Can Oregon Matter?

Hundreds of Oregonians have already enlisted in the fight to make Elizabeth Warren the next President of the United States.  Many hundreds.  We could be into the thousands by now.

There's enormous activity in Portland and its near-in suburbs, where PDX for Warren has generated the sort of passion I associate with Bobby Kennedy's campaign in '68, or Bernie Sanders' first run four years ago. 

But there's also activity elsewhere, including parts of the state where you might not expect to find cheerful demonstrations of loyalty to a Democratic candidate.  More on that below.

Occasionally, however - for all this incredible stir and bustle - someone will ask the question:  Does this really matter? 

Will all this activity - the rallies, the volunteer training, the canvassing, the phone-banking, the burgeoning cottage industry devoted to button-making - actually make any difference?

Will Oregon matter?

It's a good question.  Oregon is, after all, one of the last states to hold a primary - on May 19.  Oregon won't send a huge delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukie, Wisconsin.  Indeed, if the 2020 primary season goes true to form, there will almost certainly be a nominee - or at least, a prohibitive favorite - before Oregon votes.

Moving on to November - unless there's a political revolution of catastrophic proportions - Oregon will award its seven electoral votes to whomever the Democratic Party nominates.  Which means that, during the general election campaign, neither member of the Democratic ticket will waste time visiting Oregon.  A Democratic ticket that doesn't carry Oregon would be doomed to humiliating defeat.

So - in terms of affecting the choice of a president - can Oregon matter?

This post will argue that it can, but first, a little background.

I'm very new to Oregon.  I moved to the north coast in August, 2018, after a lifetime in Virginia.  Back east, I'd been involved in politics, on and off, all my life - which tends to happen when your dear old dad serves eighteen years in the state legislature.  But I had absolutely no thought of becoming involved in politics in my new state.

Then the presidential campaign started up.  It felt important, so I looked over the field and did my due diligence.  I narrowed my choices down to three, then two, then - finally - one.  A good one.

So in early July, I decided to find out who was organizing for Elizabeth Warren here in Clatsop County.  (If you don't know Oregon, think of it as an envelope.  Clatsop is where you'd affix the address label.)  I checked around, went to a local Democratic Committee meeting, and found out.

Nobody.

Nobody was organizing for Warren, or really, anyone else.  So I located the Portland group and wound up in touch with Kevin, a bright young guy who's one of Liz Warren's potential "West Wing" team.  He asked if I'd head up the campaign here in Clatsop County - which sounded pretty low-key - and I accepted.

Then I did a little research into Oregon politics.  I learned that, traditionally, the Democratic Party of Oregon focuses on getting out the vote in the 7 "blue" counties around Portland, Salem, and Eugene - i.e., the upper I-5 corridor.  Win those seven counties, they know, and you can elect the Governor, the two US Senators, at least three of our five members of the House of Representatives, and a majority of the state legislature.

And that's how it works.  Rural Oregon - even the tourist and retirement towns that dot our truly dramatic coastline - are afterthoughts.  Like our larger neighbor to the north, Washington, Oregon is a "red" state that votes "blue" because of a big metropolis.  Nine-tenths of our territory votes Republican.  Even my county, which is marginally "blue" - while appreciated - plays little role in the Party's calculations.  Some really progressive people out here, but not enough population.

And that's when I got involved in something slightly more ambitious than my nominal job here in Clatsop.  I contacted a few other volunteer local leaders in counties not deemed essential by the Democratic Party of Oregon.  We decided to make a modest effort at connecting with each other and finding local leaders in neighboring counties in the western third of the state..

To my surprise, the leaders of Warren's powerful Portland group sympathized.  So in August, I scored a couple hundred of their hand-made buttons, met with another local leader at the State Central Committee meeting in Newberg, and started recruiting rural-county leaders in earnest. 

One month and many road-trips - including four over-nighters - later, we had leaders in a third of Oregon's 36 counties, and were close to being organized in a half-dozen more.  And our ambitions changed from organizing the counties in the western half of the state to something we call the "36-County Project" - an effort to have Elizabeth Warren organized in every county of the state. 

Since then, a lot more local leaders have joined the effort.  I recruited a "road warrior" from Portland who made the 450-mile round trip to Canyon City one week, and a 500-mile run to La Grande the next.

The energy for our project has become, in effect, self-sustaining.  We're reaching out to every corner of the state, with good hopes of having an active group working in every county before the Iowa caucuses.  We've even won support from the national headquarters in Charlestown, Mass.

And in the process, we've found a purpose. Actually, two purposes.

First, we're asking all Oregonians for their votes.

We represent a brilliant woman who was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma.  Who was a high school debating champion in Oklahoma.  Who attended college in Houston, Texas.  A red-state gal who was still a Republican when she was hired to teach law at Harvard.  A legal scholar who changed her politics, her party - and her life - after scholarly research into America's bankruptcy laws persuaded her that predatory lending was destroying millions of American families.

A candidate, in short, who speaks "red-state". 

Elizabeth Warren might not make it to Enterprise, or Ontario, or La Grande - or even to Bend or Medford - during this campaign.  But she needs to ask folks in those "red counties" for their votes.  Through us. 

Because, by asking for their votes, she will open a dialogue that will help enormously when she is President - which all of us, of course, believe she will be.

That's the first purpose behind our project.  You can only bring the American people together if you have asked them - all of them - for their support on your way to the White House.  You might not get their votes, but if you've asked, you've started a conversation.

The second purpose is this:  As far as I know - and I've travelled a good deal of the state now - we're the only campaign making this sort of effort.  True, Bernie Sanders has some passionate loyalists everywhere I go - and I get that.  I was for Bernie in 2016 - and I'm still angry about the way he was treated by the DNC during the primary campaign.

But I've seen little serious effort to organize for Bernie as of yet.  Outside the Portland area, no other candidate - other than Yang - is putting in much effort at all.  Which means, in a sense, that Elizabeth Warren has a clear field in Oregon.  If we can direct our energies into organizing - not only in the seven "blue" counties, but across the whole state - we can go a long way toward locking up Oregon for Elizabeth Warren before the primary season starts.

Think of it this way.  If, by the time the Iowa caucuses meet, the national press can report that Elizabeth Warren's volunteers in Oregon have the state so well-organized that the other campaigns have decided not to invest resources here - that they're writing it off - that's kinda like Oregon had promoted itself to an early primary state.

Indeed, if we've got Oregon fully organized - with folks canvassing in every county - by January, we could actually cast the first vote - ahead of Iowa and New Hampshire.  Ahead of everyone.

What we do - if we do it thoroughly - could make a real difference in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.  It could make a real difference in Washington and California on Super Tuesday. 

It could make Oregon important in a way that our late primary, and our dependably Democratic electoral votes, never could.

And that's why we're doing this.  To make a difference - right here in Oregon.