Even the leaders of the state Republican Party are surprised by this news:
RED DAWN
Forget about blue Oregon: The Republicans are taking over.BY NIGEL JAQUISS | njaquiss at wweek.com 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.
"This state can go from progressive to regressive," Looper says. "And they can win if we don't participate."
Last Thursday, The Oregonian published an analysis of the May City Council primary races titled "Blue Tide." The paper's conclusion?
"Portland, which had its share of Reagan Republicans, is now a sea of liberal blue—and getting bluer all the time," the story's sub-headline stated.
The story was accurate, as far as it went.
What the daily neglected to mention is that on a statewide basis, Portland's Democratic super-majority matters less each day. The trend is so clear that if the Democratic Party of Oregon were a publicly traded corporation, owners would be lining up to dump their stock.
Over the past three decades, the number of registered Democrats in the state has not only failed to keep pace with population growth, it has actually declined in absolute terms. According to the secretary of state's election statistics, there were 794,218 Oregon Democrats in 1976; as of this past May, there were 760,066.
Thirty years ago, 56 percent of registered Oregon voters were Democrats; today, that number is less than 39 percent.
Over the same time period, the number of registered Republicans in the state has soared by half. If not for a temporary spike in Democratic registration in 2004, generated by a one-time expenditure of $10 million in national party funds, the Democratic advantage—currently less than 3 percent of the electorate—might already have disappeared.
A declining registration advantage is only part of Democrats' problem. The current gap between the two parties is even smaller than it appears, because in every Oregon general election since 1964, the GOP has turned out a higher percentage of its voters than have the Democrats.
"Republicans vote more because they are typically better educated and more affluent," says Bill Lunch, chairman of the political science department at Oregon State University.
Democrats not only face a rising Republican tide, they also must compete for a growing and unpredictable cadre of independent voters.
