What if Oregon Gets That Sixth District?

Oregon is one of the closest states, at last projection, to adding a House seat (and an electoral vote). I believe the Democrats should be cheering for this outcome, and here is why.

I think this map should shake out to a 5D-1R split in a neutral year, although Republicans may be able to swing the new OR-06 in an especially good year.

OR-01 (salmon, safe Democratic)

Democratic Rep. David Wu’s district consolidates to the western Portland suburbs, Portland’s West Hills, Columbia County, and the Oregon side of the Columbia River Delta. Wu is safe now in a district that includes a lot more reddish territory. He’s safe here.

OR-02 (red, safe Republican)

Eastern Oregon will never, ever vote for a Democrat. As incumbent Republican Rep. Greg Walden, who lives in Hood River, has been drawn out of this district, I think the electorate here would be happy to elect a more conservative Republican. State Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli of John Day would be a top recruit, but really, Some Dude could win here as long as he touted his conservatism and ran on the Republican ticket.

OR-03 (green, safe Democratic

This district is basically just most of Multnomah County. Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer could get reelected here until the day he dies. After that, I’m sure this district would be happy to elect any other Democrat.

OR-04 (purple, safe Democratic)

Yes, it still includes Linn County. Yes, it retains most of Douglas County. It also includes all of Lane County, including the People’s Republic of Eugene. It also includes the most liberal parts of the Oregon Coast. Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio is safe here. If and when he retires, I like Albany Mayor Sharon Konopa to succeed him, although I have no idea if she’s interested; running on a platform of environmental conservation and responsible urban growth management in a city renowned for being a conservative island in the middle of the sapphire Willamette Valley, she stomped the chairwoman of the Linn County Republican Central Committee in a nonpartisan election last month.

OR-05 (yellow, likely Democratic)

Yamhill and Polk counties are Republican, but Benton County is Democratic, and Marion County is bluer than not, especially with the influx of Latinos along the I-5 corridor from Salem to Aurora. The district also includes southern precincts of Washington and Clackamas counties. Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader has been drawn out of this district, but Brian Clem, a Salem-area state representative who briefly was a candidate for governor this cycle, is probably in line to succeed him in any district centered on Salem. Fellow Salem-area representatives Kevin Cameron and Vicki Berger are probably the likeliest Republican entries, although I think Berger is too moderate to win in a primary. Matt Wingard, a representative from Wilsonville, could pick up support from the conservative wing of the party if he ran, but any competent Democrat would clean his clock in a district like this.

OR-06 (blue, lean Democratic)

This is the new district, and it could swing. But it includes the Democratic stronghold of Hood River County, most of blueing Clackamas County, and all of blueing Deschutes County. Not sure if it would have gone Republican this year; I believe Gov.-elect Kitzhaber narrowly lost the portions of the state included in this hypothetical district, but Sen. Wyden won it pretty handily. Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader and Republican Rep. Greg Walden have both been drawn into this district. The terrain is more familiar for Walden, but Schrader has a base in populous Clackamas County and probably an overall advantage in terms of what politics are likely to play here. If Walden wants to move next door, Chris Telfer, a Bend-area state senator, would be the Republicans’ top recruit here; if Schrader would prefer to run in OR-05, his current district, the Democrats would probably like to turn to Rick Metsger, a Mount Hood-area state senator.

This whole exercise may be entirely academic. We’ll know for sure on 21 December…

27 thoughts on “What if Oregon Gets That Sixth District?”

  2. Now maybe you’ve managed to do it, I don’t know, I’m not sure of the partisan data for your districts. I do know that Oregon already has two swing districts, OR-04 and OR-05, with CPVIs of D+2 and D+1 respectively.

    Now maybe these districts are somewhat more inclined to vote Democratic than their PVIs suggest (as indicated by November’s results) although you should tread with caution into extrapolating too much from any one Congressional race, where candidate quality and incumbency matters a lot and can be reversed at some point down the track).

    Still, if your ratings are accurate, you’ve somehow managed to shore up three out of four Democratic incumbents and created a new Democratic-leaning district. The only way that’s possible is if you’ve significantly packed OR-02 or unpacked OR-03, and that certainly seems like “excessive partisanship” to me. It doesn’t look like you have, however, and so you’re probably overestimating Democratic chances here.  

