Learning to County
Multnomah County Assembly Election, 2016
The Twenty-Eighth Amendment remains controversial to this day. Passed in the early 1990s at the height of conservative dominance in Washington, the so-called "County Supremacy" amendment was President Quayle's pet project to placate the far right of his party and to sate what he believed to be a hunger for constitutional reform represented by the Perot movement. The amendment required states to delegate certain powers uniformly to county governments, and for counties in turn to adopt the "balanced" tripartite structure of the federal government. With the stroke of a pen, Newt Gingrich created 3,142 new legislatures.
Of course, it is a fact universally acknowledged that the Amendment was a ludicrous travesty that has slowed government work to the pace of molasses. The County Legislatures, some of whose members represent bare handfuls of voters in underpopulated census tracts, have been breeding grounds for political extremism and corruption, and are frequently rendered illegitimate by astonishingly low turnout levels even for the United States. Members of the Sovereign Citizen movement famously took control of Eureka County, Nevada, by winning seats with less than 50 voters apiece, while followers of Lyndon LaRouche have a thriving presence in County legislatures across the union. In Kalawo County, Hawaii - founded in 1905 as a leper colony and now home to only 88 people - more than a third of the residents are members of the legislature. Even conservatives have been disappointed by County Supremacy, which in practice did more to take power away from municipalities than it did from state or federal government. County legislatures are typically the least popular public bodies in the country.
The 65-member Multnomah County Assembly is no exception to the rule. Apart from the cost and the needless paperwork caused by the overlap of the county government with the City of Portland and Metro, the regional planning authority, county residents' major complaint is malapportionment. Fast-growing neighborhoods such as Buckman and Kerns on the central eastside, as well as historically underserved East Portland communities such as Lents, are underrepresented compared to suburban areas. During the second Assembly election in 1994, local prankster and future founder of the Yes Men, Igor Vamos, won a seat under the satirical "Neighborhood Overlordship Now" ticket, championing a constitutional amendment that would fix the county's problems by setting up a sovereign legislature for every city block.
There was never any question of the Democrats' total dominance of the legislature coming to an end in 2016, of course. Portland, and Multnomah County by extension, is a battleground between Patagonia-wearing liberals and crusty leftists; an intercine fight in which Republicans have no place. There are conservative areas in the suburbs, but even the closest thing to a Republican safe seat - the colossal tract of rural East County containing the Bull Run watershed, Portland's beloved source of unfluoridated drinking water - has been known to flip blue on the federal level. Nevertheless, the Republicans' two gains in Gresham Butte and Kelly Creek indicated a remarkable rally for the moribund county party and jolted suburban Democrats out of their complacency. More worrying for Dems within the city was the dramatic uptick in third-party voteshare, as Green and Working Families candidates eroded once overwhelming majorities. One Working Families candidate came within 10% of victory even in the comfortable westside seat of Palatine Hill, and the surge was capped off by the Greens winning their first seat since 2006 as transit activist James Ofsink took Richmond in a squeaker. Establishment Democrats had breathed a sigh of relief when the gadfly independent representative from Woodlawn, Chloe Eudaly, left the assembly to make an (ultimately successful) run for Portland Mayor. Yet while they retook her seat, they lost Mt. Scott-Arleta to a Lutz Tavern bartender running on an anti-gentrification platform and found themselves with a replacement thorn in their side.
With Democrats in East County tacking right to stave off Republican challengers and Democrats in the city tacking left to shore up their disintegrating base, the new Assembly session has gotten off to a rocky start...
