Regime fatigue: What could go wrong for Democrats in Oregon

Oregon and Texas have one-party rule.

Parties that hold power a long time get careless. 

Oregon Democrats will probably escape the consequences this time. 

Opinion journalist Matthew Yglesias said it so well I will simply quote him:

Beyond that, Abbott’s problem is that he’s been in office a long time and he’s the third Republican governor in a row and there’s been a G.O.P. trifecta for a long time and it’s just hard to govern for a really long time without eventually overreaching and pissing people off. The longer any party coalition governs, the more scandals accumulate and the more undisciplined its leaders become. It gets easier for voters to take for granted whatever they like about them and harder for aligned interest groups to take “no” for an answer about their most unsound ideas. You see a version of this in the relatively tight polling for the Oregon governor’s race. I think Tina Kotek will probably pull it off, but if there were a Democrat in the White House, she’d be in real trouble.

Texas has been reliably red for decades. With no real opposition, the party’s allied interest groups and its demands for loyalty have let Texas be carelessly extreme. Take abortion. Texas violated its own culture of Western independence with a law that puts a bounty on anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. Some counties went further, making it illegal to transport someone along county roads on the way out of state to get one. The anti-abortion lobby felt unrestrained so it got a policy it could hold up as a trophy.

One-party rule also closes ranks. The Texas House impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton on corruption charges. The Republican state Senate refused to convict him. His power intact, and with Trump’s backing, he won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, ousting John Cornyn. He is a weak candidate with a giant flaw, and he got there because of one-party solidarity.

Too much strength becomes a weakness. It covers up mistakes of policy and personnel.

I support Governor Tina Kotek. I have donated to her campaign. I consider a Republican governor too big a risk for Oregon, at least while President Trump is in office and keeps making demands on state and local officeholders.

It was different when Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Vic Atiyeh were governor. They were Republicans, and I considered that no great problem. Having both parties in positions of real power meant both parties had buy-in. Each had to act like a responsible governing party. 

A party that sees itself as part of the government does not pretend Oregon roads will maintain themselves. Republican opposition to the Democrats’ transportation package was good politics. Nobody likes a higher gas tax or registration fee, and voters threw the package out in May. But someone, somehow, has to pay to maintain the roads. 

I suspect Kotek will win reelection, but by a closer margin than Democrats usually enjoy. The argument for “bringing balance to Oregon” will make sense to some swing voters. Oregon interest groups that back Democrats -- unions, environmental groups, LGBTQ groups, reproductive rights groups -- have not faced hard opposition. Unions pushed through a law that pays unemployment benefits to striking workers, public employees included -- an idea at the far edge of union aspirations.

Democratic billboard. Drazan did a joint appearance with Ron DeSantis

Still, I am supporting Tina Kotek, even though I wish Republicans had buy-in in Salem. The problem is that gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan, and Republican legislative candidate Brad Hicks, have not separated themselves from the national Republican brand. They don’t dare say they aren’t Trump-obedient -- or at least they have not done so through months of campaigning. Trump might notice. MAGA voters might notice and be disappointed. The active partisans in the GOP want a loyal Republican, not a RINO.

The race may be close, and incumbency-fatigue gives Drazan a real shot, but the 2026 election is about the man who demands to grab center stage from Kotek: Donald Trump. 

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Brad Hicks caught a break, then threw it away

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Republican state Senate candidate Brad Hicks had the formula for victory: Say he isn’t a Republican soldier. 

But there was all that money. So much!

He fell into the same trap that buried Republicans before him in Oregon Senate District 3. 

Character reveals itself.

The Beatles sang about getting by with a little help from your friends. The irony of this campaign is that help from so many friends seduced Hicks into sabotaging himself. His friends meant well. Republican PACs, corporate PACs, industry trade association PACs and generous individual donors poured money into the Hicks campaign. At some point that money became a weapon he turned on himself.

The Hicks campaign started out with a Mr. Nice Guy bipartisan message. It wasn’t wholly implausible. He had been president and CEO of the local chamber of commerce, and most chambers of commerce steer clear of overt partisanship. The Medford chamber is an exception, effectively a Republican lobby with its own PAC, but that isn’t obvious to the general public. If pressed, Hicks could have said he was just the CEO and the board set the politics.

Hicks could have run a brute-force campaign, spending two-plus million dollars telling us what a nice guy he is. It would have gotten tiresome. How much Andy of Mayberry can we stand? How many rainbows, puppies, and testimonials from friends? Still, it would have been a consistent message, and a welcome note of comity in politics, a contrast to the slugfest in the governor’s race between Democratic incumbent Tina Kotek and Republican challenger Christine Drazan.

