Personal Journey from Goldwater to Biden

One person, one vote.

Each person gets to the decision on how to vote based on ones own tastes, personality, personal history, and policy interests. 

Today's blog post is a bit of autobiography from John Flenniken, a regular reader of this blog. He is about 75, he taught chemistry in a Portland High School in the 1970s and then, better to support a family, left teaching to work for the electric power utility Pacific Power and Light.

Guest Post by John Flenniken

"The Republican Party Changed"

Here is a personal dive into why my military and police family voted Republican, but now I do not.   

I grew up in a military family. You might call me an Army brat. My mother was convinced there would be another great war within 20 years. In her thinking, I needed to start first grade at five (born October 1st) so that I’d have two years of college under my belt by 1964 when she predicted the next war would start--just in time for the Vietnam War it turns out. My mother thought those two years of college would put me into military service as officer material if drafted, and maybe I could avoid actual firefights. She was also convinced that Democratic presidents (i.e. Wilson and FDR) had lead the nation into war, and Democrats would again.  

My mother, recently widowed, felt the military was poorly served by Democrats.  As was the family custom, we all voted Republican. My mother's brother became a Portland police officer at this time, and, yes, he was very Republican. I grew up supporting Republicans because that is what I heard at the kitchen table. 

I worked on the Goldwater campaign in college. So what changed?  Well, to be direct I didn’t change--the Republicans did. The tipping point for me was Richard M. Nixon. Then and now, I consider myself a conservative of the Oregon stripe. I supported Governors Tom McCall, Victor Atiyeh and Mark Hatfield. But watching the Watergate Hearings it became clear to me there was criminality in the Nixon White House. Coupled with the OPEC Oil embargo, Nixon became someone who was crooked, and who mismanaged the government. Jimmy Carter looked like a good alternative to me.

There were new family influences on me, too. My wife, raised in a Democratic family, voted a Democratic social cause ticket, and back in the 1960s and 1970s she protested the Vietnam War. That made family holidays “interesting” but gradually I came to agree with my wife and in-laws. 

I kept hoping that America could be better and do better and my attitudes evolved in that direction during the1970s.  Carter had tried to turn the US from fossil fuels and towards conservation and renewable energy, which made sense to me, even though the average citizen was not happy going fifty-five miles an hour to save fuel. The political gridlock caused by oil and car companies lobbying made embracing a new direction impossible. I began to think Republicans were trying to divide the country rather then unite it, to enhance their own agenda.   

There were economic incentives, too. As a teacher, my salary was negotiated, and compared to today's salary and wages, it was poverty-level. I applied for summer work with the USDA/Soil Conservation Service/Snow Surveys and earned supplemental wages and as a GS-9 field engineer. I seriously thought about making the SCS a career, but all that ended with Reagan’s Grace Commission Report. Temporary work was available but now there was no prospect for longterm government service. Federal government jobs were being reviewed and, where possible, privatized.

I had a young family and I was pinched by the fact that wages did not keep pace with costs.  I became a strong union leader in the Portland School District’s salary negotiations. Those of us in the union had to bargain hard to get meager salary increases. I saw the writing on the wall. It was time for me quit teaching and find a job in the private sector.  PPL offered me a job if I would move to Wyoming. We agreed. Renting out my house in Portland, we relocated to Rock Springs, Wyoming. As it turned out Sweetwater County, Wyoming is the only Democratic area in the state.  

Suffering through the Reagan - Bush years was really hard. The economy was not working for people just starting out. The term “stagflation” described low wage growth and high inflation destroying those gains.  Bill Clinton’s administration did create an economy the “floated all boats.”  I liked the economy under Clinton, but of course I found myself apologizing for Bill Clinton's mess with Monica. Then, i was crossing my fingers hoping that Democratic presidents could regain the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years, voting first for Obama and then Hillary Clinton.

In 2016 we got Donald J. Trump, a newly minted and recast Republican. When my wife's and my dismay and grief over the 2016 election waned, anger took it’s place, as the authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump became apparent. I had thought, briefly, that a New York real estate developer would be more conservative and less socially disruptive and divisive. Well, wrong again. He was worse. 

I do not expect that on November 3rd we will learn the election outcome.  I do expect there will be disruptions and legal challenges.  As Michael Steele, former Republican Party Chairman, still a Republican, said in The Lincoln Project political appeal ad, the choice is clear. A vote for Biden/Harris is a vote for America.  A vote for Trump is a vote for chaos. 

I agree. Trump is all about encouraging and profiting from chaos. Remember, my earliest political lessons were the value of authority and order in my military family.  I still value that, which is why Trump seems to me to be so wrong for America.

Still there’s hope this year!  Other unlikely people seem to be tiring of Trump's chaos. My Kansas cousin, for the first time in family history, voted a straight Democratic ticket.