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Oregon Republicans Run Away

 
 
 
lpetrich

lpetrich

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Oregon Republicans walk out and subvert democracy. Again. - Vox - "The latest escalation mirrors growing anti-democratic sentiment in the national GOP."
In Oregon right now, a handful of white people from the far right are holding the state government hostage.

No, it’s not another armed occupation of government buildings, like in 2016. This time it’s a handful of Oregon lawmakers who refuse to enter government buildings, thereby holding the business of the legislature hostage.
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Oregon's Constitution specifies a quorum for its legislature's chambers of 2/3 of all legislators in a body. Several other state constitutions, like Washington's, specify a quorum, but it is usually a majority. Oregon's was copied off of Indiana's when the state was founded.

As of 2018, Oregon's legislature is
  • House: Total 60, Dem 38, Rep 22
  • Senate: Total 30, Dem 18, Rep 12
Democrats have majorities, and almost but not quite 2/3 majorities. Oregon Republicans have taken advantage of that, and walked out to keep a quorum from existing.

Such walkouts used to be rare, and done only in extreme cases, like:
In 2001, Oregon Democrats walked out of the legislature, and in 2003, Texas Democrats did the same thing. In both cases, they were objecting to efforts by the majority to engage in the kind of gerrymandering that would stitch together future Republican majorities even if they got fewer voters.

In 2011, Wisconsin Democrats walked out; later that year, Indiana Democrats did the same. In both cases, they were objecting to bills being rushed through by small majorities, opposed by most state voters, to permanently cripple unions.
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But the Republicans have walked out 5 times since last year.

#1:
In May of 2019, Oregon Republican Senators walked off the job to prevent the legislature from passing a tax package to fund state schools, staging a four-day boycott of their own jobs. In exchange for returning and voting on the package, they demanded that two other bills with majority support — one with modest gun restrictions and another that would have limited religious exemptions from vaccines — be scrapped.
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The Dems gave in and scrapped those two bills, and the Reps promised not to do any more walkouts, and to work on a carbon cap-and-trade bill.

#2:
In June 2019, just as the Oregon legislature was about to pass that cap-and-trade bill, Republicans walked out again, violating the agreement they had signed a month earlier.

In the face of this betrayal, Governor Kate Brown threatened to send state police after the lawmakers, but congressional Democrats mostly simpered. “I’m begging you to come back,” said Senate President Peter Courtney on the Senate floor. “I don’t want to send the state police. I don’t. I don’t.”
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Pat Dooris on Twitter: "Oregon state senator @BrianBoquistGOP said if R's walk out to stop a vote on Cap and Trade and @OregonGovBrown sends state police to bring him back, they should be single and well armed. Your take? https://t.co/Fcu8NXXl8h" / Twitter

The Democrats gave in again, killing that cap-and-trade bill.

#3:
"Republicans had learned their lesson. It took only until February 2020 for the first walkout of the new session, when Republicans, en masse, skipped an evening meeting."

Because the Dems were making them do too much work.

#4, #5:

The Dems worked on cap-and-trade again. The Reps' response?
This month, Republican senators walked out again, using rhetoric unchanged from before all the concessions. This time, Courtney immediately ruled out sending state troopers after them. Instead, he redoubled his begging. “I need you. I need you to help my fellow Oregonians — all of us. I need you,” he said plaintively in a radio interview. “Let’s fight other ways. Please come back to Oregon my Oregon.”

Brown was, once again, “extremely disappointed,” as was the Senate majority leader.
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Senator Ginny Burdick on Twitter: "Today 11 Oregon Senate Republicans walked out on their responsibility to serve their constituents when they refused to show up for work. Here is my statement in response. #orpol #orleg https://t.co/G5thKNHKgm" / Twitter

Then the Oregon House Republicans joined them.

