Fast forwarding and extrapolating a lot for this final epilogue post...
AND IT IS COMPLETE!
The Oregon bit is pretty much the only idea I had since early in the Union and Liberty's development for anything coming close to modern day. So I definitely wanted to have a post laying that out, but pretty much everything besides that and the increasing break between state and federal parties a bit like OTL Canada is completely speculative with not too much set in stone in my mind. Especially the presidents and candidates mentioned for this update, I had no inkling of who I was going to use until writing this (thanks to @Usili for helping me come up with the Oregon nationalist candidates!) I'll put up some footnotes a little later, not sure how extensive I want to be with explaining who people mentioned are.
Thank you to everyone who read and commented on Union and Liberty over the years and who stuck with me on this! I'm very happy with how it has turned out!
Now enough of me, here's the update.
Epilogue Post #8
Oregonian Nationalism:
The region of Oregon has long been one of the more neglected regions of the United States. Despite being the hub of Pacific trade for the United States for much of its history, the region has seen comparatively little investment in its infrastructure and economy, especially since the admission of the Alta California states and a lot of Western trade now coming in and out of the country through the Upper San Francisco Bay and Sacramento River ports instead of through Astoria, Tacoma, or Langley. Additionally, the Oregon regions has long been, except for the coasts, much more rural than even the more rural areas in much of the eastern half of the country. With such factors and just the Continental Divide creating such isolation from the rest of the United States, it seems only natural that a regionalist and eventually nationalist sentiment like that in Mokoguay and the Mexican states to arise, even here at home.
Elements of a unique Oregonian nation first arose in the 1920s, when calls for a separate Oregon national football team were submitted to FIFA. The Oregon Football Association was created in 1920, shortly after the foundation of the United States, New England, and Texas football associations. However, when the first World Cup was held in the Netherlands in 1924, only the United States and New England were allowed to participate as teams from North America, despite Oregon submitting a team. At the time it had been decided by FIFA that the United States association was the only "official" American association in FIFA, though New England was quickly grandfathered in in time for the 1924 World Cup when no other team from the continent sought to participate. The fight to bring the Oregon Football Association continued for over twenty years as the Oregon Football League was soon established, and players from Oregon soon found themselves on the United States national team. United States right winger Errol Crossan, who played at the league level primarily for Callister FC, sewed a patch of a green "O" with a salmon in the middle onto his jersey right before the last qualifying match for the 1952 World Cup. Crossan, who had helped lead the United States to the semifinal four years earlier in France, was removed from the match by the coach. Many Americans blamed Crossan and his express of the nationalist sentiment for the United States' 1-0 loss to Haiti on a goal from Joe Gaetjens that sent Haiti to Hungary instead of the United States. However, Crossan ultimately had the last hurrah for Oregon. In 1958, Oregon Football Association president Emil Sick organized the entrance of Oregon into FIFA and in 1960, Errol Crossan would captain the Oregon national team to its World cup debut, proudly wearing a modified O and salmon crest during the first match in Saint Louis. Similarly to New England and Cuba, Oregon became a separate competitor from the United States in the Olympics beginning in 1966.
For all such successes for the Oregonian nationalist movement, political success had been much harder to come by. With the continued growth of the Confluence region during the 20th century and the expansion of port facilities in the Alta California states, Oregonian nationalism remained small, and its nationalist movement had several false starts in forming their own parties. One reason for this is that, unlike for example Cuba, there was no existing impetus to form a separate party system at the state level. The other reason was the dominance of the Progressive Party in the region for much of the early 20th century, though at times the Republicans were able to mount strong challenges at the state levels. That began to change, however, late in the 20th century. The region was able to flex its political muscles heavily in 1970, when Oregon (the state, not the entire region) senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson was elected Senate Majority Leader and became the de facto leader of the Progressive Party. Scoop Jackson was certainly a Progressive and loved the state he represented, but while most Oregonian nationalists were Progressive in their ideology, Scoop certainly had no sympathy for the nationalists.
