Speech to the Republican Central Committee
Delivered by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
December 9, 2002, Barr’s Café, Prineville
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Crook County Republican Central Committee. Chairman Ted, Vice Chairman, Dave, I congratulate you on your election, and I wish you well in building a strong, central organization to help ensure that Republicans are elected and most importantly, re-elected, within Crook County, Oregon and the nation.
I have always been a Republican. Like many people, I started out as a Republican because my parents were Republicans, but later in life I came to embrace the ideals of the Republican party when I realized that those ideals were my ideals, and that no other party label quite fits my own views of the political landscape.
My political icon, like the icon of many Republicans, is President Ronald Reagan. Even though I’m supposed to be part of one of the Generations that rejects the establishment and is in love with tree huggers and more government, I belong to a tiny little demographic niche that somehow escaped the politics of Berkeley, Boulder and Eugene and embraced instead traditional values and an appreciation for conservative political philosophy.
Friends younger than me—the type who wear all black and despair about the state of the world--call me a foolish optimist, but I really do buy into the philosophy that the former President expressed in 1992, when he told the Republican National Convention:
“… the United States is unique because we are an empire of ideals. For two hundred years we have been set apart by our faith in the ideals of democracy, of free men and free markets, and of the extraordinary possibilities that lie within seemingly ordinary men and women. We believe that no power of government is as formidable a force for good as the creativity and entrepreneurial drive of the American people.”
I think it’s a wonderful creed, and its because of that fundamental belief in the power of individuals, not governments, that I embrace Republican ideas and Republican ideals, and I look forward to working with you, my fellow Republican, to bring that same sense of idealism to Crook County.
So thank you for your good efforts to this point, and now let’s turn our attention to the state of the party in Crook County, such as it is.
In the 2002 General Election in November:
47 percent of voters were Republican
37 percent were Democrat
15 percent belonged to another party or were not affiliated with any party.
About 70 percent of voters of all parties cast ballots in the last election.
In terms of registration, there are 4,518 Republican voters in Crook County, compared to 3652 Democrats and 2,280 other.
In percentage terms, the county has:
A slightly Republican majority, with 43 percent
Followed closely by Democrats with 35 percent of registered voters
And 22 percent of voters not affiliated with a major party.
The vast majority of voters in other parties is accounted for by Independents., who account for 1905 or 84 percent of the 2280 voters not registered in one of the mainstream parties. Independents are notable chiefly because in Oregon they do not automatically receive a primary ballot and therefore they have little influence over primary elections.
Under state party rules, Independents have been allowed to request Democratic party primary ballots in previous years. Independents are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary.
In terms of which parties members are most likely to vote, the last election indicates that Republicans are slightly more likely to vote than Democrats. Nearly 76 percent of Republicans turned out, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. Non-affiliated voters lagged far behind at approximately 53 percent.
By not returning ballots, Republican voters left 1,100 votes on the table, while Democrats left 923 votes uncast. By not showing up at the polls, non-affiliated voters threw away almost as many votes as Republicans, with 1024.
Could a “get out the vote campaign” have made a difference? Probably not in this previous race. The only races where the margin was close enough to be affected by a higher turnout were the state representatives race (386 votes) and a handful of countywide votes on a couple of the initiatives. However, in the overall scheme of things, a change in Crook County’s votes would not likely have influence the outcome of any race.
So where are these Crook County Republicans?
A quick look at the precinct map reveals a fascinating division.
Prineville itself has a sort of North-South thing going on. Essentially, the county’s majority-Democrat precincts can be found south of Laughlin Road to the county border, taking in most of the city limits and the county’s largest precinct, which extends from Lynn Blvd. south between Main Street and Juniper Canyon to the border.
43 percent of the county’s Democrats live in these seven precincts, with the rest scattered throughout the county.
There is an obvious advantage to Democrats of this make-up. Because the Democratic stronghold precincts are mainly in the city limits, with most households placed on the city’s old street grid, canvassing from household to household can be an effective strategy. Basically, the Democrat that wants to find the majority of his party needs only to take a couple of weekends and walk Prineville with brochures and lawn signs. Additionally, Democratic households dominate all the main transportation routes which pass through the city, especially the all-important highway 26, meaning that in a battle of campaign signs, Republicans have the disadvantage.
