Oregon state lawmakers who sought to halt all legislative business over their unhappiness about bills being considered by the majority-Democrat legislature have just been handed a major defeat.
As Republicans have failed to take the state legislature of Oregon in several subsequent election cycles, a group of conservatives began trying a new effort in 2019: Skipping votes they knew their side would lose.
It was a novel strategy, and one that seemed effective under state law: A quorum must be present for legislative business to proceed, and the number of Republicans resisting by not showing up prevented key legislation from moving forward. The practice began with legislation regarding efforts to fight climate change, but has expanded and continued for nearly half a decade.
Republicans turned to that tactic once again this past May. For more than 40 days, all but two Republican members of the state Senate refused to attend legislative business sessions.
Now, voters in the state appear to have reached the end of their patience for these shenanigans. In 2022, a ballot measure that sought to introduce a new law that would disqualify lawmakers from seeking another term should they be “absent from 10 legislative floor sessions without permission or excuse” was considerd by voters. It passed in a landslide, with nearly 70 per cent of the vote.
And the state’s highest elections authority has just signalled that the measure will go into effect this year, meaning that Republicans whose terms end this year (or after) will be prevented from running for reelection should they meet, or have already met, that threshold.
Some of those affected lawmakers could file court challenges against the new law, but it’s far from certain whether they’d be successful or even take place in time for those lawmakers to run an effective reelection campaign.
According to Ballotpedia, 10 members of the state Senate, including nine Republicans and one former member of the party, have already accumulated the 10 absences required to bar them from running for re-election.
