A Success Story from Oregon

By Jeff DeGroot

At the time of his last article, Jeff was working for a nonprofit organization called the Bus Project. Here is his postelection update from Oregon.

Two years ago the Bus Project set a four-year goal to create a progressive majority in the Oregon legislature. This year the Bus Project reached its goal two years early by helping to elect nine of the ten State House candidates it supported. This was a tremendous and unexpected victory. In three of the ten races, the Democratic candidate won against a Republican incumbent. An incumbent is a candidate who has already been elected to the state legislature. Traditionally it is very hard for someone to beat a candidate who has already been elected to office.

 I was fortunate enough to aid in this effort by acting as the organization’s field director, which meant I worked with the different campaign managers to organize volunteer efforts. Most of these efforts were mass canvassing days, called Bus Trips. During these trips, volunteers would ride a bus to a legislative district and go door-to-door talking to people about a candidate.

In my previous article, I mentioned how the former Speaker of the Oregon House blocked a bill that would have allowed same-sex couples to get civil unions in the state of Oregon. With help from programs like the Bus Project, the Democrats now control the State House. This means there are more Democrats than Republicans in the legislature and the Democrats get to decide what bills to make into laws. In fact, Basic Rights Oregon, an organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, endorses the current Speaker of the House Jeff Merkley, a Democrat.

The Bus Project’s success shows how important it is to elect fair-minded candidates and also the impact we can all have in elections. The Bus Project would not have been able to have the success that it did without hundreds of volunteers spending their Saturdays going door-to-door and talking with voters about why there needed to be a change in the state capitol. Some volunteers will knock on fifty doors in a single day, which is a tremendous amount, considering State House races in Oregon have been won by fewer than one hundred votes.

The next set of elections is in 2008, so take a Saturday and go have some fun with a friend or your parents helping out a candidate who supports equality for all families. To get more information about how to get involved in Oregon or Washington, go to www.busproject.org. If you live in another state, go to the Human Rights Campaign website: www.hrc.org.

Since the election, I have been taking time off to spend with my family and friends, while also helping out at the Bus Project. Currently, I am back at Whitman College in Washington State, where I am completing the second semester of my junior year. I am majoring in United States Policy Studies, which means I want to know more about how the decisions government makes affect the lives of everyday people. Upon graduation I plan to go to law school and continue to work toward the goal of getting equal treatment for all families.