Senator Jackson was able to wrangle the national Progressive Party and Congress to bring some investment into the far northwest of the United States over the next decade. Legislation brought federal funding to dams on the upper Columbia River basin that helped at last bring reliable electrification to large sections of rural Kootenay. The Olympic Canal received a much needed widening to accomadate larger ships and made the port facilities at Tacoma much more competitive with other ports in the United States and California. However, for many Oregonian nationalist activists, this was too little too late. Even among many residents who were ambivalent on the issue of independence, the neglect of the broader Oregon region by the rest of the country had riled them up. The grievances against Washington and the American national party system finally came to a head and resounded like a shock wave across the region in 1984. This had been aided by the primarily state control over party nominations for state and federal offices. While parties on the national level had generally controlled the state conventions and nominations during the first half of the 20th century well into the 1960s, occasionally a state party could buck the national party. That was very much the case in 1984.
During the 1984 Progressive primary, governor Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. and senator Ed Koch of New York resoundingly won the primary in most states and were duly nominated at the national convention for president and vice president, respectively. As with tradition, the state nomination conventions followed the national party's nomination and put Stevenson and Koch on the ballot. That is, except in the Oregonian states. The nationalists had achieved their first major political success four years prior with the election of Paul Schell to Congress, and followed it up with the election of Cecil Andrus as governor of Champoeg two years later. Since Schell's first election from Oregon's 3rd district, the Oregonian nationalist faction of the Progressive Party had infiltrated and gained an ever growing influence over many of the state Progressive organizations west of the Continental Divide. In 1984, they were able to first wield their newfound power at the presidential level. In the weeks following the national Progressive convention in June of 1984, the northwestern parties one by one shocked the country and the party by refusing to nominate the Stevenson/Koch ticket. Instead, starting with the Champoeg Progressive Party on July 1, 1984, the Progressive Parties of Champoeg, Oregon, Fremont, Kootenay, and Shoshone placed a ticket of Champoeg governor Cecil Andrus for president and Kootenay Senator Bethine Clark Church for vice president. They announced a united platform of calling for an independence referendum for the Oregonian states.
The national level Progressive Party, needless to say, was furious at the northwestern parties' flaunting of their national nominee. However, they were also shocked into action. It was less than six months before the 1984 election and the Stevenson/Koch ticket had just been dealt a disastrous blow, with the potential of knocking them completely off the ballot in five of their safest states. The Progressives more loyal to the United States and less sympathetic to the nationalist cause in the region sprang to action, aided by the national party. Over the next two months, they quickly organized the creation of a state level "Progressive Unionist Party", and succeeded in placing Adlai Stevenson Jr. and Ed Koch on every state ballot except for Kootenay. However, the quick naming of the "Progressive Unionist Party" had an unfortunate consequence, due to its acronym, the PUP. Cecil Andrus's campaign released many campaign ads attacking the Stevenson campaign calling Stevenson and Koch "puppies" and "lap dogs of Washington" for their alleged complicity in the neglect of the Oregon region. Ultimately, the Andrus/Church campaign showed the force that continuous neglect of one region of the country can produce and demonstrated the slow move toward regionalization of the national parties at the time. Cecil Andrus and Bethine Church won both Kootenay and Champoeg, and came in second in both Oregon and Fremont. Even more of an upset for the national Progressive Party, Congressman Paul Schell managed to narrowly defeat Scoop Jackson for the majority leader's Senate seat. While Schell would remain caucusing with the Progressives through 1990, that year the Oregonian Nationalist Party would formally split off from the Progressive Party after rumors in the northwest claimed the national Progressive Party ignored the Oregon region yet again and blaming the national party for Champoeg voting Democratic in 1988 and helping elect President Jerry Litton.
To Progress and Conserve:
However, the Oregonian nationalists were not the only thorn in the side of the Progressive Party in 1984. Again, this thorn sprouted mostly from the western United States, but it soon spread across the country. Along with the perceived neglect of the northwest, the nominations of Adlai Stevenson and Ed Koch echoed similar patterns of Hugh Scott in 1972 and 1976, the previous time the Progressives held the presidency. This was a growing sense of abandoning the western United States in favor of the more urbanized east coast and Old Northwest, while rural regions and even more populous regions such as the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado were being ignored. This alienation of a traditional Progressive stronghold generated much animosity from some of the more independently minded Progressive politicians, especially in the west.
