blowback from the public for not supporting the measure, as reported by NBC news.

The politicians who publicly opposed 91 may have reduced themselves to political ashes.

Josh Marquis, the District Attorney of Clatsop County, has been one of the loudest voices in opposition to legalization. He leveled a plethora of claims against measure 91, including fear mongering about juvenile drug use and possible increases in occurrences of drugged driving. Marquis thoroughly embarrassed himself in his public display of opposition. Some of his claims about Measure 91 were debunked by the Huffington Post.

With the revenue collected from Measure 91 preallocated to education, public safety and health, it’s hard for anyone worth their constituents’ support to blow smoke at the new, much-needed source of revenue.

Despite the public backlash, Moore said he doesn’t think the Marquis’ political career is over. 

“They didn’t really have an organized campaign,” Moore said. “I don’t think anyone will remember.”

But anyone googling Marquis (like a future or future voters) will, and that could prove to be too much for the de-facto face of Oregon’s marijuana prohibition.

7) Democratic Members of The U.S. Senate Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden

The fact that Democrats faired poorly in the national election is well known. To consider just how much influence Democrats have lost in the Senate, however, is staggering.

Although Jeff Merkley defeated challenger Monica Wehby to retain his Senate seat, he’ll likely be booted from his Chairman positions on the Subcommittee on Economic Policy and the Subcommittee of Green Jobs and the New Economy. 

His Colleague, Sen. Ron Wyden, might be booted from his Chairman positions on the Committee on Finance and the Joint Committee on Taxation.

6) Independent Party of Oregon

With over 100,000 members and 1,100 primary voters, the independent Party of Oregon is on track to become a major political party in the state. Despite it’s growing numbers, however, pundits said its frameworks might be flawed.

“The independent party is primarily made up of people who don’t understand that there’s an affiliated selection and an independent selection,” Moore said. “An Independent is actually joining a political party.”

Only one candidate in Oregon ran as an Independent in the last elections. That's because the party typically doesn't have a nominee of its own, like the way the Libertarian or Consistitutional parties do. Instead, the Independent party chooses to endorse a Democrat or Republican in a given race. 

“They basically chose Republicans across the board this time,” Moore said. “Their candidates lost, which says the Independent party doesn’t really move voters.”

It’s hard to find 100,000 people wielding less influence anywhere else in the state.

5) Art Robinson - Leader of Oregon’s Republican Party

A disaster in contrast to tremendous opportunity, the Republican Party in Oregon took a spectacular nosedive in 2014. Its failure was so profound, in fact, that it may be a long time before we see the party pick itself up and dust itself off again.

To take a prescriptive look at the problems that plagued Oregon’s Republicans in 2014 - even when their party rolled to victories in congressional races across the country - look no further than the leader of the Oregon Republican Party: Art Robinson.

Robinson, who ran for the state’s 4th Congressional District and lost for a third time in a row, opposes abortion rights and calls public education a form of child abuse. He came away with less than 40 percent of the vote in his defeat.

If Robinson is the best option for Republicans in Oregon to choose as their leader, they’ll need to make some significant changes to their platform to have it aim more toward the middle and, of course, they’re going to have to get real about education. 

“There’s a whole lot of people who would normally vote Republican but they’re not engaged in the process,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Kruse (R) said. “It’s our job to get them re-engage them, and if we can do that then we’ll see.”

Until the GOP can shake its public image of the party of fear and complacency, the Democrat’s stranglehold on conservative’s aspirations in Oregon should continue to hold tight.

4) Chris Dudley (R)

To say that former professional basketball star and current Lake Oswego resident and former Oregon gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley missed a huge opportunity by not running for governor of Oregon in 2014 is a tremendous understatement, only akin to saying, ‘the Trailblazers missed a huge opportunity by not drafting Kevin Durant.’ 

Sure, Dudley since relocated to Southern California, but he still holds a lot of political clout in Oregon.

In 2010, Dudley ran for governor and lost an extremely close race to Kitzhaber that came down to a little more than a single percentage point. Dudley’s gubernatorial campaign was well supported, raising approximately twice as much as the Kitzhaber campaign did. When it was all said and done, Dudley had raised $5.6 million from the timber industry and other business interests. 

