Guest Post: Partisan Litmus Test

A Democratic Guest looks at Jessica Gomez

Art Baden:  "I came away from the conversation impressed by Ms. Gomez." 

We might have a very good, useful campaign, with two candidates who would be independent enough to change the Oregon legislature if elected.  But parties don't want independent thinkers.  They want loyalists.

Democrat Jeff Golden and Republican Jessica Gomez will face off as candidates to be the Medford-Ashland State Senator, District 3. Jeff Golden won the nomination without the support of the upstate Democratic Party and its allied organizations. His refusal of PAC money, even from "good" organizations, was a deal killer for them. After all, if he thinks their money is tainted then he must think there is something wrong with them and how they exercise influence, so if he rejects them, they reject him. Golden's campaign will test whether voters--and the general political system--will accept a candidate who is bound and determined to be independent.

Jessica Gomez has the potential to play essentially the same role, but from the Republican side. She might be essentially independent, having come into the campaign as someone outside the national Trump-style GOP. She would be a return to an earlier form of GOP thinking, the Main Street moderation of John Dellenback, Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, Bob Packwood.

it will be a struggle. 

I witnessed the pressure on her when she talked for a half hour on the Bill Meyer show. The host pressed her to march through a checklist of approved Republican positions. She had reservations and qualifications, but on issue after issue, she managed to come down on the side of lowering taxes, preserving gun rights, saying taxpayers shouldn't pay for abortions, opposing efforts to deal with climate and greenhouse gases.   Click for the KMED archives. 7:35 a.m.

I thought she passed the test. Apparently not.

Gomez came within 2% of losing the Republican primary to Curt Ankerberg, a candidate whose temperament, qualifications, legal difficulties, and self-admitted impairments make him manifestly unsuited for public office. (Yesterday I quote Ankerberg at length. Readers can judge for themselves what kind of office holder he would be.)

Ankerberg did the political system one big favor. His near-victory demonstrated that a great many GOP voters want a true-believing, inner directed Republican conservative, someone passionately anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-restriction on guns, anti-climate change, anti-immigrant candidate.  Or, perhaps it was a rejection of the process, unhappy that she was plucked from GOP obscurity, anointed by party leaders. In either case, Republican voters nearly made a suicidal choice, and like any near-suicide, it is a sign of trouble.

Art Baden describes a meeting with Gomez. He is a retired insurance broker, from New York and then Chicago, who retired in Ashland. He has been active in Democratic party campaign circles. He has observed the power of party litmus tests in campaigns and in legislatures. I consider his favorable encounter with Gomez to be a promising sign for Oregon. (Likewise, I consider Jeff Golden's own independence from the upstate Democratic party Unions and PACs, a promising sign.) Maybe there is some middle ground and room for respectful dialog in Oregon politics.

Or maybe not  Jessica Gomez may find she cannot be a viable candidate if she remains the person she was when she spoke with Baden. Curt Ankerberg--and the people who voted for him--will not tolerate that kind of Republican.

Guest Comment by Art Baden

Art Baden

Entertaining as Mr. Ankerberg's ad hominem attacks on Mr. Sage are (as a graduate of a public land grant university, I particularly enjoyed his portrayal of Peter’s elitist Harvard degree), I'm more interested in Ankerberg’s political analysis and opinions of his party's SD3 candidate, Ms. Gomez. And surprisingly, I agree with him!

I espied Ms. Gomez last month at the Pear Blossom Festival, and always happy to make the acquaintance of another immigrant from the Old Country (Long Island), I introduced myself and asked her why, at this particular time, with Mr. Trump as the leader of the Republican Party, she, who claims she voted for Hillary Clinton, a Latina woman, would join the Republican party and run for the State Senate. 

Ms. Gomez told me that she did not resonate with what Republicans were doing nationally. The impetus for her conversion was her experience as a small business owner, specifically her frustration with what she believed was over-regulation and red tape from the State, bloated State bureaucracy, and concern about the Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) and its potentially devastating effects on our State government and overall economy.

I asked her why she felt she'd be more effective in bringing solutions as a member of a Republican minority in Salem, rather than as a member of a Democratic supermajority. Her answer was that the Democratic legislators were too beholden to the public employee unions to honestly address PERS.

I came away from the conversation impressed by Ms. Gomez's intelligence, her willingness to dialogue with a partisan of the opposing camp, and her effective communication skills. But I didn't get any sense that she shared any philosophical space with the Republican Party as it is increasingly being defined by Donald Trump - nativist, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion rights, pro-gun, anti-free trade, climate denying, etc.

And I suspect that the 48 % of her fellow SD3 Republicans who voted for Mr. Ankerberg didn't get that sense either.

The Republican party used to be a big tent, or at least purported itself to be one. Is there space in the Trump Republican Party tent for Jessica Gomez?

But what of the Democratic Party tent? We have a Democratic SD3 candidate who won his primary without the support of the Public Employee Unions. Athena Goldberg proudly claimed the endorsements of public employee unions. Mr. Golden presented himself as independent of PACs and interest groups of all stripes. He won. It will be interesting to see how, in the general election campaign, he now addresses the issues which Ms. Gomez claims drove her conversion to the Republican Party.

Is there a litmus test for Democrats: "thou shalt not disagree with public employee unions?"

As I am hopeful (although increasingly despairing) to see Republicans standing up against Trump and reactionary orthodoxy; I'm also hopeful to see Democrats speak some truth about PERS and wasteful gov't spending. If Democrats ignore these issues, we not only relinquish our moral authority and intellectual integrity, we also risk losing a rare opportunity for a blue wave in 2018.