While Oregonian nationalism was the prime force of the alternatives to the mainstream Progressive Party in the northwest, the southwest became the center of a movement claiming to go back to the roots of the Progressive Party, and a return to the ideals of Theodore Roosevelt. In Colorado, where the movement first took hold, it was led primarily by former governor Dick Lamm. Lamm, during his governorship, frequently clashed with Progressives in the state legislature over development projects along the Front Range such as further develompent on the turnpike between Osorio and the capitol in Ferroplano, and permitting further sprawl and housing development up into the canyons west of the cities on the foothills of the Rockies. Lamm also tapped into the conservationist movement, decrying what he felt was the overpopulation of the urban centers of the United States, and lamenting the more open immigration stances of some of his Progressive colleagues. Dick Lamm believed that the country could not take more people than it already had, and that the preservation of the environment necessitated a reduction of immigration into the United States as well as moves toward "preserving what little natural land we have left" with the expansion of the national park system and the creation of a Department of Urban Development to enact national restrictions on urban development.
Lamm joined with others across the west to create a new party; the Progressive Conservative Party, that many felt was taking the Progressive Party back to its original purpose, in 1983 after his term as governor ended. Many had speculated that Lamm would run for the Progressive nomination in 1984, but the creation of the new party quickly moved that speculation to how much support the Progressive Conservatives would get and whether Lamm or someone else would lead them. Soon, the Progressive Party gained a further following in some of the still rural areas of the Northeast and even gained some urban support from anti-development activists. Particularly in New York, the Progressive Conservatives gained membership from activist Jane Jacobs and Congressman Eugene Luther Vidal Jr. Vidal had a strong connection to both the west and to New York. His maternal grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore, who served Calhoun as a Progressive in the early 20th century, and he was a West Pont graduate and son of fellow West Point graduate and New York Congressman in Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. Vidal, like Lamm, felt that rural issues were being ignored by the party and risked being coopted in the long term by the more socially reactionary Democrats. So, in 1984, the Progressive Conservative Paty emerged as a new party portraying old values, and nominated Dick Lamm of Colorado for president and Eugene Vidal Jr. from New York for vice president.
While other parties had experienced brief ideological splinters in the past, this was the first time that the Progressive Party had gone through such a splintering. The Oregonian nationalists and the Progressive Conservatives represented a fresh opening of old wounds for the Progressives, that of the battle between the rural Western faction and the more urban Eastern faction of the party. The Populists before them certainly had their problems with internal divisions before the cohesion of the Progressive Party under Roosevelt, what with the 1896 split between Adlai Stevenson and William Jennings Bryan for the vice presidential nomination, but this had not yet happened so openly since Roosevelt consolidated the modern Progressives into a single successful party. Needless to say, this splintering hurt the Progressives badly in 1984. Of course, there was the Oregonian nationalists winning their three states in the northwest. However, the Progressive Conservatives also hurt the Stevenson/Koch campaign in many states that were seen as likely Progressive holds after Hugh Scott's administration. Most notably and possibly clinching the 1984 election was the split of the Progressive vote in New York between Stevenson and Lamm. The extent to which the nomination of Ed Koch and Eugene Vidal Jr., both New Yorkers, for vice president influenced this vote splitting continues to be debate to this day. However, on the ground, what mattered was the winner, and neither party would be the winner in New York. While the Progressive Conservatives earned a respectable 10.4% in New York in 1984, the governor of neighboring Massachusetts would be victorious in New York, and its electoral votes were crucial. As with many previous Republican presidents, it would be that rare victory in New York that pushed Michael Dukakis over the top and into the White House. And like most party splinters, the Progressive Conservatives would perhaps win one or two states, in this case Colorado and Trujillo in 1988, but they would soon fade like so many others. However, the Progressive Conservatives would remain influential at the state level in many northern border states and in the non-Oregon West.
Well, I gotta say, @wilcoxchar , this was a fascinating end to a TL that can quite arguably be called a real AH.com classic. I do look forward to anything else you may try your hand at, as you certainly do have some real talent, my good man.
