photo by MICHAEL PARRISHLEAD STORY
They, the People
Washington County voters point the way to Oregon's political future.BY BOB YOUNG
byoung@wweek.com
LEAD STORY SIDEBARS:
National Interests
Bordonaro vs. Wu on policy mattersShall We Bamba?
Two cultures converge every weekend at Washington County's Cooler Club.Fed Up
Other Washington County voters: bleeding-heart liberals and bible-thumping conservatives.
Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 91,280 to 81,042 in Washington County; 50,864 voters are not affliated with either party.
Washington County voters 18 to 34 years old are the most independent: 32 percent of them are not affiliated with either major party.
Washington County has a younger population than Multnomah County: 70 percent of its residents are 44 or younger; in Multnomah County the figure is 66
percent.
Washington County has fewer nursing-home residents than Multnomah County: 1,223 to 4,607. (Most statistics are through 1996, the most recent year for which numbers were available.)
Washington County has a lower unemployment rate than Multnomah County's: 3.9 percent to 5.2 percent.
Washington County has a smaller share of its students enrolled in private schools than Multmomah County: 15.6 percent to 16.9 percent.
Washington County still has 140,000 acres of farmland and over 1,600 working farms.
Washington County has far fewer government workers than Multnomah County: 13,068 to 62,767.
Washington County had far fewer serious crimes than Multnomah County: 14,463 to 56,755.
Washington County has the highest percentage of professional, managerial and technical workers in the state--36.4 percent, according to the 1990 census.
"It's a county in search of an identity," says pollster Lisa Grove Donovan, who graduated from Beaverton High in 1980. "It's still very adolescent," adds John Fregonese,
formerly Metro's top planner.
There's only one Democratic mayor in Washington County, Beaverton's Rob Drake, and one Democratic state legislator, Ryan Deckert, also of Beaverton.
Cekiel Danielson looks a little like comedian Jim Carrey.
He looks a lot more like the future of Oregon. Perhaps even the country.
Hopping on the new westside MAX line one morning last week, he could have been an advertisement for Oregon's changing economy and explosive growth.
An overseas-marketing manager for Intel, Danielson, 30, moved to Oregon five years ago from Arizona. He's got a master's degree and a three-bedroom house in Beaverton that he shares with his wife, also a high-tech worker. Politically, he's bullish on free trade and sick of government overspending but keen on protecting air, water and a woman's right to abortion.
Portlanders might dismiss Danielson and his suburban pals as Home Depot shopping squares. Politically, they're something else entirely: They're the most intriguing and important voters in Oregon.
Consider this: In 1996, Washington County voted for Democrat Bill Clinton and Christian conservative congressional candidate Bill Witt. Residents voted for an enormous light-rail project and against higher property taxes. There are more paradoxes here than cul-de-sacs. Washington County voters are the most prosperous in Oregon, yet they are brimming with anxiety; they are nostalgic yet Internet-savvy and cynical.
One thing's for sure: They're influential. They played a crucial role in electing liberal Ron Wyden to the U.S. Senate in early 1996; then later that year they did the same for conservative Gordon Smith.
In just four weeks they'll again play a decisive part in the hottest race in Oregon and one of the most closely watched in the country: the 1st Congressional District contest between Republican Molly Bordonaro, 30, who hopes to be the youngest Oregonian ever elected to Congress, and Democrat David Wu, 43, who aspires to be the first member of the House of Representatives born in mainland China.
The election has national implications. First, it helps determine who controls Congress, where Republicans now enjoy a slim 11-seat margin. But more than that, it showcases the growing influence of suburban counties where population is swelling, party lines are eroding, and a libertarian streak is emerging.
"The battle is going to be for the hearts and minds of people in Beaverton and Hillsboro," says pollster Lisa Grove Donovan.
Given that, it made sense to spend a day on the battleground with voters to find out who they were supporting and why. And what better place than the westside MAX? For many Washington County voters, the MAX is more than a sleek symbol of change; it's the closest thing they've got to a neighborhood coffee shop or a community plaza--a place where migrant workers share seats with soccer moms.
We found that train-hopping with voters like Cekiel (pronounced "See-kull") Danielson, Briani Solberg-Bell, 28, and Tom Priest, 83, was like climbing into a time capsule and traveling into America's political future.
Washington County seems to be changing as fast as the countryside that flies by the window during a ride on the new MAX line. Farmland next to Molly Bordonaro's old Beaverton elementary school is now a Barnes & Noble bookstore. The sleepy little hamlet of Orenco, which for decades didn't see two new pieces of plywood a year, is home to a new development featuring architecture borrowed from Boston and San Francisco. "It's in constant flux," says Les AuCoin of the county he represented in Congress for 18 years.
Given this dizzying transformation and the 400 percent increase in Washington County's population since 1960, you'd think people would be obsessed with local concerns. Instead, Washington County's new breed of voters defies the notion that all politics are local.
