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‘Failure of Leadership’: Oregon’s Lifelong Democrats Explain Why They’re Voting GOP

‘Failure of Leadership’: Oregon’s Lifelong Democrats Explain Why They’re Voting GOP

“It’s single-party control. Things are going downhill: inflation, crime, homelessness, addiction, overdoses. Here in Oregon, look outside—you see the homelessness, people dying in the streets from overdoses, people having psychotic breaks. It’s in shambles right now. It wasn’t always like this.”

Oregon has been a mess for years. Democrats have controlled the governor’s mansion for over 40 years and the legislature for 15 years.

2022 might be the year everything changes, thanks to some lifelong Democrats who are ready to vote Republican.

Yes, the Democrats will vote for pro-life, 2nd Amendment advocate Christine Drazan. We have been covering her rise in the race, and the hippie state wants to vote for Drazan instead of Democrat Tina Kotek and Independent Betsy Johnson.

Johnson is taking more Democrat votes than Republican votes, 17% to 9%.

Documentarian Leighton Woodhouse spoke to some of those Democrats who live in floating houses on the Columbia River for Bari Weiss’s Substack Common Sense.

The homes aren’t floating down the river. But they are literally over the river. It actually looks pretty cool.

Linda Donewald moved to Oregon from Phoenix because her husband wanted to live on the river. Plus, Portland offered a vibrant atmosphere. Donewald now describes Portland as a “war zone.”

Oregon voters have homelessness as their top issue, especially in Portland.

The homeless encampments started years before the riots after George Floyd’s death in 2020. One homeboat community saw the city’s largest homeless encampment right across from them:

Until recently, the city’s biggest homeless encampment stood just across the street from the floating-homes community, in what’s called the Big Four Corners Natural Area. The camp was founded in 2018 by homeless activists on a protected wetlands site. They used to call it the Village of Hope.

By 2020, hundreds of people were living in the Village of Hope, and crime was rampant. Houseboat community residents started finding their car windows smashed in. Thieves stole their catalytic converters, and then their cars. On one occasion, a resident returned to his floating home to find someone in his bathroom taking a shower.

“We considered hiring a nightly foot patrol, but it was too expensive,” said Denise Olson, another floating home resident. “We felt terrorized.”

The community needed to do its own foot patrol because the authorities found it too dangerous for them to do anything.

Residents told Woodhouse they regularly hear gunfire. They “could smell the paint thinner-like odor of meth labs in the encampment, which burst into flames on several occasions.”

The homeless stole neighborhood dogs for ransom. A person admitted the camps have deceased residents “buried in the site’s marshy ground.”

Government agencies ignore the residents or suggest ludicrous ideas:

Residents said they got bounced from one unresponsive government agency to the next, until they finally got a meeting with an aide to their state representative, Democrat Zach Hudson, Olson told me.

The aide told the houseboat owners that their homeless neighbors “just need a hand-up.” She suggested they organize a barbecue for the homeless. A barbecue?! The houseboat owners were stunned.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said Donewald, who, with Olson, created a neighborhood security committee. “There’s been a failure of leadership.”

Portland leaders started planning a ban on homeless campouts last month. But it’s probably too late. Mayor Ted Wheeler describes the issue as “public camping.” He wants to establish them in “large city-sanctioned camps.”

The voters also care about drugs and crime, which have connections to the homeless encampments:

The murder rate is surging in Portland, especially among those living on the street. In a recent survey of Portland residents, 84% of those polled said they felt unsafe downtown at night, and 61% felt the same way during the day. Eighty-two percent want more police in the city.

Drug addiction is as bad as ever. “There is no evidence that Measure 110 has reduced drug use, drug-related crime, or overdose in the state,” Keith Humphreys, a psychologist who specializes in addiction and served as a senior advisor in the Obama administration, told me, referring to a progressive 2020 initiative that decriminalized drug possession. Meanwhile, Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel is active in “every corner of the state”, as The Oregonian puts it. (Police in Eugene recently seized 18 pounds of fentanyl in a single traffic stop, enough to kill most of the state of Oregon.)

The floating home community is at its wit’s end, but you can also see the effects in population stats.