  3. I appreciate your efforts on it-very interesting.  I would like to see a 5 district standpat map.  Its seems to be that Portland Metro area has grown a bit faster then the rest of the state.

    Of course a 6th district would be a wild card in OR.  I am only familar with the last 5 sets of lines (1960 -2000) but it appears that Eastern Oregon (those counties that do not touch the Pacific ocean) have more or less been an intact district forever in this state.  That’s a geographic/community bond that could even back 100 years?  Does anyone know?

    Schrader lives in Clackmas-makes more sense to push him into Washington county/Portland area.  Then have the new seat based in Marion/Linn/Polk/Yamhill area.

    Then Dafazio would pick up balance of Josephine/Jackson plus Klamath falls.

    That seems more logical and nonpartisan to me.  That would perserve an Eastern Oregon seat and nice and compact.  It would create a seat with no incumbent that would be a fair fight.  

  4. 3 gop 3 dem in an open seat situation.  lane co. as a whole isn’t as democratic as places like washington co. or benton co., it’s about D+5, i think, and with low college turnout, it could be a problem

    marion co. is still purple.  it’s pvi is about zero., maybe D+1.  i’d make the yellow one include eugene and lose yamhill and polk.  and i don’t think greg walden’s a bad fit for the c. oregon one

  5. does redistricting.  I think there is a difference between state legislative districts and congressional.  We see quite a few states like TX OH MO where one system is used for legislative seats and another for congressional seats.

    I am doing this from memory so if I am wrong the states that are above-excuse me.

    Is there anyone more clued in on Oregon?

    Something tells me that you are absolutely correct that the Secretary of State has a huge impact on legislative seats but that the legislators do the congressional seats.  Could be wrong-could be confused.

  6. Oregon voters tend to be far more amenable to ballot-switching between the state and federal level than some other states, more comparable to New England or New York than to, say, California.

    Oregon is the most polarised state in the country, with most liberal Kerry voters and the most conservative Bush voters. This helps your case one way by suggesting that moderately Democratic districts at the Presidential level are less likely to go GOP than their PVIs would indicate. On the other hand, it hurts your case that moderates would help Democrats win districts with nominally evenish PVIs.

    Oregon actually was dominated by the Republican Party for the first half of the century, but the eventual divergence of the Democrats and Republicans over military issues (exemplified by then-Sen. Wayne Morse, actually) got the ball rolling for the Oregon Democratic Party. When Republicans took a rightward turn after then-Sens. Packwood and Hatfield retired in quick succession (for rather different reasons), Democrats roared into near-total dominance.

    That doesn’t come to close to the sorts of dominance that Southern Democrats had. State like Alabama had literally 100% Democratic representation until the 1960s, and only just lost their legislative majorities in 2010. Those states having “vestigial” legislators makes sense, a state which lost its Republican dominance at any level more than 50 years ago does not.

    As for Central Oregon, Sen. Wyden lost Deschutes County by literally 22 votes. Gordon Smith mauled him there in 1996, which was the last election in which Wyden had more than token opposition.

    Which means this isn’t helpful for finding which way a county is “trending”, any more than claiming Olympia Snowe’s recent results in a given county in Maine “proves” that the county is trending Republican.  

    Kurt Schrader would have lost. Yet he won 51-46 in a D+1 PVI district.

    If Rs can’t win the swingiest OR district in the most R year of ’10, it’s hard to see them winning any district other than Walden’s in the future.

    This is reminiscent of the excessive extrapolations of Mark Critz’s special election victory in PA-12. Sure, that district had a significant Democratic registration advantage, but other vestigially Democratic districts (e.g. in Arkansas and West Virginia) fell to the Republicans. The main lesson is that there a lot of variables (e.g. candidate quality) in a single race and so it is best to look at other data to get a better idea of a district’s competitiveness.

    And what does that data say? Well, OR-05 is not adverse to voting for national Republicans, as evidenced by voting (narrowly) for Bush twice. Nor is it adverse to voting for state-level Republicans, presumably voting for Dudley (given he lost narrowly, he almost certainly won a district four points more Republican than the state as a whole) and likely Republicans at the state legislative level given the narrow Democratic advantage there.

    So, we have the strange phenomenon that Oregonians apparently don’t mind state Republicans or federal (i.e. Presidential) Republicans, but are very averse to federal Republicans elected from the state. The evidence for this comes from one Congressional race.      

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