Looking at the distribution of registered Republicans, however, it is interesting that the party in some ways is even more concentrated than Democrats. Just five precincts account for fifty six (56) percent of the registered Republicans in the county. The largest concentration of Republicans is in precinct 11, Powell Butte, followed by 17, the Juniper Canyon area, 4, the area outside Prineville north and east of Barnes Butte Road, 4, West Hills and 15, Paulina Highway.
An obvious strategy for any Republican running on a limited budget is to reach out to voters in these areas. The downside is that, taken together, these areas of the county form an enormous land mass with few central gathering points where voters can be reached. Probably the most effective means of reaching these voters is to concentrate a door to door campaign in Powell Butte and rely heavily on direct mail and telephone to reach the rest of the precinct. The downside of this strategy is, of course, that it is most expensive way to campaign. However, until the geographic distribution of the party changes, that’s probably the facts we are stuck with.
Now all of this strategizing to date is based on the assumption that voters favor their party’s candidates and vote for them. But is that really true?
To find out, I ran an analysis on three races in the general election. I compared the number of registered voters in the Republican and Democratic parties in each precinct with the number of vote cast for the individual parties’ candidates in three tight contested races.
I chose the governor’s race, pitting Kevin Mannix against Ted Kulongoski, the U.S. Senate race, pitting Gordon Smith against Bill Bradbury and the Oregon House race, pitting George Gilman against Karole Stockton. I did not run the numbers on the House of Representatives race pitting Greg Walden against Peter Buckly, because Walden’s victory was so lopsided he might as well have been running unopposed.
After crunching the numbers, I developed a ratio of votes over registered voters of the candidate’s party. In order to earn a score of at least 1.0, a candidate had to either pull all of his or her parties votes in a given precinct or pull enough votes from independents and Democacts to make up the loss of any votes from his or her own party.
This analysis tells me two things: which precincts are likely to demonstrate the most party loyalty and which candidates are most attractive to Crook County voters.
The chart tells me that Republicans did a much better job than Democrats in retaining their own parties’ votes while drawing from independents and Democrats as well. Voters in precincts 14, 3, 13 and 8 were most loyal to Republican candidates. That’s particularly notable because of those, three are predominantly Democratic precincts, indicating that our candidates did extradorinarily well in not only retaining their own parties votes but in appealing to non-Republican voters as well. In future campaigns, it would be wise for the party to consider focusing some special effort on these precincts.
As they did statewide, Democrats weren’t particularly kind to their own candidates. Karole Stockton was the only candidate in Crook County to make any inroads with the opposite party, probably reflecting the advantages of being local. In terms of precinct loyalty, Democrats lost votes to Republicans almost everywhere. The only place they held on to their own, appears to have been Ochoco Heights, and since the Republican “loyalty ratio” is about the same as the Democrats, I am assuming the swing comes mostly from Independent voters. The chart makes it pretty obvious that the Democrats need help in hanging on to their own. Do you suppose that’s why the pundits post-election comments about Democrats was that “They form their firing squads in circles?”
OK, to sum up:
The last election shows an excellent base on which Republicans can build. We have a majority of the county’s voters. We tend to enjoy a greater degree of loyalty among our voters and our candidates seems to be better accepted by Independents and Democrats.
On the downside, our strongholds are more disbursed, and traditional Crook County campaign strategies of “stick some signs along Third Street and call it good” are probably not the most effective way to connect with and energize our base. Our candidates, if they are going to be successful, must position themselves as moderates, and our state platform needs to reflect that. We can’t win any election without bringing along some Independents, so we may want to think about ways to bring them into our fold early, possibly by opening our primary in order to encourage independent voters to bond them to Republican candidates.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you. I am delighted to be with you, and I’m delighted at the efforts you are making to revitalize the party. I look forward to working with you in months ahead, and wish you the best of luck in building a really great party in Crook County.