The problem was excess. The GOP money machine made ads that vented its frustration with Democratic majorities in Oregon. The result was angry, hostile, contemptuous ads. Take THAT!

A new brand emerged. Hicks became a Republican warrior. He hardened the partisan lines. Several times every hour, voters in a district with a Democratic majority hear that Democrats and their leaders are wasteful, incompetent, corrupt, evil and dangerous. It isn't how to win friends.

The race became a slugfest just like the governor’s race. Democrat Denise Krause’s campaign switched to nasty ads too. Don’t trust Hicks. Hicks would sell public land to corporations. Hicks won’t protect women’s reproductive rights. Hicks is a Trump toady.

The ugly battle clarified what the campaign is about: Republicans versus Democrats, both full of rancor. This year, with an all-too-visible Trump defining and damaging the Republican brand, a partisan brawl helps Democrats. Voters move to their respective corners of the ring.

As with Drazan’s campaign for governor, I think there is a public appetite for an independent-minded Republican who would offer an alternative to decades of Democratic control in Salem and the fatigue that comes with it. Hicks started with that message of independent bipartisanship. In my opinion, he could have won. He had the money to sell it, even if it wasn't remotely true.

But the richer his campaign got, the more capacity he had to show the underlying reality. Character reveals itself when given enough time and money. By campaigning as a Republican brawler, Hicks demonstrates to voters he would legislate like the loyal Republican his original message claimed he was not.  

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Christine Drazan can't catch a break

"You can go by foot
You can go by cow
Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now."
       Theodor Geisel, as "Dr. Seuss," 1972

President Trump won’t go.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, the Democratic incumbent, won’t let us forget it.

Trump said it himself: “Pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot.” He meant it as a favor to Republican candidates. It is a curse.

Christine Drazan, the Republican candidate for governor in Oregon, is one of the victims of Trump’s narcissism. Trump is not sending out bipartisan signals, nor is he doing anything to ease Democratic suspicion of a repeat of 2020, when he tried to overturn an election. He is still posting up a storm and talking about ballrooms and a triumphal arch. He is promising $5,000 payoffs if Republicans win, an offer so outrageous that even some Republicans dismiss it. He keeps insulting and picking fights with Canada. Canada! Our peaceful, reasonable, no-trouble neighbor and ally. He confirms every suspicion Democrats carry that Trump is careless and desperate. The moment they wonder whether they are being alarmist, whether everything is normal after all and they have simply fallen into a habit of derangement, Trump says something crazy at a rally. He praised Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio ad featuring his opponent’s estranged mother! It is as if he is trying to sabotage Republican candidates.

                               

Poor Christine Drazan.

Governor Kotek is vulnerable. Oregon has its own problems, made worse by Trump, Kotek argues. Democrats have been in charge, and Kotek carries the malaise that hangs over every incumbent in this period of high prices and low consumer confidence. Bad feelings still linger from the Covid shutdowns. Nike and Intel are laying off people, and Portland office buildings have empty floors. Oregon has lost some of its luster.

Kotek has a Trump card: Drazan has been a good Republican. She isn’t aggressively MAGA, and she has not promised to bring Oregon into sync with Idaho and Alabama,  but she is Trump-compliant. She is on the Trump team bus, even if she isn’t waving pom-poms and shouting “attaboy!” Kotek has seized on that compliance. A Kotek TV ad drives the point home, and it appears to be her closing argument. A mother talks about her daughter who was born with Down syndrome, and about how the family relies on the Oregon Health Plan. It puts a sympathetic face on Trump’s Medicaid cuts. The mother says:

     "President Trump tried to cancel that funding. It would be catastrophic. Christine Drazan follows everything Trump wants to do. She tried to cut Medicaid, too. The most vulnerable are left in the dust, scrambling to survive. That's not right. That's the difference for governor. Christine Drazan will never stand up to Trump."

Drazan won’t stand up to Trump. Frustration with Oregon government falls to insignificance next to Trump, who would do God-knows-what and doesn’t even pretend otherwise. Oregon is a target.

Drazan has an escape route but does not take it. Apparently Republicans think they cannot. Look at Mike Pence and Liz Cheney. Better to lose as a Republican than break free of Trump. Suppose Drazan were to denounce Trump forcefully -- his Medicaid cuts and tariffs and the harm they do Oregon, his crypto grift, his sale of pardons. Suppose she said Oregonians won’t tolerate Trump's blatant corruption, and said it so clearly that Trump condemned her as a RINO turncoat. Then I suspect she would win this race. I think there is a public appetite for an independent-minded Republican with the spunk to stand up to Trump. She might not need to take the scary step of breaking with Trump if he would just disappear for a while.