As cow chips give way to microchips, people like Danielson are creating a new demographic profile for Washington County. They wear khakis and tasseled loafers and carry pagers and laptops. Washington County now has a higher percentage of college graduates than any other county in Oregon. Its residents are more affluent, earning the highest average household incomes in the state--and 40 percent more than Multnomah County households. And they live in larger, more expensive homes than average Oregonians do.
Like Danielson, many can now ride the MAX from their subdivisions in Beaverton--Washington County's largest city--to Intel campuses in Hillsboro. And like Danielson, they're looking forward to a proposed new MAX line to the airport so they can catch a train in Hillsboro to their plane at PDX. "That will be great," says Danielson, who frequently travels abroad for work.
This combination of mobility and rootlessness most distinguishes Washington County residents, says AuCoin, and gives them a peculiar political bent. They're not only newcomers, he explains, but they live without a sense of community. They sleep in new subdivisions with no established neighborhoods, local papers or radio stations--not even the trees have deep roots. There really is no there there, AuCoin says.
"What you'll find is a tendency for election choices to be made on national trends and issues," he says, "and a tendency for people not to organize around community but around individual interests.
"People don't think of you as a congressman who takes care of the local public works project," AuCoin continues. "They think of how you stand on abortion or gun control or the environment. No matter how hard you try, you are a captive of national trends."
Danielson, who logs on to cnn.com for much of his news, agrees. "I tend to pay attention to national issues more than local ones," he says. "Having lived in Texas, Minnesota and Arizona before Oregon, I'm not as attached to local issues as a native Oregonian. I travel a lot in my job, too, so that probably adds to my interest in national issues."
It should come as no surprise that such a rootless population will choose between two congressional candidates who are like them. Both Wu and Bordonaro have résumés of community involvement as thin as a silicon wafer. In fact, neither has held any kind of elected office.
With his emphasis on education, the environment and abortion rights, Wu has an edge with Danielson. "I vote for Democrats because of the things they stand for: choice, the environment, planning for growth, spending appropriately but not exorbitantly on social programs," he says.
Although Wu does not advocate free trade--which is important to the high-tech industry--the issue isn't critical to Danielson. "For the most part that battle has already been won [on the national level]," he says.
Nor will Clinton's scandal discourage Danielson from voting for other Democrats. "This is blown completely out of proportion," he says. "Man, it's such a waste of time. Since this started I've gone to probably 10 different countries, and people laugh at us. Brazil, England, Argentina, Belgium. They laugh about it.
"I was on a tour in Amsterdam, and we went by this building where the most famous Dutch lawyer resides," Danielson continues. "The guide said, 'If Bill Clinton lived here, this guy would be his lawyer. But then if Bill Clinton lived here, he wouldn't need a lawyer.'"
People like Danielson seem to be overrunning Washington County. But even on the brand new MAX you can find stalwarts like Tom Priest, who represents the old Republican guard, a group known for its independent streak.
Priest has lived with his wife, Kay, in the same house for 32 years. It's in Cedar Hills, an unincorporated part of Washington County that sits between Portland and Beaverton on the west side of the Tualatin Mountains.
Priest used to be a TV repairman in Hillsboro. It wasn't that long ago, the octogenarian recalls, when he could drive from home to his shop in the morning and hit just one traffic light--the signal at 185th Avenue and the Tualatin Valley Highway. Now, he says, on his way to see his son in Hillsboro, the traffic is thick and the landscape unfamiliar. "I used to take a lot of service calls in the area," he says. "I can't even find those old houses now."
Priest's not complaining, though. He and Kay have enjoyed retirement, driving their motor home all over North America, from Lake Okeechobee in the Florida Everglades to the wheat fields outside Edmonton, Alberta.
And Priest is looking forward to the fall once again. Not because of politics, but because he and Kay are students of another life form that thrives in the dark dankness of autumn. "We're mushroom pickers," he says, leaning forward, his suspender-supported pants seeming to run all the way up to his armpits like a pair of waders. "I'm a former president of the Oregon Mycological Society. That's the study of mushrooms and fungus," he explains.
Priest doesn't think highly of most politicians. He traces his disdain back to his home state of Missouri, which during his youth was run by the corrupt machine of Democrat boss Tom Pendergast.
"I didn't even know what the Republican Party was until I got out of Missouri," he says. Once he learned there was a party that stood for less government, he was happy to join it and stay in it. Bill Clinton has done nothing to change his view of Democrats.
At the same time, Priest is not the kind of guy who's blindly loyal to the GOP agenda. He likes candidates who show independence, like U.S. Rep. Linda Smith of Washington, who has battled GOP leaders with her crusade for campaign-finance reform. "I admire the way she told Republican leadership to shove it," he says.
Priest is part of a rich tradition in Washington County. The 1st Congressional District elected a Republican when it was created in 1893 but soon showed a maverick streak. In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt--representing the rebel Bull Moose Party--was Washington County's preferred presidential candidate.