Working Oregonians call on Republicans to stop wasting taxpayer dollars and get back to work — No More Co$tly Walkouts
Oregon Union Leaders Say They Will File Initiative Aimed At Stopping Legislative Walkouts . News | OPB
 
Oregon Republicans walk out and subvert democracy. Again. - Vox - calls Republican complaints about procedure "bad faith"

E. Werner Reschke 🇺🇸 on Twitter: "It has begun. Oregonians are waking up to the unOregonian policies being crammed down our throats in Salem. #OregonCapitol #TimberUnity #Oregon11 #CapKillsJobs #HB2020 https://t.co/3zy9HSQWNT" / Twitter

Karin | This is not a snow day | Power on Twitter: "Over the last two years, this #orleg bill to address the climate crisis has had:
👉35 hours of public hearings
👉A statewide tour with public town halls
👉Six hours of floor debate between House Republicans and Democrats in 2019
✅ No bill has ever had this much process. EVER. https://t.co/vG2FLQsx2X" / Twitter
noting
OR House Democrats on Twitter: "“No bill has ever had this much work in the history of Oregon,” Power said. “It’s been crafted over many years. It’s been well vetted and negotiated, and it deserves a vote by the Legislature.” - Rep. @karin_power on climate legislation [url]https://t.co/TEjX9tq0ej #orpol #orleg" / Twitter[/url]

Oregon Environmental Council on Twitter: "#ORclimateAction is years in the making, including the participation of a variety of stakeholders. Groups representing Oregonians from all walks of life are at the #orleg today to make our voices heard AGAIN #NoMoreCostlyWalkouts #orpol https://t.co/sXYcplnrRM" / Twitter

Republicans’ objections have been heard and addressed. They just haven’t stopped the bill, and that’s what they want. It was never really about process, it’s about state government doing something they don’t want it to do (pricing carbon) in a state where they believe they ought to have veto power. They believe that rural white people and the kinds of jobs they do are more authentically Oregonian than those of city dwellers working service jobs, and thus they ought to have a greater voice in politics.

“This state was built by the timber industry and by farms, ranchers, construction and other blue collar industries,” said John Hanlin, sheriff for rural Douglas County in southern Oregon, at a protest in 2019. “Not on coffee businesses and marijuana dispensaries.”
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This despite the Democrats making concession after concession after concession.

Then the Republicans wanting a referendum. Several months, enough for fossil-fuel interests to finance a big ad campaign to defeat it.

To hear Republicans talk, they’re just looking out for the interests of beleaguered yeoman farmers. The money tells a different story.

As this great exposé from the Oregonian’s Rob Davis documents, Oregon has the country’s loosest laws on money in politics, with no restrictions whatsoever on what corporations or individuals can donate to politicians. This has led to a flood of cash into state politics and the steady erosion of the state’s once-proud pollution and environmental laws.

Oregon is now first in the country in per-capita corporate donations to politicians; almost half the total money donated to Oregon legislators comes from corporations, far more than comes from unions or individuals.
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Rob Davis on Twitter: "The walkout shows one way Koch-backed politicians work to stall action on climate. The Kochs own a mill in Toledo, Oregon that is the state's sixth-biggest source of CO2 emissions." / Twitter
then
Rob Davis on Twitter: "The Kochs and other energy-intensive companies covered by #HB2020 have given $160,000 to state senators' campaigns since 2009. The partisan divide is stark.
The Republicans who walked out: $117,619.
The Democrats who stayed to vote: $43,250." / Twitter
He then lists how much money that several Reps received from the Kochs and the like.
 
Oregon Republicans walk out and subvert democracy. Again. - Vox
"Calling white supremacy what it is"
This is an extraordinary situation. An overwhelmingly white, rural minority of voters is holding an entire state’s business hostage. Oregon Democrats played by the rules, got more votes, and developed legislation through appropriate channels. Now fewer than a dozen lawmakers, heavily funded by the very industries they are defending, are blocking it, at will, using an anachronistic quirk of the state constitution.

There is no conceivable justification for it, no possible democratic rationale. It only makes sense in the context of white supremacy: the notion that rural white Americans are more authentically American than other groups and deserve outsized representation in its politics and veto power over its legislation.

It is no surprise that there are copious ties between the Oregon GOP and the far right.
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The article then discussed the likes of TimberUnity and the Three Percenters.
It is no coincidence that Oregon is the state where a group of far-right extremists occupied government buildings in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for over a month, armed and explicitly threatening violence. Ammon Bundy, the leader of that criminal occupation, was acquitted of all charges and back to his life within a year.
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The Democrats look like the Weimar Republc here, letting the far right make them look like wimps who helplessly wring their hands.

The Weimar Republic? It cracked down hard on the Bavarian Communist uprising, killing and jailing several thousand people. But it could barely make a response to the Kapp Putsch, and it let Adolf Hitler get off very easy for his Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

Then how "Oregon Republicans are national Republicans in miniature".
 
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