But Trump stays front and center, a wild card menace, but he won't go now.

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Picking the Malbec grapes

[Skip this post if you want politics, not agriculture.]

 

Monday we pick the Malbecs.

The starling pressure has gotten overwhelming. 

The grapes are netted, but the starlings come in swarms and they are doing what they can to get into the nets. 

I drive my tractor up and down the rows and ten or fifteen birds flush out and fly away in alarm. It works for the moment, but then they return. They are looking at the seams of the nets, trying to find a way in.

I set up a flopping man scarecrow on Sunday, but it won't work for long. 

Nets work, but imperfectly. What works to protect grape clusters is picking them, getting them into bins, and driving them to Valley View Vineyard's winery and out of harm's way. 

Picking involves cutting the grape clusters with hand clippers and placing clusters in a bucket.

Here is what they look like, freshly picked and still in the field. These are the Pinot Noirs we picked last week.

Then at the winery, fermentation started, a small pump recirculates the juice, pouring it back over the grape skins to extract color and grape-skin flavor notes.

My vineyard froze hard on Thursday and Friday nights. The vineyard is colder than most of the Rogue Valley because my place is along the Rogue River, i.e., the point of lowest elevation, where the coldest air settles. Here is one of the alarm notices I was texted every half hour from my electronic thermometer.

A freeze this hard doesn't ruin the grapes, but it finishes off the still-greenish living grape leaves that were delivering carbohydrates to the grapes. The Malbec and Cabernet grapes are as ripe as they will get, although as they dehydrate on the vines they will get sweeter.

The Valley View Vineyards owners and winemaker are attempting to make excellent wine, not just good wine, so their plan for now is to leave the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes on the vines for another few days. The crew is hand-picking the grapes, not machine-picking, because, again, the quality if better. Machine-picking shakes frosted grape leaves along with the grape clusters; the leaf fragments cannot be separated out and they change the taste of the wine. 

I share these posts about growing wine grapes because many people who drink wine have no clear idea about where those nicely finished bottles come from. Wine is an agricultural product. Every agricultural product in every region on Earth addresses problems getting stuff grown and marketed. Melons have their problems. Grapes have different ones. Farming is complicated.

I have a second purpose. Grape prices are down. Wine sales are down. We don't have a wine-glut problem; we have a drink-imported-wine problem. There is more wine consumed in Southern Oregon than is produced in Southern Oregon. The boycotts of American wines by foreigners retaliating to Trump tariffs are damaging the grape and wine markets, and wine exports are down.  That is part of the problem. Nationwide  domestic wine consumption is down because of the ebbs and flows in consumer tastes. (Maybe wine isn't health food after all.) Markets will settle out at some new equilibrium over the next few years. The U.S. is a net importer of wine. American wines, including ones grown here in Southern Oregon, do not need to apologize for their quality on world markets. Local wines are fully equal to imported wines and those from California. We are a high-quality wine region, recognized by wine experts, but less so by local residents. People who consciously "buy local" when buying other food forget that policy when shopping for wine. Local restaurants showcase foreign wines. What a shame. Southern Oregon is a superb wine-growing area, and I am trying to show how that is accomplished. 

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Easy Sunday: That Ramaswamy ad

 Readers respond.

-- Some thought it impossible that the ad helped Ramaswamy.

-- Others complained that I was unfairly insulting Republicans to suggest that many of them liked the ad.

-- Others thought it insightful to have recognized the MAGA populist resentment of bureaucratic expertise.

Yesterday's post made a brief reference to Dr. Amy Acton's earlier job as director of the Ohio Department of Health. It is relevant. She was the Covid czar. 

Dr. Acton was the face of Covid-era school closures in Ohio. In those early weeks, when little was known about a new disease, she made public projections of how many Ohioans could be infected. Those fears and warnings were revised downward, in Ohio and nationally, and the impression that left became partisan. Republicans said Democrats lied and exaggerated the danger. Acton, like Dr. Anthony Fauci nationally, became associated with overreaching, controlling bureaucrats. The MAGA conclusion: Covid experts lied to us. The ad treated her Covid warnings as a character flaw, not as a mistake made while understanding of the disease was still evolving.

Again, I am disgusted by Ramaswamy’s ad. I think it probably hurts him more than it helps him in this year’s governor’s race. But Trump’s strong endorsement of the ad is a “tell.” The ad helps Ramaswamy with a decisive segment of the Republican base. A majority of Ohio voters chose Trump in 2024, knowing exactly who he is. They resent the smarty-pants experts who sent their jobs to China and shut down their schools unnecessarily over Covid.