Portland’s population is shrinking “for the first time in over a decade.” Young people are fleeing the city:

And, for the first time in over a decade, Portland is shrinking, with young adults leaving in particularly large numbers: between 2020 and 2021, the county that includes Portland had a net loss of more than 4,000 residents between the ages of 25 and 29. Oregon as a whole has experienced one of the biggest slowdowns in population growth in the country.

Angela Renteria has lived in Portland for a long time and used to work downtown. She told Woodhouse she “watched Portland ‘completely turn to shit.'” Literally:

“The biggest thing to me, though—the most off-putting thing, is open defecation,” she said. “I’m walking down the street with my kids going to a bookstore, and someone is squatted on the sidewalk taking a sh*t.”

Renteria said, “she’s accosted” every time she goes outside to smoke a cigarette. When she tells a homeless person she won’t give them a cigarette, “they call her a ‘F*cking bitch.'”

Renteria also saw the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, which caused her bosses to close her bank’s branch. They told the employees “to lock yourselves in the vault” if the riots got out of control.

The whole time Renteria saw “maybe two police cars the whole time. I saw ambulances, fire trucks, but no cops. They just let them do their thing.”

A poll by The Oregonian/OregonLive showed that 81% of Portland-area voters believe the protest “did more harm than good to Portland’s image.”

A “union guy” who wants to stay anonymous will vote for Drazan after “nearly every vote he’s ever cast has been for Democrats.'” He brought up the “stunning amount of violence from Antifa.”

Diana Sapera doesn’t “feel comfortable” taking her kids downtown. The chaos makes them scared, and they witness “grown adults yelling, hitting things, throwing things.” They ask Sapera about the needles on the ground.

“It feels like night and day even just this year,” explained Sapera.

The longtime Democrat voted for Drazan.

George Carillo, Sapera’s husband, feels the same way and supports Drazan:

“It’s single-party control,” he told me. “Things are going downhill: inflation, crime, homelessness, addiction, overdoses. Here in Oregon, look outside—you see the homelessness, people dying in the streets from overdoses, people having psychotic breaks. It’s in shambles right now. It wasn’t always like this.”

Carillo became so frustrated with the status quo in Oregon that he ran for office for the first time in his life in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. After dropping out, instead of going with his party’s nominee, he threw his support behind Christine Drazan.

The Democrats better change if they want the people to come back after 2022:

“The Republican Party has almost nothing to offer me,” the unnamed “union guy” told me. He described himself as a “1960s Civil Rights type,” the kind of person who believes that “the best way to end discrimination is to end discrimination.” In 2016, he voted for Bernie Sanders. Now, he said, the Democrats are all about dividing the world into victims and oppressors. “It seems to be their goal,” he said. “They want more division.”

The Cook Political Report moved the race to toss up in September.

RealClearPolitics rates the Oregon gubernatorial race as a toss-up but projects a GOP pick-up. The data is insane and favors Drazan:

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Comments

Keep watching. If I remember correctly, Oregon has state-wide cheat-by-mail and they mail out the ballots without request. This will be stolen.

I wish Christine the best. IF she wins I believe she has a legislature that would make Stalin’s Duma look like a meeting of CPAC, so whether or not she can actually accomplish anything remains to be seen, but good luck.

In other news, Oregon is 100% mail-in ballots so the fraud factor is enormous. I wouldn’t be surprized to see 81 million Democrat votes in Oregon alone. But hey, I’m a cynic.

AND, just for commentary, people in Portland deserve all they are getting and lots and lots more of it. They elected and reelected and reelected the people who made the policies that led to the shithole you’re living in. Personally, you deserve much more of it, I just wish we could block the exits when the [sh]itty finally burns to the ground. I’ll happily contribute salt to salt the earth when the fire goes out.

    Gosport in reply to mbecker908. | November 3, 2022 at 2:05 pm

    If she can’t do anything else she can veto much of the stupidity the legislature produces. They might still over-ride her but someone will have at least put a speed bump in their previously rampant and unfettered destruction of society.

    Oh, and there are always Executive Orders and “declarations of emergency” to clout them with. You could sell tickets to watch the left’s reaction to their tactics being used against them.