December 9, 2002, Barr’s Café, Prineville
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Crook County Republican Central Committee. Chairman Ted, Vice Chairman, Dave, I congratulate you on your election, and I wish you well in building a strong, central organization to help ensure that Republicans are elected and most importantly, re-elected, within Crook County, Oregon and the nation.
I have always been a Republican. Like many people, I started out as a Republican because my parents were Republicans, but later in life I came to embrace the ideals of the Republican party when I realized that those ideals were my ideals, and that no other party label quite fits my own views of the political landscape.
My political icon, like the icon of many Republicans, is President Ronald Reagan. Even though I’m supposed to be part of one of the Generations that rejects the establishment and is in love with tree huggers and more government, I belong to a tiny little demographic niche that somehow escaped the politics of Berkeley, Boulder and Eugene and embraced instead traditional values and an appreciation for conservative political philosophy.
Friends younger than me—the type who wear all black and despair about the state of the world--call me a foolish optimist, but I really do buy into the philosophy that the former President expressed in 1992, when he told the Republican National Convention:
“… the United States is unique because we are an empire of ideals. For two hundred years we have been set apart by our faith in the ideals of democracy, of free men and free markets, and of the extraordinary possibilities that lie within seemingly ordinary men and women. We believe that no power of government is as formidable a force for good as the creativity and entrepreneurial drive of the American people.”
I think it’s a wonderful creed, and its because of that fundamental belief in the power of individuals, not governments, that I embrace Republican ideas and Republican ideals, and I look forward to working with you, my fellow Republican, to bring that same sense of idealism to Crook County.
So thank you for your good efforts to this point, and now let’s turn our attention to the state of the party in Crook County, such as it is.
In the 2002 General Election in November:
47 percent of voters were Republican
37 percent were Democrat
15 percent belonged to another party or were not affiliated with any party.
About 70 percent of voters of all parties cast ballots in the last election.
In terms of registration, there are 4,518 Republican voters in Crook County, compared to 3652 Democrats and 2,280 other.
In percentage terms, the county has:
A slightly Republican majority, with 43 percent
Followed closely by Democrats with 35 percent of registered voters
And 22 percent of voters not affiliated with a major party.
The vast majority of voters in other parties is accounted for by Independents., who account for 1905 or 84 percent of the 2280 voters not registered in one of the mainstream parties. Independents are notable chiefly because in Oregon they do not automatically receive a primary ballot and therefore they have little influence over primary elections.
Under state party rules, Independents have been allowed to request Democratic party primary ballots in previous years. Independents are not allowed to vote in the Republican primary.
In terms of which parties members are most likely to vote, the last election indicates that Republicans are slightly more likely to vote than Democrats. Nearly 76 percent of Republicans turned out, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. Non-affiliated voters lagged far behind at approximately 53 percent.
By not returning ballots, Republican voters left 1,100 votes on the table, while Democrats left 923 votes uncast. By not showing up at the polls, non-affiliated voters threw away almost as many votes as Republicans, with 1024.
Could a “get out the vote campaign” have made a difference? Probably not in this previous race. The only races where the margin was close enough to be affected by a higher turnout were the state representatives race (386 votes) and a handful of countywide votes on a couple of the initiatives. However, in the overall scheme of things, a change in Crook County’s votes would not likely have influence the outcome of any race.
So where are these Crook County Republicans?
A quick look at the precinct map reveals a fascinating division.
Prineville itself has a sort of North-South thing going on. Essentially, the county’s majority-Democrat precincts can be found south of Laughlin Road to the county border, taking in most of the city limits and the county’s largest precinct, which extends from Lynn Blvd. south between Main Street and Juniper Canyon to the border.
43 percent of the county’s Democrats live in these seven precincts, with the rest scattered throughout the county.
There is an obvious advantage to Democrats of this make-up. Because the Democratic stronghold precincts are mainly in the city limits, with most households placed on the city’s old street grid, canvassing from household to household can be an effective strategy. Basically, the Democrat that wants to find the majority of his party needs only to take a couple of weekends and walk Prineville with brochures and lawn signs. Additionally, Democratic households dominate all the main transportation routes which pass through the city, especially the all-important highway 26, meaning that in a battle of campaign signs, Republicans have the disadvantage.
