Republican walkout came during perfect storm, sets stage for new political era

When Senate Republicans fled Oregon to derail the passage of a sweeping greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill, political analysts, journalists and average citizens across the country took notice.

But the seeds for the nine-day walkout were planted much earlier. Now with fractured relationships throughout the Senate, leadership believes it may have solidified a new era of politics inside the Oregon Legislature.

Already there is talk from Democrats about the need to elect two more senators and establish a "quorum-majority" of 20, providing them even greater power than their current supermajority. The cap-and-trade bill (in one form or another) will be back for the 2020 short legislative session, Democrats promise.

Republicans, meanwhile, received widespread support from constituents for the walkout — including a Capitol rally against House Bill 2020 of nearly 1,000 people and hundreds of trucks during their absence — and now largely believe they would not be punished politically if they left again over a greenhouse gas bill.

"I know they've got the supermajority, but ... they would be completely out of their minds to bring that back," Senate Republican Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr., R-Grants Pass, told the Statesman Journal last week.

Both sides are angry at the other, and trust in the upper chamber is at perhaps the lowest levels in modern history, senators say.

This leaves an institutionalist like Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, in the middle of a left-pushing Democratic caucus, a Republican caucus ready to "fight to the death" and fewer people interested in maintaining the decorum that had been Courtney's goal throughout his historic tenure as the Senate's presiding officer.

"I don’t know if anybody has learned anything from this," Courtney said. "This was not good. We need to find a way to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I don’t sense that."

Despite the contentious session, Courtney — first elected to the Legislature in 1980 and Senate president since 2003 — said he's not looking toward the exit just yet.

"I have no desire to leave now," Courtney said. "The Senate president’s term is two years. It’s two years. That’s all I know."

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Courtney's prophetic warning

While some senators believe that bipartisanship has steadily declined over the past three sessions, the roots of the walkout can be directly traced to November of last year.

When the general election results were announced Nov. 6, Democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate secured three-fifths supermajorities of 38 and 18, respectively.

Many on the left considered it to be a mandate from voters to Democrats to pass progressive legislation on issues ranging from gun control to the carbon emissions cap-and-trade bill that was a decade in the making. 

“Oregonians have spoken. We want leaders to take bold action on a host of urgent issues, perhaps most pressing of all is climate change," Tera Hurst, executive director of Renew Oregon, said in a statement days after the election. "We have a Legislature committed to passing the Clean Energy Jobs bill and acting boldly to protect Oregon."

On the other hand, Courtney warned fellow Democrats that if they pushed too many bills the Republicans hated, they ran the risk of alienating their colleagues on the right.

Remember, he said, the 18 Democratic senators could not achieve a quorum on their own.

But those quorum concerns would not come home to roost for another six months. 

Republican senators said the next step toward a walkout occurred about one month into session when Democrats passed Senate Bill 608, which made Oregon the first state in the country with statewide rent control.

It passed without any amendments and set the stage for Republican frustrations that would simmer for the next four months.

Sen. Alan Olsen, R-Canby, wrote in a newsletter to constituents shortly after the governor signed the bill that "it went through the House and Senate like a freight train."

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Sen. Jackie Winters' influence missed

The session — while described as horrible by Republicans and historic by Democrats — wasn't without bipartisan agreement.

As is always the case, the majority of bills that made it out of the 2019 Legislature received at least some support from both parties.

One of the most noteworthy bipartisan efforts came on SB 1008, which reformed sentencing for juvenile offenders in the state. It was pushed by the late Sen. Jackie Winters, R-Salem, and required a two-thirds majority vote to pass both chambers. 

On April 16, it passed the Senate 20-10 after Winters gave what would be her last speech on the Senate floor. Several of her Republican colleagues said after the fact they would have been willing to vote for the bill so Winters could see it pass.

Baertschiger himself went to Courtney and said the bill needed to move forward when it did.

Winters was absent for much of her last session in public office and passed away on May 29.

Many in the Capitol have wondered, including Courtney, how the session might have been different if Winters had been there.

She was considered the soul of the Senate, someone able to bridge divides and find agreement even in situations where there was little to be found.

Baertschiger and many others in the Senate Republican offices said they believe Winters would have joined the walkout if it came to that. She was a principled conservative.

But she also was better at mitigating disarray among Republicans and between caucuses, so perhaps, some speculate, partisanship never would have reached such a fevered pitch. 

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Bills scrapped to end first walkout

Now overshadowed by the nine-day walkout near the session's end, Senate Republicans' first walkout in early May set the stage for that final absconding.

It was far less dramatic, with the senators avoiding floor sessions for four days, but staying close so they could still attend important committee hearings.

They left because they wanted a billion-dollar education funding bill sent back to committee and for the Senate to take up significant reform of Oregon's public pension system.

They came back after Democrats agreed to kill bills dealing with gun control and vaccination exemptions. And Republicans agreed not to walk out again. 

