Plenty of people outside of Oregon assume our fair state is as blue as the Pacific Ocean – but those who live here know better. The gradient of blue starts to mellow as you go east, until you reach the Idaho border, where the hues tend to go bright red. Here in Central Oregon, sorta in the middle of those two extremes, you get some interesting combinations.
In Bend, Democrats rule the City Council, the park board and the school board in a district that now has a restorative justice and equity model for discipline. In Redmond there’s more of a mix of politics, and currently, a school board majority that is demonstrating its performative politics by working to strip its policy language of anything remotely resembling a push for diversity and equity. And let’s not forget Prineville, just slightly farther east, where a cadre of “mama bears” on the school board are presently working to ensure Crook County’s kids are never exposed to a shred of cultural or intellectual diversity in what they read. Recently, they took issue with “George vs. George,” a children’s book that discusses the American Revolutionary War and draws parallels between King George and George Washington. The humanity!
But beyond those policy-making moves, the average citizen might find the play-out of politics to be a bit more “a la carte.”
How those interesting combinations play out for the average local became a little more apparent this past week, with the passing of the 4th of July holiday.
If you live in Bend and lean a little more right, you might find yourself driving north to Redmond to buy your fireworks.
“I’d like the liberal main course, with a side dish of personal freedom, thank you very much!”
If you live in Redmond and lean a little more left, you might find yourself driving south to Bend to get your marijuana.
“I’ll take the conservative school board policy meal deal with a side of permissive drug policy, please!”
And if you live in Bend or Redmond but work in Prineville at the Meta or Apple data centers, you might be very confused.
“I’ll lament about the area’s overgrowth while simultaneously elevating the profile of Big Tech – no big deal!”
All day long, imagine the number of people who drive from one of these cities to the other, criss-crossing each other on the highways in order to get the type of governmental policies that work for them on that particular day.
And when that main course isn’t quite as amenable to one side of the state, the course of action thus far hasn’t been to try to cross the proverbial highway to work out where we can come together; instead, the solution for some has been a long-shot attempt at just turning part of Oregon into Idaho. One has to wonder whether the recent addition of the potato as Oregon’s state vegetable wasn’t a jab at Idaho and its “famous potatoes.”
“We’ve got everything that Idaho does – so why leave?”
It’s like a microcosm of what we’re seeing in the United States in general these days – this shifting of locales and states to make one’s politics fit with the community they’re in. It’s just that in Central Oregon, you only have to drive about 15 miles to feel the difference.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 13, 2023.
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