Oregon Election Season Was One For the History Books, Experts Say

Sunday, November 02, 2014

Cornelius Swart, GoLocalPDX Director of Content

With approximately half of ballots yet to hit polling offices, Oregon now heads into the final weekend of what will probably go down as the most memorable campaign season in a decade.

Oregon’s mid-term election has featured high profile ballot measures, big money donors and scandal after scandal.

“It makes you feel like it’s The Jerry Springer Show, not an Oregon election,” said Len Bergstein, a political consultant with Northwest Strategies. “It was the most uncharted election season we’ve had in a long time. There were just a lot of things that happened that no one expected.”

Governor’s Race and Beyond

Most expect that Governor John Kitzhaber will win an unprecedented fourth term in office. That speaks to a tremendously successful career in some respects. But Kitzhaber’s performance as a governor next term may be hampered by the scandals that erupted in the media, in classic “October Surprise” fashion, late in the campaign.

“You can’t go through that without it having an impact on the governor,” Bergstein said. “It’s been brutal.”

Revelations that Kitzhaber’s fiancée Cylvia Hayes had a for-profit sham marriage and an alleged pot-farm in Washington (before it was legal) were headlines for weeks. But charges that Hayes may have been engaged in lobbying as a consultant at the same time she was treated as a “public official” and “First Lady of Oregon” may linger on into his administration.

Kitzhaber will have to face an Oregon Ethics Commission investigation into the charges later this year or early next year, at the very least.

Comparisons could be drawn to Sam Adams, the Mayor of Portland whose affair with legislative intern Beau Breedlove went public right at the beginning of Adam’s first and only term in office. Adams stayed in office, but critics say the scandal cost Adams the political clout he needed to push through ambitious projects.

Bernstein said Kitzhaber may suffer a similar fate.

“I think he’ll personally have a lot less energy,” Bergstein said. “Because it hasn’t been an election run on the issues, he won’t have a mandate. He’s still going to be one of the smarter guys in the room, but he might not have the same umph to do a grand bargain.”

Wehby Faceplants

Monica Wehby looked like the best shot the GOP has had in years to take a U.S. Senate seat from Democrats. The politically moderate, Portland neurosurgeon had a message that condemned extremist politics and a personal story that should have resonated with female voters. But right out of the gate, the media, perhaps fed by political opposition research, published police reports filed by her ex-husband and a former boyfriend that characterized Wehby as a stalker.

Wehby had attracted the support of the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners PAC. But in September Freedom Partners pulled the rug - and their money - out from under her.

“Since the beginning of October her campaign has gone dormant, mainly because the Koch brothers pulled out,” said Jim Moore PhD director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University. “She doesn’t have enough money to compete.”

Moore said it reminded him of 2002, when former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury mounted a largely symbolic campaign to dislodge Republican Gordon Smith from his U.S. Senate seat.

“It was basically just giving Democrats a place to vote,” Moore said.

Mammoth Measure and Money

A total of $267.7 million has been spent in Oregon this campaign season, according the website HackOregon. Most of that cash has been funneled into the cluster of hot button ballot measures, the likes of which Oregon hasn’t seen since voters approved assisted suicide in 1994.

“Our ballot measures haven’t been as lively in about 20 years,” Moore said. "That’s been driving huge amounts of money into the state."

Campaigns for and against the big three ballot measures 90, 91 and 92 have raked in a total of approximately $40 million in campaign contributions.

“The money is jaw dropping,” Moore said. He believes the dollars are a lot for the Beaver State, but not the rest of the country. “Unless the Supreme Court changes its rules, I think Oregon is going to join the new normal in the rest of the country.”

Full of Sound and Fury

Despite record campaign contributions, game-changing ballot measure choices and historic scandals, no one seems to think Oregon voters are going to behave any differently than they have in the past. Issues like GMOs and marijuana aren’t particularly inspiring voter turnout.

“We thought the pot measure would get Democrats to turn out,” said Tim Hibbits of marketing research firm DHM Research. “But we just aren’t seeing it on the ballots that are returning.”

Oregon’s vote by mail system creates a pretty steady stream of data to watch as ballots are gradually turned in in the weeks leading up to Nov. 4.

"I don't anticipate any huge changes in the turnout because of the GMO or Pot measures." said Tim Hibbits of marketing research firm Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall "I've looked at 60 years of elections, turnout out is almost always around 68-73 percent.”

So far the voters are on track for a 71 percent turn out. "That’s roughly what the state had in its last two-midterm elections", Moore said.

According to experts, the candidates just aren’t sexy; and even though the ballot measures are paradigm shifters, they aren't hitting any demographic directly enough to fire up voters.

“It’s hard to have a ballot measure drive voter turnout if it doesn’t target a very specific group the way a vote on labor unions, tax or same sex marriage issues does,” said Bergstein.

What’s more, voter sentiment hasn’t moved much. Most experts expect that the big players will return to office next year, with Kitzhaber and Merkley keeping their jobs and the Democrats holding onto power in both chambers in the state legislature.

The Huffington Post’s poll tracker shows U.S. Sen. Merkley leading GOP challenger Monica Wehby with 52.6 percent to 35.4 percent and Kitzhaber leading Richardson with 49.6 percent to 40.3 percent.

Current polling also indicates that the big three ballot measures could fail.

An Elway Research poll commissioned by the Oregonian and KGW was conducted on Oct 26 and 27. It estimated Measure 91 had 44 percent of voters supporting pot legalization, 46 percent against it and 7 percent undecided.

Measure 90, which would create nonpartisan primary elections, has the support of 36 percent of voters while 38 percent said they didn't support the measure and 26 percent of respondents said they're undecided.

Elway estimated 42 percent of voters supported Measure 92’s GMO labeling and 48 percent opposed it, with 7 percent undecided.

That said, Bergstein sees Measure 92, more than anything else on the ballot, as Oregon’s opportunity to stand out. He thinks if it fails it will be just another victory for big money in politics. But if it wins, Bergstein likens it to the fight against big tobacco.

“It would say, ‘Hey we turned a corner on this issue,’” Bergstein said. “Other states might follow and it would validate that one community’s view had become more mainstream.”

Oregon Election Season Was One For the History Books, Experts Say

Related Slideshow: Timeline of Cylvia Hayes’ Life and Misdeeds

Marriages

Evergreen State College

Alleged pot farm property

Bend

3EStrategies

Run for office

Kitzhaber Divorce

Kitzhaber and Hayes

Kitzhaber Reelection

Investigation by DOJ

Move into Mahonia Hall

Work for the Governor

3E Contracts with Demos

Engagement

Expose on Hayes

Confession

Investigation called for

The bank loan

Ethics Commission

Rep. Berger complaint

Former boyfriend speaks

Ethics document

Open records complaint

Opponents demand records

Kitzhaber leads polls

Hayes Speaks Out

Federal Investigation

Press Conference

Plagiarism

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