Demographics drive GOP nosedive on West Coast

By Andrew Selsky, AP staff writer

BEND, Ore. (AP) — In the early 1990s, the population of Bend was around 25,000 and leaned Republican. A lumber mill operated along the banks of the Deschutes River in Oregon’s high-desert country.

Today, the lumber mill is an REI outdoor recreation store. The population has quadrupled. And for the first time in memory, the number of registered Democrats in Deschutes County recently eclipsed the number of Republicans.

The transformation shows how demographic shifts and the GOP’s tack further to the right are helping push the party into a nosedive along the West Coast.

The last Republican presidential candidate that California went for was George H.W. Bush. For both Oregon and Washington, it was Ronald Reagan. Now, Republicans are struggling to hold seats in Congress, statehouses and city councils up and down the coast.

California, Washington and Oregon will hold their presidential primaries on March 3, March 10 and May 19 respectively, and which Democratic candidates they favor will become clear. But this much is certain: In November, none of the three states is apt to go for President Donald Trump, and there is little hope Republicans will claw back much ground in other contests.

Political districts have flipped in population centers, from San Diego in the south to Seattle in the north.

“There is no way out,” Chris Vance, a former Washington state Republican Party chairman and legislator, said in a telephone interview.

Vance blames the area’s exodus of college-educated white voters, particularly women, from the GOP on the party’s turn toward more fundamentalist values under Trump. Vance himself abandoned the party in 2017 after an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate as the Republican candidate.

“This was the party of nerdy, wonky, tweedy capitalists who cared about economic growth. Now it is the party of populists: alt-right, let’s keep the immigrants out, truck- and rifle-populists,” Vance said. “That works in Mississippi and Arkansas and stuff, but it does not work in the Seattle area.”

And Democrats in Oregon — who already hold the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats and four of five U.S. House seats — wield supermajorities in the Legislature, and are gunning for more seats.

One of them is the House seat representing Bend, currently held by moderate Republican Rep. Cheri Helt. Challenging her is Deschutes County Deputy District Attorney Jason Kropf, whose treasurer is a veteran political fundraiser.

After the demise of the timber industry, Bend became a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts and beer lovers. The town of roughly 100,000 is arrayed along a scenic river and below the Cascade Range, with one of the highest number of breweries per capita in America.

“Bend is full of beautiful, very fit, beer-swilling jocks,” said James Foster, professor emeritus of political science at Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend.

The shifting demographic has made Bend, and Deschutes County, “much more moderate” than in the past, he said.

In 2018, about 4,100 more people moved to the county than moved out, with two-thirds arriving from 11 California counties — 10 of which are predominantly Democratic — and from the liberal bastions of Seattle and Portland, according to a new study by the Oregon Employment Department.

The growth of registered Democrats “could be a reflection of the political party affiliation of the new residents, rather than longtime locals shifting their party affiliation,” said economist Damon Runberg, who prepared the study.

Republican lawmakers in Oregon are so fed up with Democratic dominance that they began a boycott of the Legislature this week in an attempt to kill a bill aimed at stemming global warming. Helt bucked the move by remaining in the Capitol.

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