OREGON
Thursday, November 4, 2021
East Oregonian
A7
Tentative opinion suggests Oregon’s
congressional map could be upheld
By DIRK VANDERHART
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Wikipedia Commons/Contributed Photo
Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton also oper-
ates several extension campuses in Northeastern Oregon.
Democrats in the Legislature sent letters to the state’s U.S.
congressional delegation Monday, Nov. 1, 2021, urging them
and the Biden administration to revisit a plan for free com-
munity college.
Oregon Democrats
push delegation in
D.C. to restore free
community college
By MEERAH POWELL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
SALEM — Democrats
in the Oregon Legislature
sent letters to the state’s
U.S. congressional delega-
tion Monday, Nov. 1, urging
them and the Biden admin-
istration to revisit a plan for
free community college.
President Joe Biden orig-
inally included two years
of free community college
in his “Build Back Better
Plan,” but removed it from
the spending framework last
week. Democratic leaders on
Capitol Hill worked to scale
back what had previously
been a $3.5 trillion package
last week to satisfy concerns
from moderates in their
party, particularly Sen. Joe
Manchin, D-West Virginia,
and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema,
D-Arizona.
The state lawmakers in
Oregon are hoping Biden
and other Democratic lead-
ers will reconsider the policy
in the near future.
“By not investing in
two years of free commu-
nity college, this threatens
Oregon’s and the United
States’ ability to develop and
retain a workforce that meets
today’s evolving industry
needs,” the state Demo-
crats who authored the letter
wrote.
They wrote that two years
of free community college
would help lift millions of
Americans economically,
especially those from under-
served communities such as
people of color and people
with low incomes.
SALEM — New congressional
districts passed by Oregon Demo-
crats meet all legal criteria, with little
evidence they amount to blatant parti-
san gerrymandering, a judge has found.
That tentative opinion, released
Monday, Nov. 1, by retired state Judge
Henry Breithaupt, is not the final
word in an ongoing lawsuit, in which
Republicans are seeking to have the
new six-district congressional map
redrawn. Instead, Breithaupt is acting
as a “special master” in the case,
tasked with making findings of fact for
a five-judge panel that will decide the
outcome.
But the findings by Breithaupt
suggest Republicans have failed to
prove their insistence that Democrats
purposefully stacked the congressional
maps in their own favor. A lawsuit filed
on behalf of former Secretary of State
Bev Clarno and three other former
Republican elected officials called the
map “a clear, egregious partisan gerry-
mander, as has been widely acknowl-
edged both in Oregon and across the
country.”
Skeptical testimony
After nearly 15 hours of hear-
ings last week, Breithaupt was not
convinced. His opinion relies heavily
on a proposed set of facts suggested
by the Oregon Department of Justice,
which is representing the Legislature
in defending the map.
Breithaupt agreed with the state’s
contention that the new maps meet stat-
utory criteria requiring them to be of
roughly equal populations and contigu-
ous, and to use existing transportation,
political and geographic boundaries.
The judge also agreed that an additional
factor that must be considered — that
lawmakers cannot unduly split commu-
nities of common interest — was diffi-
cult to determine.
Most damaging to the Republican
Brian Hayes/The Associated Press, File
Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Linn County, talks to Sen. Lew Frederick, D-Portland, during
the legislative session in the Senate on June 23, 2021, at the Oregon State Capitol
in Salem.
case, Breithaupt was skeptical of the
lone expert the petitioners brought in
to testify the new congressional maps
were baldly partisan. He found three
experts brought in by the state and a
national Democratic group helping
defend the maps more credible.
Those experts were Paul Gronke,
a political science professor at Reed
College; Devin Caughey, a political
science professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; and Jonathan
Katz, a social sciences professor at the
California Institute of Technology.
The three men testified to differ-
ent measurements of potential bias on
the congressional map. Some of those
benefited Democrats, including an
often-used metric called the “efficiency
gap.” That measure attempts to quan-
tify which party has the most wasted
votes under a plan — either by voting
for a candidate who did not win, or by
voting for a winning candidate by more
than the margin needed for victory.
But other metrics could bene-
fit Republicans, and each of the
professors called to defend the maps
suggested the congressional plan
would not necessarily give Democrats
five of the state’s six seats in the U.S.
House, as Republicans argue.
One caveat offered by many experts:
Because Oregon only has six congres-
sional districts, statistical analysis
includes high amounts of uncertainty.
“I agree with Dr. Caughey’s conclu-
sion that ‘[t]here is, in short, little
compelling evidence that the Oregon
districting plan substantially favors the
Democratic Party,’” Breithaupt’s opin-
ion read in part.
Breithaupt was less impressed with
Thomas Brunell, a political science
professor at the University of Texas at
Dallas.
Called by the Republican petition-
ers in the case, Brunell introduced an
analysis that suggested the map was far
more biased in Democrats’ favor than
the other witnesses. The state countered
that Brunell had based that analysis on
the 2012, 2016 and 2020 presidential
elections, which did not fairly charac-
terize voting patterns for congressional
elections, and that his methods would
not be accepted by most in the political
science realm.
Breithaupt agreed.
“While I find Dr. Brunell generally
to be a credible witness, the method-
ology he employs, and therefore the
conclusions he reached, lack credibility
and are therefore unreliable,” he wrote.
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