Is this Oregon senate map the weirdest senate map ever

[OSR stands with Israel]

For some reason the Dem nominee despite being from Portland lost Multnomah county(which even McGovern won) but won a solidly R county like Wallowa.


NOVA Green can you explain this map

[lfromnj]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_United_States_Senate_election_in_Oregon

It looks like it was a bit swingier but 80% D was insane in a landslide R election.  The democrat was from portland too.

[ON Progressive]

Maybe something really local that Packwood did that pissed the locals there off?

Edit: Alternative explanation could simply be an error in the count by the county's local elected officials that never got caught. Wouldn't be the first time this has happened (Tyler County, WV in 1996 being a blatantly obvious example of this).

[Calthrina950]

For some reason the Dem nominee despite being from Portland lost Multnomah county(which even McGovern won) but won a solidly R county like Wallowa.


NOVA Green can you explain this map

What year is this map from? Is it from the early twentieth century? Or after the New Deal?

[lfromnj]

1986. I posted this in another thread first and reported this thread to merge it.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Union and Umatilla (and Baker) weren't as solid R back then - you can find Senate races in the 80s and 90s where Ds picked each of them off, even in losing years.

This sounds like a very strange race, though. I don't have a good explanation. My first thought when I saw the map is that Wallowa county is the only part of Oregon with a high mountain range (mountains in the East are single volcanic features) so perhaps it had to do with environmentalism.

Bauman was only drafted in August to help replace Jim Weaver who introduced a bill that designated land in the Wallowa mountains (among other areas) for federal protection. I don't really know why that would transfer to Bauman. Also the politics of Oregon and forestry/environmentalism are tricky because of unpopular federal protection for the spotted owl. NOVA can correct me but this is part of why SW OR is as consistently R as it is.

Unrelated but here is Packwood's 1992 map and it's amazing how similar this looks to a map you would see in the 2010s if you saw a Dem implosion in Washington County.

[Chester County Anti-populist]

It's not too much different than this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_United_States_Senate_election_in_Oregon

[Mr. Matt]

Checking on the Atlas reference from the Oregon SOS, for Wallowa County, the totals for the gubernatorial, Senate, U.S. House, State Rep., and Labor Commisioner are all similar but Rick Bauman and the Labor Commish are the only Dems to win there (the latter won 68% statewide though Neil "Not too Young" Goldschmidt got 43% there).

This was the only reference to "Bauman" AND "Wallowa County" from that time I found.

In Union County (the other Atlas Red county for US Senate), the Dems barely won the Gov. and Senate races and barely lost the US House race in the county by two votes. Searching through Newspapers.com for "Bauman" AND "Union County," I did see a brief reference to the Union County Dem chair but I do not have access to that website (the paper is the Statesman Journal, Aug. 14, 1986, pp. 5-6).

[I’m not Stu]

Why weren't Union and Umatilla as solidly GOP back then?

[NOVA Green]

Union and Umatilla (and Baker) weren't as solid R back then - you can find Senate races in the 80s and 90s where Ds picked each of them off, even in losing years.

This sounds like a very strange race, though. I don't have a good explanation. My first thought when I saw the map is that Wallowa county is the only part of Oregon with a high mountain range (mountains in the East are single volcanic features) so perhaps it had to do with environmentalism.

Bauman was only drafted in August to help replace Jim Weaver who introduced a bill that designated land in the Wallowa mountains (among other areas) for federal protection. I don't really know why that would transfer to Bauman. Also the politics of Oregon and forestry/environmentalism are tricky because of unpopular federal protection for the spotted owl. NOVA can correct me but this is part of why SW OR is as consistently R as it is.

....   [edited OP to remove '92 map and comments]....

Peenie-Weenie thus far provides what I see as the most likely explanation for this extremely unusual election map.

This photo perhaps explain it best of Bob Packwood looking over the Hell's Canyon area in 1986...



Here is an article from a well known Oregon Environmental figure, Andy Kerr, who was both loved and reviled throughout Oregon during the decades of Oregon Environmental Politics, and well known among Oregon Democratic and Republican political figures alike on a personal level.

http://www.andykerr.net/kerr-public-lands-blog/2017/1/13/premembering-bob-packwood-oregon-conservationist

Here is an excerpt, but I would highly suggest reading Andy's article in full:

"In 1986, Packwood faced a re-election challenge from Representative Jim Weaver, who was beloved by conservationists. However, I and some other conservationists believed that while Weaver could easily be re-elected for his house seat, he couldn’t win statewide against Packwood. We chose to support Packwood over Weaver, thereby splitting the Oregon conservation community.

During the 1960s through the 1980s, for a Republican to win statewide in Oregon, it was very helpful to be starkly non-Republican on one issue so as to be able to split the Democratic vote. For Hatfield it was peace and opposition to war; for Packwood it was a woman’s right to choose.