Critically, both sides also agreed that the greenhouse gas emissions bill "gets a reset."

But disagreement lingers over what "reset" exactly meant.

Senate Democrats contend that all it meant was to allow Senate Republicans' top climate lawmaker Sen. Cliff Bentz, R-Ontario, back into the room for negotiations and listen to his proposals.

Moreover, they say, some Republican proposals found their way into the final version of the bill.

Courtney said Republicans began re-interpreting what the agreement meant.

But Republicans said they had agreed to far more wholesale changes.

"Come on, give me a break. Look it up in the dictionary," Baertschiger said. "When practically nothing changes, that's not a reset."

This lack of change in Republicans' eyes would continue to play out in the days and hours ahead of the second walkout. 

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Senate negotiations fall apart

Several important dominoes fell in those final days: the passage of a continuing resolution for state spending, the second reading of the greenhouse gas bill and failed final negotiations.

If no new budgets were passed, the continuing resolution would give state agencies the authority to continuing spending money at current service levels as of the eighth quarter of the last biennium.

It passed both chambers — unanimously in the Senate and with only one "no" vote in the House.

After it passed on June 17, Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, described it as "first-of-its-kind" legislation, though the resolution was considered common housekeeping toward the end of previous long sessions.

What was new, however, was its use as political leverage.

During the walkout, Republicans were able to push back somewhat on calls for senators to return to pass budgets because the continuing resolution would allow state agencies to continue operating.

Courtney acknowledged that Democrats allowing it to pass could be considered a lack of political foresight, except that using it as leverage had never occurred. 

"It’s like, why would you all of a sudden not do it when you’re always doing it? It was never used that way before," Courtney said. "I didn’t know at the time we passed it we were getting enough signals about walking out."

Finally, on June 19, overshadowed by threats Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, made against Courtney and Oregon State Police officers, the greenhouse gas bill received its second reading and behind-the-scenes negotiations over the bill failed.

Courtney is convinced it was the second reading of the bill that sent Republicans out the door. 

Once a bill is read a second time, it must come up for a vote on the Senate floor (though not necessarily on the substance of the bill). It is during a bill's third reading that a final vote occurs. 

After Boquist made his threat against Courtney on the Senate floor, Courtney said Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, approached and encouraged him to get everyone off the floor.

The second reading list hadn't happened yet, so Courtney was hesitant, but he decided to recess, a move that was agreed to by Baertschiger and Senate Democratic Leader Ginny Burdick, D-Portland.

“Give me some credit in terms of this process. I’m not a sneak, but I know what first, second and third reading is,” Courtney said.

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When everyone came back out, Courtney said he was "frozen" at his podium waiting for the second readings. He hadn’t told anyone his plan, including members of his own caucus. Courtney said he tried to encourage the reading clerk to read it quickly (the clerk declined).

Once HB 2020 was read, Courtney said he looked straight at Baertschiger and held his arms up.

"That kind of put things in a precarious position," Baertschiger said. "We were in the middle of negotiations on it."

When a final round of negotiations between Bentz and staff from the governor’s office failed hours later — Democrats said Bentz was offering poison pills, Republicans said Democrats were not open to compromise — the 11 Republican senators left the state.

Too few votes for carbon bill

The thing is, Courtney wasn’t sure the bill had the votes anyway. To get the bill out of committee he had to temporarily replace a member and vote it out himself.

“I thought at the time if we got it on the floor we had a chance to get it passed. I wasn’t sure,” Courtney said.

Republicans, meanwhile, were asking him to guarantee it would die on the floor. But he wouldn’t, so they walked.

At some point between voting it out of committee and June 25, Courtney became convinced it didn't have the votes to pass. Three Democrats were assured "no" votes.

"The more I talked to them, I said: ‘Oh my God, this isn’t going to make it,'" Courtney said.

On June 25, he announced on the Senate floor the cap-and-trade bill lacked enough votes and was effectively dead.

Baertschiger returned to Oregon on June 26 to continue negotiations to bring Republicans back. All but two of the 11 Republicans who walked out in June ended up returning so the Senate could pass around 130 bills in the final two days before adjournment.

"We returned so we could finish the job that we were elected to do," Baertschiger said. "We didn't walk out to kill all 130 bills. We walked out to kill one bill."

But the greenhouse gas emissions bill will be back, maybe as soon as February 2020.

“We ain’t doing nothing else big,” Courtney said. “We tend to misjudge that February session every damn time. That carbon bill has got to be ready to go on day one. It’s got to come out of the Senate in five seconds.

“I know what’s going to happen: vaccinations and guns and I’m going to have to say ‘no!’” Courtney said. “We’re doing this one thing.”

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Contact Connor Radnovich at cradnovich@statesmanjournal.com or 503-399-6864, or follow him on Twitter at @CDRadnovich