Nature of Oregon politics has shifted, analyst says

Floyd McKay: Environment consensus gives way to discord on social and economic issues.

Protecting Oregons natural environment through landmark legislation a few decades ago was not as challenging politically as resolving economic and social differences today, a longtime observer of Oregon politics says.

Floyd McKay, former reporter and news analyst for Portland television station KGW, made the comment at the Friday Forum of the City Club of Portland.

McKay spoke about his new book, Reporting the Oregon Story: How Activists and Visionaries Transformed a State, before joining a panel discussion moderated by KGW anchor Tracy Barry.

McKays newspaper and TV career spanned 1964 through 1986, when Oregon protected its coastal beaches and the Columbia Gorge, imposed deposits for recycling bottles and cans, and separated farms and forests from urban development. The landmark measures are collectively known as the Oregon Story.

During the same era, Portland turned back plans for a Mount Hood Freeway and laid the foundation for the city it is today.

We faced common threats, and we could work together, McKay said. All of these changes affected everyone who lived in a given neighborhood, town or this state. There was no partisanship in pollution or in running a freeway through a residential area.

But he said todays social issues involve gender, immigration, race and religion.

They are full of passion and anger, McKay said. It is much harder to negotiate a hot-button issue than the issues we typically negotiated in the 1960s and 1970s.

Oregons environmental measures also relied on legislators to pass them and agencies to carry them out, McKay said, on the cusp of President Ronald Reagans 1981 inaugural declaration that government is the problem.

This epitomized almost the exact opposite of what we were doing in Oregon, because we had used government to accomplish these community goals, he said.

The political rise of Reagan split the parties, with Democrats maintaining a more positive role for government and Republicans more critical of it.

Oregon has sided with the Democratic presidential nominee seven straight times since Reagans presidency in the 1980s. Though Republicans have had majorities in the House (16 years) and the Senate (8 years) since then, no Republican has been governor in the past 30 years.

One of the reasons things worked in the Oregon Story was because we had two strong parties, McKay said. I think one-party control of a state is not a great idea, regardless of which party it is.

After a two-year stint on the staff of Gov. Neil Goldschmidt  a former Portland mayor who reshaped the city in the 1970s  McKay left Oregon and ended up as a journalism professor at Western Washington University. He lives in Bellingham, Wash., but has family in Portland.

Other reasons for discord

In addition to changing issues, McKay and two Democratic state representatives from Portland assessed the current state of Oregon politics and government.

Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer, appointed to the House in 2011, said while McKays book depicts great Oregon milestones, it also details a lot of the infighting within and between the major political parties, so that it was less of a golden age for politics than many believe.

She also said todays lawmakers have to confront issues of climate change and economic disparities not faced by their predecessors – and that Oregon has done relatively well.

Rep. Lew Frederick, a one-time colleague of McKays at KGW who was appointed to the House in 2009, said relationships between Democrats and Republicans are better than they are usually portrayed in news media  especially TV  that increasingly focus on conflict.

What you see is only the times when the extremes are talked about, Frederick said.

Frederick also said overall government coverage by major news organizations, particularly commercial TV, is scarce  unless there is an unusual angle to the story.

Moderator Tracy Barry said there are other ways the public can learn about what goes on in the Legislature and state government. But resources being what they are, I dont see any great change coming.

But Barry drew protests when she made an unfavorable comparison between Oregons successful opposition to destroying nerve gas at the Umatilla Army Depot in 1969  the federal government backed down  and Oregons failure to stop oil-train shipments after the June 3 derailment east of Hood River.

Rep. Barbara Smith Warner of Portland had introduced a bill to strengthen regulation of rail shipments of oil and other hazardous materials in 2015, but Union Pacific opposed it. The bill was changed to require response planning for incidents.

Keny-Guyer said its difficult for state legislators to step in when federal rules preempt states.

McKay said based on his observations in Washington state, citizen activists have been effective in persuading officials to reject most proposed rail-to-marine oil terminals – although one project is pending at the Port of Vancouver.

Among the younger generations of millennials and Gen-Xers, there is enormous interest, he said. I just hope they do not flame out.

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