Partisanship in Jackson County, Oregon
Jackson County is reddish purple now.
I have a farm in a bright red part of Jackson County.
"Stronger together" has a better ring among people who choose to live in town than among people who live on large rural lots. COVID shutdowns seemed less appropriate among people whose work is outdoors and neighbors are far away.
I live in a neighborhood to the east of downtown Medford.
I live among prosperous retirees attracted to the nearby hospital system and golf courses. The electoral vibe of my neighborhood is the old-school "country club/chamber of commerce/Rotarian" style of Republican. A bare majority of my neighbors stay loyal to the GOP brand, even though the party has moved downscale and populist. My neighbors are educated enough to be Democrats, but many remain Republicans out of inertia and for the tax cuts.
Mix red rural Jackson County together with reddish Medford, and combine it with bright blue college town and upscale Ashland. The result is a county with a small Republican edge. The Trump vote underestimates the real partisan tilt. Trump underperformed his party in this general election.
Kevin Stine is a leader on the Medford City Council. He is a navy veteran. He is politically astute. He is a Democrat. He is active in local politics, taking a leadership role in expanding Medford parks. He is handling his nonpartisan work on the City Council well, and he was just re-elected to another term. He is widely expected to run for higher offices at some point, which is an advantage and disadvantage. It means that people have their eye on him and have liked what they see. It also means that Republicans in the local area understand that he has a promising future, so they run candidates against him, trying to nip in the bud his career in politics. So far he has overcome that.
He offers these observations about partisanship in this community.
Guest Post by Kevin Stine
What do Ted Wheeler (2012), Ron Wyden (2004, 2010, 2016), Jeff Merkley (2014), Ellen Rosenblum (2012), and Bill Bradbury (2004) have in common? They are all current or former Statewide-Democratic elected officials who won Jackson County. And as I’m sure it will be pointed out, Barack Obama won by 47 votes in 2008.
This all seems bizarre in a 2022 context, as Republicans won across the board in partisan races. As Peter Sage has pointed out, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden received 46.4% of the vote with over $9M spent across Oregon, with plenty of money reaching Jackson County. Joe Yetter, running for Congressional District 2, spent less than $100,000 total, and got 43.2% in Jackson County.
Party-line voting isn’t a new phenomenon, but it has taken hold in a way that we haven’t seen before. The national 2016 election was the first in history where every state voted for the same party for their Presidential and U.S. Senate elections. This nearly happened again in 2020, but Maine re-elected moderate Republican Susan Collins while voting for Joe Biden.
Voting trends in Jackson County show a big change away from ticket-splitting in the post-2016 world. Congressman Greg Walden (R) comfortably won Jackson County by an average of a 66%-33% margin in his 7 elections from 2004-2016. With Trump’s election in 2016, Democratic Party activism rose with the creation of groups such as Indivisible, and generally sleepy affairs like deep red CD2 received far more attention. Jamie McLeod-Skinner ran a vibrant campaign, turning a 33% margin in 2016, down to 5% in 2018.
Greg Walden retired after a long political career in 2020, and Cliff Bentz took his place. The attention of the race largely cratered, but the Democratic nominee’s percentages stayed relatively the same. Jamie received 45.1% in 2018, while the two largely penniless campaigns after her received 42.9% and 43.2% in 2020 and 2022 respectively.
The floor has been raised for Republicans as well. Since Jeff Merkley defeated Gordon Smith in 2008, the recruiting of nominees for the Republican nomination has been a disaster. Those nominees have been Jim Huffman (2010, random law professor), Monica Wehby (2014, a good candidate on paper who absolutely imploded), Mark Callahan (2016, a perennial candidate with a host of personal issues), and Jo Rae Perkins (2020 and 2022, most famous for her Q-Anon support).
The percentage of the vote each Senate Republican candidate has received in Jackson County:
2010: 45.1%2014: 42.5%
2016: 39.8%
2020: 49.1%
2022: 50.9%
I don’t believe Jo Rae Perkins had any special appeal to Republican voters here, as it’s most likely that voters didn’t know anything about her other than seeing the R next to her name. The same is true of Democratic candidates running for Congressional District 2. Party affiliation is the ballgame, now more than ever.