In a Year of Capitol Feuds, Oregon Has a Political Breakdown

or the past month, the Oregon Senate has started its daily proceedings by dispatching a search party.

Unable to summon a quorum to vote on any legislation, the Senate president orders the sergeant-at-arms to track down the day’s missing senators, largely Republicans who are now on the fifth week of a boycott. The sergeant scales the stairwells of the Capitol, knocks on closed doors, questions staff members who coyly claim that their bosses are not present. When she returns empty-handed, the Senate adjourns, leaving hundreds of bills, stored in a growing stack of blue and yellow folders, untouched.

“I am sad to be on the front lines of watching democracy crumble,” Kate Lieber, the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, said after another fruitless day trying to keep Oregon’s government running.

Oregon has long had a pronounced political split, reflecting the natural divisions between its rural farm and timber counties and its liberal cities like Portland and Eugene. But the state historically prided itself on the way its politicians usually seemed to find ground for collaboration.



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/04/us/oregon-legislature-republican-walkout.html