What’s in the Bill Republicans Are Willing to Give Up Careers to Block?

Oregon Republicans are currently threatening their political careers in an ongoing protest to block a number of Democrat-led proposals to protect access to abortion and gender-affirming care and impose new gun controls they claim are too extreme to accept.

As of last week, approximately one-third of the Oregon state senate had been ruled ineligible to serve another term under recently enacted bylaws disqualifying any members who’d missed their tenth unexcused day of voting.

Those rules, passed during the 2022 legislative session, were drafted after Republican lawmakers abandoned the state several years ago to rob Democrats of the lawmakers necessary to establish a quorum ahead of a vote on a piece of climate legislation, prompting then-Governor Kate Brown to send state troopers out of state to retrieve them.

To those boycotting, the effort is worth even potential expulsion.

What started the Oregon Senate turmoil?

Now entering its third week, the Republican-led boycott was originally begun as a protest against members of the Democratic majority allegedly abandoning a 1979 law requiring bill summaries be written at an eighth-grade reading level—an obscure bylaw Democrats say has rarely been followed.

Republicans, however, argue that because the law is on the books it must be followed. It also just so happens that many of the bills that could be impacted by the law happen to be ones Republicans in the state adamantly oppose.

This session, the Oregon Legislature—controlled by Democrats, and with a Democrat in the governor’s mansion—has sought to fast-track legislation expanding privacy protections for minors who receive abortions (while offering zero room to compromise, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle), enhancing legal protections for gender-affirming medical care, and inserting language implementing mandatory background checks for all gun sales statewide inside legislation that purports only to restrict the sale of undetectable “ghost guns”, a term for guns that are manufactured without serial numbers.

Amid claims Democrats refuse to negotiate on those bills, Republicans have simply walked out of the legislative session, denying the legislature the quorum they need to enact anything up to the final day state lawmakers will be able to enact a budget.

While Republicans have said on the record they do not plan to hold the budget hostage, they do intend to continue the boycott until Democratic leadership backs away from the contested legislation—or at least negotiates with Republicans in good faith.

“I don’t think that Republicans have gotten their way in any way shape or form, but I’m also not in Salem to facilitate a process that allows Democrats to do whatever they want,” Senator Daniel Bonham, one of the Republican holdouts, told Oregon television station KATU over the weekend. “Like that’s not what I’m there to do. There should be some accountability in government. And I think right now the quorum requirement is that accountability measure.”

Has this ever happened before?

The political boycott in Oregon is not a solely partisan exercise. Democrats in the early-2000s notably used the tool to their advantage in a protest over a Republican-led redistricting proposal, for example.

However, after the notorious 2019 boycott—and Republicans’ inability to win elections on a broad scale in the state despite recent discontent on issues like crime—Democratic leaders in the state are encouraging their Republican colleagues to respect the process, and not use their vocal minority to sabotage what they claim is the will of the majority of the state’s voters.

Speaking with KATU over the weekend, Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner noted both sides of the aisle began the session working on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation important for the state including emerging technologies and affordable housing initiatives, all of which included avenues for both sides’ concerns to be addressed.

But Wagner said Republicans’ refusal to engage now—even on bills they oppose—runs counter to the spirit of how state legislatures should operate.

“If you look at what the definition of democracy is, it’s people electing representatives to show up, come to the floor, have robust debate, and vote on behalf of their constituents,” said Wagner. “And if you lose, sometimes that’s okay. I’ve lost a lot of bills. I’ve lost a lot of debates, lost a lot of dates with my family. But in a democracy you show up you do the work. You don’t shut down government.

“We can’t have a democracy if the tiny minority are the ones who are just telling Oregon voters, ‘we’re not going to pass budgets. We’re not going to address education. We’re not going to address housing,'” he added. “That’s not okay.”

Newsweek has reached out to both for comment.

Wagner’s concerns come as some more rural, conservative areas have recently announced plans to defy laws favored by a majority of those in the state, including a recent spate of sheriffs who said they would decline to enforce recently enacted gun control legislation that was on the ballot this past fall.

But while Oregon state law allows for other measures to stall controversial legislation—Republicans notably began the session requiring Democrats to read out the entirety of every bill prior to debate, for example—minority lawmakers’ options are highly limited, while other states and even the federal government offers provisions for filibusters.

In South Carolina, for example, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers recently ran 1,000 separate amendments to a six-week abortion ban there, stalling a vote on the state budget and forcing Republicans to repeatedly debate the merits of every relevant change to the bill Democrats wanted to discuss.

Christopher Stout, a political science professor at Oregon State University, said Oregon’s law leaves Republicans with little choice in the matter but to put their careers on the line in order to stall legislation they refuse to support.

“I am not sure what dilatory tactics the minority has in Oregon beyond the quorum,” he told Newsweek. “I think compared to other states, we are only 1 of 4 with a two-thirds quorum requirement. This is why walkouts mostly occur here and in places like Texas with a similar threshold. It likely is easier to do this than to filibuster or attempt to add amendments to a bill. Not having people in session at the end can be a pretty effective delay tactic.”

And if he is ejected, Bonham has already pledged to fight the law that allowed it in court.

“We have processed about 20 bills through the Senate that have been purely partisan, so you can’t tell me that I’m not willing to allow Democrats to have their way,” Bonham said over the weekend. “But there are steps that are too far there are steps that violate the constitution constitutionality. Some Democrats have said that’s for the judicial branch to decide, but I swore an oath that I wouldn’t allow for it. And so that’s where I stand today.”