...That's right. Oregon, where only one of eight statewide elected officials, Sen. Gordon Smith, is a Republican. Oregon, where Democrats have controlled the governor's mansion since 1986 and where every Democratic presidential candidate since then has carried the state.First state with a bottle bill, first with an all-public coastline, first with an urban growth boundary, first with vote-by-mail, first with physician-assisted suicide—that Oregon is unmistakably losing its Democratic majority, Looper says.
As seismic as such a shift would be, it is a well-kept secret. Reed College political science chairman Paul Gronke was unaware of Democrats' dwindling power. "I'm stunned," Gronke says. "I find that very surprising and something that has not been highlighted by the press at all."
Former state senator and Oregon Republican Party vice-chairwoman Marylin Shannon says Republicans' gathering strength is little recognized even among her party's leaders.
"When I show the data at [Republican] Central Committee meetings, people say, 'I didn't know this,'" says Shannon.
"This" is the fact that, absent major demographic shifts, Republicans are on track to soon outnumber Democrats in Oregon.
In the liberal Portland echo chamber, such a notion might seem absurd. But a Republican-controlled Oregon would probably be an entirely different place on issues ranging from abortion, school funding and the environment to the judiciary and the Legislature...