Packwood, who truly loved Hells Canyon and wanted to save the rest of it, introduced legislation to expand the Hells Canyon Wilderness by 300,000 acres on the Oregon side. Just two years after Hatfield said he would never ever do another wilderness bill, Hatfield was holding a field hearing in LaGrande for Packwood’s Hells Canyon bill. If it took another wilderness bill to ensure the re-election of his fellow Republican, Hatfield was there. Before the LaGrande hearing, Packwood went back to Hat Point for the rededication of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, at which he said, “If we save all the roadless areas that are left as Wilderness, in fifty years it won’t be half enough.” By this point, I wouldn’t walk through hell for Packwood, but I was feeling good about having supported him over Weaver in the upcoming election."

1.) Although this part of Oregon was not nearly as overwhelmingly Republican as it is today (Without going into extensive conversations of changing party affiliation and identity over the past (40+ Years), partisan affiliation is clearly not the major reason to explain this phenomenon.

2.) As you correctly identify this wasn't only one issue for voters within the region, but perhaps was THE issue within both Wallowa and Union Counties....

Google: "Wallowa County Unemployment Rate 1986", and scroll down about three hits below, and pull up a Google Book: Hells Canyon National Recreation Area Conservation Act of 1986 ..., Volume 4, which is essentially part of US Senate Committee Hearings, where Mark Hatfield is a major player....

You can read through, but it should hit Page 51 which starts with the AFL-CIO, rolls through testimony of Native Populations that would be directly impacted, etc...

3.) Here is a link to a '04 Academic Publication which covers the decades of discussion/debate regarding the Hell's Canyon Region, including various Senators from the Pacific Northwest on the subject over the decades...

"The creation of the recreation area was not the end of legislative interest in Hells Canyon.
In 1985, Senator Packwood (OR-R) proposed passage of S.1803, a bill to designate certain lands
in and near Hells Canyon National Recreation Area as additions to the Hells Canyon
Wilderness. The bill would have created a 299,000-acre expansion of the Hells Canyon
Wilderness, which in turn would have expanded the recreation area. In addition the bill
proposed to place a cap on the amount of timber that could be annually harvested from the
recreation area.
 This bill received stiff opposition from local communities,school districts, ranchers, and loggers who all saw the bill as a threat to the economic livelihood of the area and wanted no more wilderness and no more regulations on timber harvesting.

In addition to these local interests, Governor Atiyeh of Oregon strongly opposed the bill as did
many members of the Oregon State Legislature. On the other side of the debate many of the
key environmental groups came out in support of this billF as did the Nez Perce Indian Tribe
who saw it as a means of protecting and enhancing historic salmon runs. Yet in the end there
was just not enough support to get this bill through. The bill eventually died in committee.
"
https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=books_reports_studies

4.) My strong initial suspicion is that this was not especially an endorsement of the DEM US-SEN candidate who replaced Weaver who had just recently dropped out because of some type of campaign finance irregularities in what is generally a pretty squeaky-clean state when it comes to even the perception of corruption.

Rather, I strongly believe this was a message to Packwood during a period where most of Oregon was hit extremely hard at the height of the Reagan Recession, and for many of the local residents, they were not particularly interested in expanding the size of the protected area, while still trying to figure out to how support their families and communities...

Thoughts all??

[lfromnj]

Thx NOVA figured you might know so had to pm you.

[NOVA Green]

Why weren't Union and Umatilla as solidly GOP back then?

Without going into a long a detailed explanation of a topic, which rightfully deserves it's own discussion maybe when it goes into items such as TRENDS, I will attempt to provide a "brief" summary of my own opinions, which may or may not be anywhere close to accurate.

This is a bit of a separate item from the '86 OR-GE-SEN results, which I believed I attempted to explain upthread...

Here is a somewhat ugly map of the 1960 US PRES GE in Oregon:



1.) We see JFK in 1960 significantly over-performing statewide numbers in NE Oregon.

2.) This was historically an Ancestral Democratic "Mining" part of the State.

3.) The area around there is also part of the Historical "Mormon Belt" of Oregon, where Senior Elders were trying to determine where to create a "safe space", at a time of massive Pogroms against Mormons in Missouri...

In the end, the decision was made to move to the Utah territories, but not before massive numbers of religious refugees had relocated elsewhere.

LDS members at that time were not overwhelmingly Republican, and in fact in many Western States tended to frequently support Democrats over Republicans in various elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udall_family

4.) As the older generations who survived the Great Depression and WW II, gradually passed away, the politics of the "Sagebrush Rebellion" moved center-stage (Which tended to be most predominant in ranching parts of Oregon), culminating in the Reagan nomination of James Watt to Secretary of the Interior, the political voting habits of local residents shifted....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagebrush_Rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Watt#Secretary_of_Interior

5.) All that being said, Oregonians within the region were not overwhelmingly monolithic when it came to multiple elections, including the PRES election of '88.

A.) Bush Sr--- only won Union County in '88 (50-46 R).

B.) Although Bush Sr out-performed his State & Ntl numbers in Umatilla and Baker Counties, it really wasn't by that much larger a margin than National numbers....

Two Cents brief post....