Oregon politics popped into the national scene last week, as the Oregon House voted to expel Republican Representative Mike Nearman. Back in December, Nearman had opened a door of the locked-down Capitol back to allow in right-wing demonstrators, including some who were armed . This was an obviously pre-meditated act on his part, as evidenced by a video from a few days before the event which, in the words of The Oregonian, showed Nearman instructing viewers how they should wait outside an entrance to the Capitol and text his cell phone. Then, “somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there,” Nearman said, a plan he dubbed “Operation Hall Pass.””
Some of the protestors who Nearman helped into the building proceeded to fight with police, allegedly using bear spray on some of the officers.
I’ve seen commentary that what is most remarkable about Nearman’s actions and his expulsion — apart from the fact that a Republican elected official used his official privileges to support violent right-wing extremists in an attack on a state government — is that he was actually held to account for his actions; after all, not only every Democrat but every other Republican in the House voted for expulsion (Nearman himself was the lone dissenting vote). It is tremendously heartening to see Democrats acting with dispatch against a colleague whose behavior crossed the line into borderline insurrectionism. Likewise, some credit should be given to GOP leadership for speaking to the dangers posed by Nearman’s actions and the seriousness of his offense; House Republican Leader Christine Drazan told Oregon Public Broadcasting that, “There could easily have been a death on that day,” and issued a statement that Nearman’s “plan to let people into the Capitol ended with violence, property destruction and injured cops.”
But though Oregon legislators did the right thing in this instance, it’s essential that we view Nearman’s coddling of extremists as existing on a clear continuum with previous Oregon Republican outrages. Even prior to “Operation Hall Pass,” the Oregon GOP was already shot through with extremism. Republican legislators have staged multiple walk-outs in the past few years to deny the Democratic majority a quorum, exploiting a quirk of the Oregon constitution to bravely stop climate legislation. And during the 2019 walkout, GOP Senator Brian Boquist had responded to Governor Kate Brown’s plans to send state troopers after the absconding politicians by saying, “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon”; that senator was subsequently censured, but not expelled. Subsequently, the Oregon state capital was closed due to the threats of right-wing extremist to defend the Republican politicians who had walked out; as Oregon Public Broadcasting reported, “Some lawmakers believe [Boquist’s comments] helped stir up right-wing militia members, whose avowals to defend absent Republicans led lawmakers to close the Capitol on June 22.
In 2020, Oregon Republican voters elected a QAnon supporter, Joe Rae Perkins, to run against Democratic Senator Ron Wyden (Wyden won handily. After her defeat, Perkins’ next major political act was to take part in the January 6 insurrection at our nation’s capital — an event at which, incidentally, the vice chair of Oregon’s Young Republicans organization was arrested). And shortly before Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Oregon state Republican Party “issued a statement condemning the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump and aligning itself with conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building.”
Given this context, I’m not sure we can rightly say Republican House members in Oregon acted honorably to punish one of their own who had gone too far, but rather that they acted expeditiously to avoid permanently cementing themselves as members of a party that demonstrated some of the same disqualifying authoritarian tendencies as other state GOP organizations. I am not so sure that if the GOP controlled the Oregon House, so many Republicans would have voted for Nearman’s expulsion. The decision of all 23 House members may indeed reflect some honest repugnance at Nearman’s behavior, but there’s also a strong CYA component in the party deciding to turn on one of their own. The state GOP has already dug itself a deep hole in terms of basic credibility for the majority of state voters who back Democrats; it would be hard to see the party ever making its way to majority status were the Democrats able to portray its current crop of state legislators as defenders of political violence and insurrectionism.
One final note on Nearman’s offenses: I haven’t yet seen anyone note that he also managed to betray his constituents by depriving them of representation through the end of the current legislative session that ends this month (county commissioners from his district will appoint a new representative in the next 30 days; under state law, the new representative will be a Republican, and will serve out the remainder of Nearman’s term). Expulsion was a necessary measure, but we shouldn’t overlook that it has temporarily deprived his district of representation in state decisions in the coming weeks.