By Daniel Noonan
June 1, 2021
It’s a Tuesday morning in Oregon’s Capitol building and two members of the state legislature are having coffee. The two exchange pleasantries and return to their respective offices. They work right down the hall from one another and if you watched them interact, you would have no inkling that their respective parties had spent the last election cycle raising millions of dollars to defeat the other. The public saw two representatives fighting, opposed to one another, but what Joseph Erickson saw was something quite different. Erickson is a legislative aide working under Representative Lisa Reynolds. Erickson’s job is to communicate with constituents and posit strategies to help pass bills in the Oregon House of Representatives.
“You see it all the time,” Joseph Erickson said. “People from opposing sides of the aisle, people on different congresspeople’s staffs…when the campaigning ends people get along well.” Erickson didn’t name names, but he described that such scenes are common in the capital building. “It’s hard to be hostile with people that you work down the hall from,” Erickson said.
When facing the public Oregon’s representatives do bitter war under the constant pressure of needing to raise money for campaigning. These election cycles give off the impression to voters that the people that represent them are as antipathetic to one another in private as they are in public.
“To be honest I don’t know who my representative is,” Becky Warnell said. Warnell is a Sophomore Family and Human Services (FHS) major attending the University of Oregon. “I feel like republicans and democrats wouldn’t get along; they seem so opposed to one another.”
“I think people’s view of politics stops outside of the federal government,” Erickson said. “People really don’t understand what happens in local politics or what people can get done at a local level…so many of the changes that people actually experience are products of decisions that people like me have made.”
“I want to say his name is…Jeff Merkley?” Austin Murray said. Murray is a recent graduate from the sports business program at the University of Oregon. “I feel like I know nothing about my local officials.” Out of 17 students interviewed on the University of Oregon campus, there were only two that knew who their elected official was.
“Sharon Meieran represents my district,” Jillian Phillips said. Phillips is a Junior FHS major. “It’s a shame that I’m one of the only people but I’m not surprised. It’s not as if local politics gets any news coverage.”
“Pam Marsh is her name,” Navon Encarnacion said. “I remember bubbling her name in on the ballot.” Encarnacion is a Junior and a Chinese major at the University of Oregon. “It makes sense to me that no one knows who their local representatives are. I’d bet some of them didn’t vote in the general.”
Those who didn’t know their representative cited a lack of education on the matter.
“I don’t think I’ve seen any coverage of a local election,” Sam Inada said. “I couldn’t even tell you when they get elected.” Sam Inada is a Junior and a computer science major.
As Erickson describes it, once the members of Oregon’s legislature are done waging their wars of words and funds, they come back together in the capitol to get to work in unison. In between the public and the private are the decisions that our officials make. The public gets to see what legislation gets passed but is oblivious to why and how.
“Most bills get passed easily with bipartisan support,” Erickson said. “Every career politician has their own pet project and for the most part the bills that we pass involve small projects that cost a relatively small amount of money.”
General public ignorance of the inner workings of local government doesn’t seem to be contributing to any lethargy in the capital – at least when it comes to the smaller projects. In the same way that harmony is abandoned when election season comes around when the stakes are increased all civility goes out the window. Erickson’s descriptions paint the picture of a clean and highly functioning lab of democracy. Democrats and Republicans able to find common ground, able to compartmentalize the venom of the campaign when it comes time to run the state. However, Erickson insists that “the system is broken.”
“In so many ways we are different but the same,” Erickson said. “But when it comes time to deal with the partisan issues that would be considered charged in the larger political climate, things start to fall apart.” In February of this year when the Oregon legislature came into session the republican coalition walked out of the building citing concerns over the governor’s COVID-19 policy. 2021 is the third year in the row that the republican delegation has walked out during the session to prevent democratic legislation from getting passed. Despite having a supermajority, the Democrats are unable to take advantage because the Republicans abuse the rules of quorum.
“I think this is a great example of the so-called urban rural divide,” Erickson said. “Voters in these rural senators and representative’s districts love seeing them walk about. It’s like they feel as though their elected official is sticking it to the liberal elite.”
It appears to be impossible to pin down exactly what local politics are like. One moment our officials are in heated political campaigns leveeing huge sums of money and time to bury their opponents and the next they’re enjoying each other’s company with a warm Styrofoam cup of coffee. Then suddenly the coffee has soured and the seeming respect they shared goes out the window. If our politicians are loyal to anything it’s themselves and the dissonance of local politics make it hard to discern anything past that.