Oregon supported these policies in the past. Is there a problem. /s Best of luck to you folks living there. We’ll see if you can vote your way out of Socialism.

“The Republican Party has almost nothing to offer me,” the unnamed “union guy” told me. He described himself as a “1960s Civil Rights type,” the kind of person who believes that “the best way to end discrimination is to end discrimination.”

A, immediately followed by not-A.

The problem here is obvious: he watches CNN/MSDNC.

    Dimsdale in reply to henrybowman. | November 2, 2022 at 7:44 pm

    My Mass Teachers Association (MTA) union sent out its voter guide. Guess what? Recommend Dems across the board. Surprise.

    I use their guide as a sure way to know how NOT to vote. The are especially pimping Proposition 4 (illegal driver licenses), and Prop 1, the “fair share” tax on the rich (making over $1million). It is accompanied by the usual pictures of millionaires etc.

    What it doesn’t tell you is that the sale of home and businesses will also get caught in this. But it’s “fair.” Allegedly up to $2billion for “roads, bridges and schools,” but no stipulation that that is what the money must be used for. We can trust the pols, can’t we?

    Did I mention that the state has a tax surplus?

I’m-a recycle a comment from last year:

Watching Democrats artistically ruin a state while they attempt to govern it is like watching an Ethiopian podcast of Pimp My Jalopy.

I’m a 5th generation Oregonian and the entire state can just go to hell. I will never go back.

    Oregon Mike in reply to Sanddog. | November 2, 2022 at 9:35 pm

    Hey, Sanddog, wait a minute. Don’t condemn us east of the Cascade types (those of us lucky enough not to live in Bend)! My county was 73.0% for Trump vs. 24.6% for Biden. There’s not much we can do with Portland being the big tail wagging the dog.

Interview Rajee Kumar Doopall, the wife of Sanjiv Vita Doopall who were both imported to Portland a decade ago and is now a naturalized citizen…. yeah she and all her hate mongering dotted friends will vote exactly the same because PDX looks exactly like the hell hole they came from… and how many conservatives do you see getting elected there?

I went to school with all of them. I have been to their houses and I’ve had to listen to their close minded diatribes.

Portland will vote exactly the same.

Secede from Oregon? ‘Greater Idaho’ is on the ballot in two more counties. Many rural Oregonians fed up with the state’s liberal politics want to move to Idaho — or rather, move Idaho to them.

The Greater Idaho movement proposes redrawing Oregon’s borders so that about two-thirds of the Beaver State’s land mass becomes part of neighboring Idaho. The movement has already gained support from nine counties in Eastern Oregon, and two more will vote on whether they want lawmakers to work on the logistics of moving the border.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/secede-from-oregon-greater-idaho-is-on-the-ballot-in-two-more-counties/ar-AA13bD7y

Sure, if the riots around the bank get too bad lock yourselves into the vault. That way, if they set fire to the bank your troubles will be over.

I left Oregon three years ago. Many of my friends still there tell me I did the right move. Oregon is run by the people in Eugene north to Portland and they don’t give a crap about the other state residents. A prime example of failed progressive policies.

BierceAmbrose | November 3, 2022 at 1:47 pm

“Secede from Oregon?”

I still don’t get why federal law prevents part of one state from switching to be part of another state. Does this count as “formation” of a new state? That seems a stretch.

As a thought experiment, I wonder what protocols more like “You wanna keep em, make em wanna stay.” would be like.

— Move in units of subordinate jurisdiction as they stand: a county, for example. (The mere term “subordinate jurisdiction” makes me cringe, but…)

— Geographically contiguous with the move-to state. Flip where a border county rolls-up.

— Approval by the go-to state. “Yeah, we’ll take you.”

— No approval required from the state being left.

— The whole guns n bombs, extortion and invasion thing is off the table. How different would Europe be right now if the EU and Russian Federation had to bid for territories to stay because it’s good for them? You don’t need occupying tanks if they think your rule is good for them. And a wall that faces in tells you where people are trying to get *to* and more telling *from.*

Say goodbye to the Republic. If it took this long and that much abuse for those mind numb robots to seek an alternative to the left, the US is done. Time for secession.