Looking at the distribution of registered Republicans, however, it is interesting that the party in some ways is even more concentrated than Democrats. Just five precincts account for fifty six (56) percent of the registered Republicans in the county. The largest concentration of Republicans is in precinct 11, Powell Butte, followed by 17, the Juniper Canyon area, 4, the area outside Prineville north and east of Barnes Butte Road, 4, West Hills and 15, Paulina Highway.
An obvious strategy for any Republican running on a limited budget is to reach out to voters in these areas. The downside is that, taken together, these areas of the county form an enormous land mass with few central gathering points where voters can be reached. Probably the most effective means of reaching these voters is to concentrate a door to door campaign in Powell Butte and rely heavily on direct mail and telephone to reach the rest of the precinct. The downside of this strategy is, of course, that it is most expensive way to campaign. However, until the geographic distribution of the party changes, that’s probably the facts we are stuck with.
Now all of this strategizing to date is based on the assumption that voters favor their party’s candidates and vote for them. But is that really true?
To find out, I ran an analysis on three races in the general election. I compared the number of registered voters in the Republican and Democratic parties in each precinct with the number of vote cast for the individual parties’ candidates in three tight contested races.
I chose the governor’s race, pitting Kevin Mannix against Ted Kulongoski, the U.S. Senate race, pitting Gordon Smith against Bill Bradbury and the Oregon House race, pitting George Gilman against Karole Stockton. I did not run the numbers on the House of Representatives race pitting Greg Walden against Peter Buckly, because Walden’s victory was so lopsided he might as well have been running unopposed.
After crunching the numbers, I developed a ratio of votes over registered voters of the candidate’s party. In order to earn a score of at least 1.0, a candidate had to either pull all of his or her parties votes in a given precinct or pull enough votes from independents and Democacts to make up the loss of any votes from his or her own party.
This analysis tells me two things: which precincts are likely to demonstrate the most party loyalty and which candidates are most attractive to Crook County voters.
The chart tells me that Republicans did a much better job than Democrats in retaining their own parties’ votes while drawing from independents and Democrats as well. Voters in precincts 14, 3, 13 and 8 were most loyal to Republican candidates. That’s particularly notable because of those, three are predominantly Democratic precincts, indicating that our candidates did extradorinarily well in not only retaining their own parties votes but in appealing to non-Republican voters as well. In future campaigns, it would be wise for the party to consider focusing some special effort on these precincts.
As they did statewide, Democrats weren’t particularly kind to their own candidates. Karole Stockton was the only candidate in Crook County to make any inroads with the opposite party, probably reflecting the advantages of being local. In terms of precinct loyalty, Democrats lost votes to Republicans almost everywhere. The only place they held on to their own, appears to have been Ochoco Heights, and since the Republican “loyalty ratio” is about the same as the Democrats, I am assuming the swing comes mostly from Independent voters. The chart makes it pretty obvious that the Democrats need help in hanging on to their own. Do you suppose that’s why the pundits post-election comments about Democrats was that “They form their firing squads in circles?”
OK, to sum up:
The last election shows an excellent base on which Republicans can build. We have a majority of the county’s voters. We tend to enjoy a greater degree of loyalty among our voters and our candidates seems to be better accepted by Independents and Democrats.
On the downside, our strongholds are more disbursed, and traditional Crook County campaign strategies of “stick some signs along Third Street and call it good” are probably not the most effective way to connect with and energize our base. Our candidates, if they are going to be successful, must position themselves as moderates, and our state platform needs to reflect that. We can’t win any election without bringing along some Independents, so we may want to think about ways to bring them into our fold early, possibly by opening our primary in order to encourage independent voters to bond them to Republican candidates.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this information with you. I am delighted to be with you, and I’m delighted at the efforts you are making to revitalize the party. I look forward to working with you in months ahead, and wish you the best of luck in building a really great party in Crook County.
posted by Scott Cooper | 11:02 AM
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