The congressional seat stayed in Republican hands, though, until 1974, when voters disgusted by Watergate elected AuCoin. The Democrat won eight more terms because the GOP kept running candidates against him who didn't quite satisfy moderate Republicans.
"People in the 1st District are just very independent in their thinking," says AuCoin, who was succeeded by Democrat Elizabeth Furse. "It's not just high tech. It's their overall education level and economic status. High tech magnifies the phenomenon, but it's always been there."
Priest isn't like Bible-Belt Republicans, and he doesn't care much about their social agenda. He doesn't think government has any business legislating abortion. "Women ought to make up their own minds," he says.
Although the staunchly pro-life Bordonaro holds a different view, it probably won't move Priest to cross party lines.
That kind of allegiance is crucial to Bordonaro. The 1st Congressional District stretches from the west side of Portland to fishing docks in Astoria. The district includes parts of six counties in all, but Washington County accounts for 60 percent of its population and is where most elections are determined. Republicans outnumber Democrats by almost 10,000 in Washington County, and GOP candidates must hang on to voters like Priest to stand a chance of winning.
Smaller government and lower taxes are the issues of most importance to Priest, and the ones most likely to determine his vote. "Molly wants less government control, and I agree with her on that," he says.
He also supports Bordonaro's desire to remove federal mandates from local schools. "Trying to control education from Washington, D.C., is the worst idea," he says.
Priest also says he finds comfort in the idea of a Republican Congress to keep Clinton in check. "I like that split. It keeps them honest," he says. "I figure any bill that does pass has got to be pretty good."
Between the new Democratic politics of Danielson and the old Republicanism of Priest stand swing voters like Briani Solberg-Bell who embrace more libertarian views.
Solberg-Bell, 28, is part of the 22 percent of the district's registered voters who are not affiliated with either major party. She was a Democrat, and before that a Republican; now's she at home as an independent. It fits her eclectic tastes. Musically, she likes the Pogues and Mozart. In politics, she's inclined to support medical marijuana and tough-on-crime measures.
An intense, articulate clerical worker at the county sheriff's office, where she files police reports and records other crime data, Solberg-Bell isn't happy with the major parties. She doesn't trust their candidates to tackle the issues most important to her. She wants to save forests and fish and preserve farmland and air quality. "All my fears go back to overpopulation. These issues keep coming up but never get resolved," she says. "Politicians are trying to be on both sides."
If politicians won't take on these tough issues, she adds, then they ought to stay out of people's private lives as well.
"I like it when politicians stand up for free speech and other personal freedoms," she says after getting off the MAX in Hillsboro, where she lives with her 4-year-old son and husband, a shipping manager.
"Assisted suicide was big for me because I want that option," she continues. "Too many people, like the anti-abortion people, don't treat us as adults capable of making our own decisions. I want those people out of my life."
But don't call Solberg-Bell a libertarian. She doesn't like what that tag implies. "It sounds like extreme right-wing rhetoric," she explains. "I don't so much want government out of my life as I want some people, and their agendas, out of my life."
Indeed, Solberg-Bell thinks government can play an important role in protecting the environment and managing growth. "I like the MAX," she says. "I'm glad we're getting more transit."
Such views led her to vote for Democrats like Clinton and Gov. John Kitzhaber in recent elections. "Clinton and Gore gave me a great sense of hope," she says. That hope hasn't been dimmed by the Lewinsky scandal. "I think he's done a great job. I don't care who he's boffed. It seems Republicans like to call Democrats names, but they don't want to work. They just stall, stall, stall, and try to get Democrats out of office."
Such tactics may steer her to the Wu column in November. So might Bordonaro's strong positions on issues like abortion: When she first ran for office two years ago, Bordonaro declared she was "absolutely pro-life" in an effort to win conservatives' votes in a Republican primary.
"Changes in our party have been hard for Washington County to accept," says Republican consultant Dan Lavey, referring to the growing influence of religious conservatives on the GOP.
"You've got to be the right kind of Republican to win Washington County. You can't be religion-oriented," says Lavey, an advisor to Bordonaro. "Voters fear left-wing Democrats less than right-wing ideological Republicans."
"I think that's accurate," says Solberg-Bell. "Way accurate."
Although these three MAX riders--these strangers on a train--share little in common, they do reveal one unifying thread that runs through the politics of Washington County.
So far neither Bordonaro nor Wu seems to have figured it out, says political strategist Paul Phillips, who represented Washington County in the state Legislature for 14 years. "These people believe government has a proper but limited role," Phillips explains. "It fascinates me that neither candidate has jelled around that message, although both have sniffed around its edges."
Areas like Washington County are only growing more powerful as party lines fade and suburban population starts to outnumber Democratic strongholds in cities and Republican-dominated rural areas. If either Bordonaro or Wu finally latches onto the idea of a limited but socially responsible government, this could lead to a victory that stands as a bellwether for Oregon--and beyond.
originally published September 30, 1998