Here is an example of the comments I received, edited for brevity. Joe Yetter is a retired physician and a former candidate for Congress.

Joe Yetter:

Peter, you really have the ability to see through others' eyes. It's not what I see, at all.

I see Ramaswamy and Trump as stone-cold liars willing to hurt anyone, any place, any time in service of their own aggrandizement. And who believe enough voters will side with them, seeing the world through those eyes.

It is stomach-churning for me to think there are any voters--let alone many voters--who will find this ad appealing. I hope you are wrong.

My response:

Joe, this speaks well of your character, but it is a political liability for you.Their stone-cold lying is the asset in this contest you if you start with a premise that the world is rigged in favor of everyone else. Trump is the anti-hero. He is Dirty Harry.  I am disgusted, not admiring, of the ad but I think I recognize Ramanswamy's strategy.

As with evolution, if something unintuitive exists it is a huge opportunity to consider what is really going on. The peacock's tail is such a thing. Ramaswamy's ad is the same thing.

Joe Yetter's response: 

What science teaches us is the triumph of cooperation. The way to win is to work for all to win.

We--and all multicellular life--exist because our single-celled ancestor ingested a bacterium and, instead of digesting it, provided it shelter, and so mitochondria were born. 

It's a story that can be retold in detail and in broad sweeps, like the co-evolution of insects and flowering plants. Wolves and grizzlies and beavers have the power to change geology and hydrology to the benefit of whole ecosystems.

The current rapacity of humans is putting us on track to destroy much of the beauty and diversity of the natural world, and its ability to sustain us.

It will profit us not at all to hire "Dirty Harry." But (as in War Games), the only winning move is not to play that game. I say this not merely because it's the kind thing to do, but because I think it really is the way to win. For everybody.

I often recommend books. Narrowing down, I'd recommend Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass; Richard Powers' The Overstory; Terry Tempest Williams' The Glorians; Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer; Zoë Schlanger's The Light Eaters.  And hat tip to the late Lynn Margulis, the evolutionary biologist who taught us the significance of symbiosis in evolution.

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What is Ramaswamiy's thinking?

On the surface it is beyond stupid. It is suicidal. Is he trying to lose?

Vivek Ramaswamy, the GOP candidate for governor in Ohio, made an ad that even some Republican officeholders objected to. He defended it. Then he announced he would spend $4 million to promote it.

What’s going on?

The ad features Donna Arthur, the mother of Dr. Amy Acton, Ramaswamy’s Democratic opponet. 

“My name is Donna Arthur and I am Amy Acton’s mother. It’s not easy for a mother to say this but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help and she can’t help you if she needs help herself. Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor if you think she’ll make your life better.”

Here is what the record shows. When Amy Acton, a physician and later director of the Ohio Department of Health, was 12, her stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. She and her younger brother were removed from their mother’s custody. Donna Arthur stayed married to the man. He was indicted, skipped a court hearing, and was never tried. Acton’s younger brother backs her story and says she took the worst of it to protect him.

At first glance the ad looks like it should backfire. The mother comes across as a woman who lived exactly the hard life Acton describes: a string of partners, a husband she believed over her daughter, children taken from her. And we are supposed to believe her, not her high-performing daughter?

But the ad is pure MAGA positioning. It hits every note for a successor to Donald Trump. It may win Ramaswamy the governor’s office, his best outcome. Win or lose, it positions him, not Marco Rubio or JD Vance, as Trump’s legitimate heir in 2028.

-- It shows Ramaswamy is willing to be the transgressive candidate, to say what “cannot be said.” A big part of Trump’s appeal is that he says things people know are crude and politically incorrect, and it reads as honest and forthright. Vance staked his claim to that ground in 2024 with the story about Haitian immigrants eating pets. Ramaswamy just called that bet and raised it.

-- It casts Ramaswamy as the champion of the common person against the manager and the expert. Trump identified and nurtured the revolt against experts. Dr. Acton, the physician-bureaucrat who was the face of Ohio’s Covid response, carries the worst possible positioning for a Democrat, a Covid czar. The ad plays the note of disbelieving experts.

-- It casts Acton as damaged and unstable. That the mother looks rough is an asset for Ramaswamy. The worse she looks, the stronger the case that Acton is scarred for life by a miserable childhood. Being a survivor cuts both ways. She was strong and showed character. But it also raises suspicion, especially among people already suspicious of experts. She must have spent time on a psychiatrist’s couch. She must carry deep trauma. Megyn Kelly voiced the suspicion on her podcast, saying there is something weird about the way Dr. Acton talks, that her voice is slurred like she is drunk; she said she had heard Acton cried on the job during Covid. 

