Political storm rakes nation, but gives Northwest a pass

A political storm brought thunder and lightning raining down on America’s east and west coasts Tuesday, and vast swaths of the heartland lying between.

Almost everywhere, the results were delivered not with a whimper, but with a bang. They were virtually unequivocal in their clarity, representing a sharp rebuke to ruling Republicans in the vast majority of cases.

But not in Oregon, not in Yamhill County and most certainly not in McMinnville. The only issue on the city ballot was a $98.5 million parks and recreation bond, which trailed by three votes in initial election night returns and 67 by the time almost 9,000 ballots had been tallied the following morning.

This being Oregon, where mail ballots may be dropped off anywhere in the state, or mailed from anywhere in the world with an election-day postmark, the outcome could remain in doubt for days, if not weeks. It could even require a recount.

Not much thunder was sounded elsewhere in the state either, as 19 of 36 counties had no candidates or issues up at all, and the rest so few they only had to mail ballots to a relatively small percentage of their registered voters. The rest of the Northwest was largely spared as well.

Elsewhere, however, a normally low-key off-year election proved anything but.

As voters went to the polls, President Trump was unilaterally blowing up alleged drug running boats, threatening to resume nuclear testing, ignoring the longest federal shutdown ever, rounding up immigrants anywhere he could find them, flooding major cities with unwanted military forces, and slapping friend and foe alike with punitive tariffs, even as the Supreme Court was opening a hearing on a challenge to its legality. The voters responded by:

-- Giving a 34-year-old Ugandan-born Muslim, running as a Democratic Socialist, more than half the vote in a three-way race for mayor of New York City.

-- Boosting Democratic women to big wins in hotly contested gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, while also electing Democrats attorney general and lieutenant governor in Virginia.

-- Giving California Gov. Gavin Newsom a smashing victory in his bid to counter Republican gerrymandering elsewhere with gerrymandering the other direction in his deep blue state, expected to swing five House seats.

-- Electing three liberal Democratic justices to new 10-year terms on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court by stunningly lopsided margins.

-- Flipping two seats on Georgia’s powerful state utility commission from Republican and Democratic, giving Democrats their first state office wins there since 2006.

-- Passing a red flag gun law and rejecting a restrictive voter ID proposal in Maine, overcoming fierce, well-funded Republican campaign efforts.

Election day surveys by neutral parties, including The Associated Press, showed voters were swayed more by the economy than crime and immigration, and felt Trump’s erratic tariff policies were doing more harm than good. They also found voters blaming Trump for an increasingly painful federal shutdown, and for a pattern of overreaching that left them angry or fearful about the direction of the country.

Other factors cited in post-election observations included fears about inflation, rising housing and health care costs, erosion in the nation’s social safety net, barriers to middle class prosperity and the impact of large-scale cuts to the federal work force.

By comparison, the local bid to erect new aquatic and community center facilities, and upgrade existing library, senior center and park system facilities, seemed quiet, calm, low-key and largely non-partisan. However, in our analysis, economic issues probably played the leading role locally as well.

There seemed to be general if not universal agreement that the existing aquatic and community center facilities were too old and obsolete to be salvageable, making new construction an eventual necessity. There also seemed to be general if not universal agreement that the plan being put forward fell into the realm of reason, following a round of deep cuts ordered by the city council.

However, against a backdrop of both actual and projected economic hardship, and a feeling among many that the city has been guilty of acts of overreach of its own in recent years, views began to diverge. What half the electorate came to see as an affordable necessity the other camp came to see as an unaffordable luxury — one it simply could not justify in its current economic circumstances.

At this writing, how all of this will play out in the end is anyone’s guess. Voters may have sounded a clarion call in other parts of the country, but they delivered a decidedly mixed and muted verdict here, in the little piece we call home.