One of his endorsements was Nike Co-founder and Chairman Phil Knight, who was also one of the financial contributors to the Dudley campaign. The financial support Dudley’s campaign garnered from the timber industry was among the most intriguing things surrounding the possibility of him running again. 

With business connections in his back pocket and no voting record to speak of that could appall voters, the would-be-governor made a terrible mistake by not throwing his hat in the ring in 2014.

3) Candidate for U.S. Senate Monica Wehby (R)

Monica Wehby, a Portland neurosurgeon, appeared to be the GOP’s best chance at taking a U.S. Senate seat from an Oregon Democrat in years. As a medical doctor opposed to the Affordable Care Act, Wehby would have been an especially important seat in the Senate for conservatives had she had won. She had a shot at the upset - garnering national support from big business including campaign contributions from Freedom Partners, the political action campaign backed by the Koch brothers. 

The wheels of the Wehby campaign fell off in late September, when reports surfaced alleging Wehby had stalked her former boyfriend and ex husband. Sensed something in Wehby that gave many of them an uneasiness and the Koch brothers could sense it as well - Freedom Partners pulled their funding of Wehby’s campaign shortly after the allegations were made public. After that, she simply didn’t have enough money to compete with incumbent U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, pundits said. 

“She herself never showed she could raise money,” Jim Moore PhD director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University, said. 

Another problem plaguing the Wehby campaign, according to Moore, was an unprofessional staff.

“It usually took them three to five days to respond,” Moore said. “That’s a sign that the campaign staff doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

If the disaster of Wehby’s campaign could be surmised in one misstep, it would be that she never had a chance to show that she was a moderate Republican. Wehby sounded like a staunch conservative when asked about healthcare, and Moore said she was just never able to get passed that soundbite. 

Wehby slinked back to where she came from; Merkley rolled to an easy win. 

Was this the last that voters have seen of Wehby? Time will tell. 

2) Low-income students

The most devastated group of people walking away from Oregon’s 2014 elections were, arguably, were low-income students. The state’s most impoverished scholars were dealt a double-tap by voters rejecting Measures 86 and 88.

The state treasurer requested the original draft of Measure 86, which would have created an endowment fund of college aid that would have been available to any student pursuing a post-secondary degree. The demand was in-place: state support for community colleges had reached a historic low while tuition at public universities risen steadily over the course of a decade. Many schools have been forced to cover more than half of their operational costs with tuition revenue, effectively balancing their budgets on the backs of students. Student debt eclipsed the mark of $1.2 trillion nationally in 2013, according to Forbes.

1) GMO Producers

Measure 92, a statewide ballot measure that would have required the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms - or GMOs - lost by a narrow margin. Despite earning their political victory, the opposition made a potentially fatal mistake: making too much noise.

Opposition to Measure 92 received more financial contributions and spent more money than any other political campaign in Oregon’s 2014 election, raising over $17 million and spending a total of $20.6 million. The No on Measure 92 campaign contributors included DuPont Pioneers ($4.5 million), Monsanto ($5.4 million), Pepsi ($1.4 million) and Coca Cola ($1.1 million), among others.

Despite the David vs. Goliath funding paradigm, proponents of the measure still came dangerously close to having it approved by voters. The race was too close to call on election night.

Before the 2014 election cycle, details pertaining to GMOs and the controversies surrounding them were widely unknown to members of the public. Unfortunately for agrochemical companies like Monsanto and DuPont, the brouhaha surrounding the campaign brought an increased level of public awareness toward GMOs.

One defining moment that stuck with a number of voters was a campaign ad that compared two different kinds of corn side-by-side, one handful was natural food and the other handful contained genetically modified organisms. 

The man in the ad asked viewers, “Don’t you feel like you have a right to know if you’re eating this, or this?” 

One thing is for certain: With proponents of GMO labeling reorganizing and redoubling their efforts for similar measures in the near future, the tide of public opinion may have turned against GMO producers. What would it mean for companies like DuPont and Monsanto if GMO labeling became the national law of the land? How much would It may be a long time before we know the answer, but that won’t stop us from watching agrochemical companies dump unprecedented piles of cash into politics in the interest of self-preservation.