Scott Bruun: Dorchester Conference - Oregon’s Unique Brand of Activism

Wednesday, March 04, 2015
Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas and one-time presidential candidate, is not afraid to drive fast.  Really fast. I know this because I once picked him up at PDX in a rented Lincoln Town Car, then drove him to the Seaside Convention Center where he delivered the keynote speech for Oregon’s annual Dorchester Conference.

This was 1992, and I was asked by the conference president to provide chauffer services for Gramm.  Of course I said “yes.”  This was the Phil Gramm of Gramm-Rudman fame, after all. Truth be told, I also said “yes” because the conference president that year also happened to be my then-girlfriend’s boss.  Sometimes you just do what you’re told. 

I was stoked, but also nervous. So nervous that as I was driving Senator Gramm away from the airport, I completely blew the correct exit.  We ended up driving east for miles toward Hood River.  Needless to say, this is the long way to Seaside.

I tried to subtly turn us around and head back through Portland toward the coast.  But Gramm is smart. He saw through my ruse, got a little animated, then told me to punch it.  After a 70-minute white-knuckle grand prix on the Sunset Highway, I was able to deliver the senator to a waiting Dorchester crowd.  He was only a few minutes “fashionably” late.

That was my first experience with Dorchester, the longest running conference of its kind in the United States.  This year, during the weekend of March 13-15, Dorchester will mark its 51st annual meeting since the conference was founded by Bob Packwood as an invite-only event for Republican insiders.

The conference has long since expanded to a gathering for all Republicans. Hundreds attend every year.  It is not, however, an official Republican gathering.  Dorchester is independent, sometimes painfully so.  This year’s conference will be a little smaller than years past because of that independence.

Last year, as part of its 50th anniversary, the conference decided to push forward debate on same-sex marriage.  It was lively debate, something Dorchester is famous for, but also served to alienate a segment of Oregon’s social conservatives.  Alienation that some social conservatives believe, and this writer agrees, was unnecessary.

Where I can’t agree is with the response.  This year, in reaction to last year’s Dorchester Conference, social conservatives have created a competing event.  It’s called the “Freedom Rally,” and is being widely advertised. It’s scheduled to occur in Portland the same time the Dorchester Conference is taking place in Seaside.

Some are saying this smacks of ‘taking our ball and going home.’  Perhaps.  What is beyond question is that it serves to further divide Oregon Republicans. It divides the Republican house. A house that is already far too small, as any drive through uber-liberal, tolerance-enforced-intolerantly, Southeast Portland will verify.   

All Republicans, conservatives and otherwise, may do well to remember Lincoln’s warning that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”  In any event, the challenge for Republicans of all stripes is to acknowledge that a Republican Party of just one stripe cannot win in Oregon.

The Dorchester Conference has always included people from across the Republican ideological spectrum, and has always been about getting Republicans elected in Oregon.  At the same time, many conservatives in Oregon have focused on ensuring the sound principles and small government bona fides of candidates.  In other words, one promotes organizing while the other promotes orthodoxy.  These goals are not mutually exclusive, and in fact must be combined if Oregon is to ever again elect a state-wide Republican.

The missing ingredient for years has been leadership. That kind of old-school, elder statesman leadership necessary to bring everyone together. The good news is that this can be resolved.  Those leaders are out there, or soon will be.  Leaders who endear trust like Congressman Greg Walden, and state reps Knute Buehler and John Davis.

In the meantime, I’ll keep attending Dorchester.  It’s an amazing venue to meet elected officials, debate important issues, and strategize ways to rescue Oregon from its current single-party stranglehold.  And in any event, I’m required to attend.  That girlfriend from way-back when, the one whose boss asked me to drive Phil Gramm, is now my wife.  She’s also president of this year’s conference.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs', yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living in public affairs with Hubbell Communications.