From The Heart, The Mouth Speaketh

Commentaries of a two-bit local politician and sometimes journalistic hack

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Location: Prineville, Oregon, United States

Scott Cooper lives in a small town in Oregon. While mostly a history buff, he can be convinced to read literature, fiction and just about anything else.

Thursday, April 03, 2003

Speech To The Democratic Central Committee

Speech to the Democratic Central Committee
Delivered By Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
April 3, 2003, Sandwich Factory, Prineville, Oregon

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Crook County Democratic Central Committee. It seems somewhat odd to be here, given my own long-time affiliation with the Republican, but at the same time I am glad for the opportunity because I believe strongly in the value of a partisan system, and I the people are best served when both parties are well-organized. It is through strong party voices that we ensure that opposing views and options are clearly laid out for the electorate. That’s how we make elections meaningful for all citizens, regardless of which party ultimately prevails.
Thank you, too, for being here tonight. The job of a party organizer is not one of the preferred jobs in the county. It’s very hard work to run a good campaign, and your willingness to help ensure someone’s election speaks highly of your commitment to your community. Without volunteers such as yourselves, elections would not be possible. With good volunteers, anything is possible. Now, with kudos handed out, 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.

In terms of which parties members are most likely to vote, the last election indicates that Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to turn out and vote. Nearly 76 percent of Republicans turned out, compared to 75 percent of Democrats in the November election. 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 the Republicans, with 1024.

Could a “get out the vote campaign” have made a difference? Maybe. In the race for state representative between Karole Stockton and George Gilman, Stockton missed the opportunity to win the general election in Crook County by a mere 386 votes. While that would not have been a sufficient number to carry the race for her districtwide, it certainly would have been nice to see Karole carry her home county.

So where are these Crook County Democrats?

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 is a very effective strategy for you. 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. And, 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, Democrats have the advantage.

All of this strategizing, of course, 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.

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 to work on hanging on to their own.

The most obvious precincts to work on, other than the Heights include 1 (Central City), 4 (Lone Pine), 7 (NE County), and 11 (east county). Obviously, with the exception of 7, which has only 33 registered Democrats, efforts should likely be made in any future election to strengthen Democratic turnout in these key precincts.

The bad news is that even if you held on to every Democrat in a majority-Democrat precinct and you achieved 100 percent turnout, you would still have only have only 1283 votes. If every Democractic voter in the county had voted a straight ticket in the General Election in November, you would have had 2729. In order to win any two-candidate election in November 2002, a candidate needed 3674 votes, so you’re at least 1,000 votes short.

That’s about how many non-affiliated voters cast ballots in the November Election. In order to win future elections in Crook County, Democrats must do three things:

Strengthen loyalty to you own party;
Reach out to non-affiliated voters; and
Somehow, appeal to enough Republican voters to cross party lines and vote for attractive Democratic candidates.
To do this is going to require some serious thinking by Democrats about how best to position themselves. Given the need to pull Republican votes and given Republican values, extremist candidates are not likely to win. Moderates and centrists who can appeal to Republicans uncomfortable with their party’s social agenda and can appeal to Independents by taking more conservative fiscal approaches probably have the best chance of prevailing in a Crook County election.

You also need to think about get-out-the vote efforts, possibly opening your primary to Independents, and registration drives.

Strategies such as these are time honored, and present the best opportunity to ensure the continuation of balanced political representation in Crook County. Good luck to you.

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