-- “She lies.” Trump got traction as a politician by calling his opponents frauds, illegitimate. Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and the birth records are fake. Elizabeth Warren is Pocahontas, a fake Cherokee. Ted Cruz is “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump’s own flagrant corruption only strengthens the argument that the whole system is rigged and full of frauds. Ramaswamy’s ad is an expression of that idea. So is the way his side has handled the backlash: the outrage itself is fake. Vance said he was “disgusted” by the Republicans who criticized the ad and told them to stop whining and go win. Trump said Ramaswamy wasn’t to blame for the trouble between mother and daughter.

The Ramaswamy ad disgusts me, but it is not directed at me. The ad does not backfire on him. It reminds the solid majority of Ohio voters who chose Trump in 2024 that Ramaswamy is their guy.

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Guest Post: In praise of college fraternities.

The Incident

In October 2024, a Cornell University student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, was allegedly drugged and gang-raped by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at their house on campus. Her lawsuit says she was pressured to take ketamine and plied with more alcohol and marijuana. The men deny her account.

Two days later, she and one of the men exchanged text messages. He apologized for “how things went down.” He said his memory was “kinda fuzzy” and that he felt bad for being too intoxicated to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.” She replied that none of the sexual activity had been illegal and that her own memory was “super clouded, too.” Nearly two weeks later, she texted him that 90 percent of what happened that night was not consensual.

That night, members of the fraternity traded messages in a Snapchat group about the woman upstairs. At 1:42 a.m., one message suggested she was available for sex. Later came the question “Shop still open?” The answer: “Yea.”

That is the story circulating in the media. It is ugly and tawdry. Is it the hidden reality of fraternity life?

I asked my friend Jack Mullen, who belonged to a fraternity during a tumultuous era on campus, the late 1960s. He told me the story in the news isn’t the whole story. Fraternities, he said, serve a good purpose. He wanted to share fraternity life as he experienced it, and he has a suggestion for making fraternities better.

Theta Chi Class of 1969

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

Reporting on the recent rape allegations at a Cornell University fraternity party has cast a pall over fraternity houses and the entire Greek system.

Living in a fraternity enriched my college experience, so I am disturbed by the public perception that fraternities breed predatory behavior. Were there hints of such behavior during my years as a member of Theta Chi at the University of Oregon? Perhaps.

I entered the University of Oregon in 1965 as a timid freshman, unsure how I would fit in. Could I hack it academically? Could I muster the nerve to ask a coed out on a date? Joining Theta Chi helped me meet both challenges.

I’d be lying if I said I pledged Theta Chi because it was the highest-rated academic fraternity on campus. I decided to pledge when George Dames, a childhood friend from Medford, described in great detail the house’s upcoming dance, the Red Ox. “Count me in, George.”

Much has changed since the late 1960s, not least the dating apps today’s students use to meet one another. Much, however, remains the same. Alcohol is still readily available and, when consumed responsibly, can add a bit of zest to a date.

My fraternity had guardrails to limit drinking. Alcohol was prohibited in the house. For the Red Ox, we rented a bus to take us to a barn in Creswell, where we could drink whatever crazy concoction we had mixed up. The same bus brought us back to the house, which we had decorated top to bottom for a western party. That included the basement. Yes, the basement, which we turned into a dark mattress room.

Nothing heinous happened in the mattress room. As best I can recall, no one was ever dragged down those stairs against her will. College kids being college kids, I suspect our dates enjoyed their visits as much as my fraternity brothers did, though I never asked them. That I never persuaded a single date to go downstairs with me is a story for another time.

After I graduated, Oregon’s dorms went coed, with men and women on alternating floors. I wish they had been coed my freshman year; it might have cured my shyness around women. Until the early 1970s, Oregon freshmen lived in the dorms and could not join a fraternity or sorority until their sophomore year. A New York Times column by the president of Wesleyan University carries the title “Want to Address Sexual Assault? Make Fraternities Coed.” 

At first I didn’t want to read such nonsense. When I finally did, I realized that in this day and age it makes a ton of sense.

Fraternities once excluded Catholics, Jews and African Americans. Fortunately, they have changed for the better. This is, after all, America, and I hope we are now an inclusive society. I believe coed dorms at Oregon helped students stop seeing the opposite sex as objects. Just maybe, bringing men and women together under one roof in the Greek system can put a damper on the kind of sexual assault alleged at Cornell.

I wouldn’t change anything about my days at the U. of O., including my life as a Theta Chi. Those years shaped my life for the better. But times have changed, and the Greek system needs to meet today’s challenges. Make fraternities and sororities coed.

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