Used to work in Portland. Have opinions. What made Oregon "liberal" is they had to figure stuff out on their own. Typical Pacific Northwest DIY mentality (see

Used to work in Portland. Have opinions. What made Oregon "liberal" is they had to figure stuff out on their own. Typical Pacific Northwest DIY mentality (see Olympia, Bellingham). After the resource extraction industries died, Oregon really struggled to transition to mfg, education, tech. Think Spokane and other inland empire metros. Oregon has the largest hunger problem. Basically a rolling crisis. They've had to take extreme steps to try to mitigate it. Pretty much on their own. So their safety net efforts are driven by necessity. Ditto health insurance. In the 90s and 2000s, Portland city proper tried some proper good governance reforms. Public financing of campaigns. Some kind of runoff voting. Mass public transportation. I was very proud of them and hope they continued. Portland's reputation as "liberal" is what attracts the whackadoodles. Proud Boys and the other hard right lunatics explicitly target Portland. Journalist David Neiwert's has covered these movements since the 90s and some excellent (depressing) books on same. In case anyone's interested. It cracks me up that Seattle and Portland are considered "liberal" by outsiders. The term "Skid Row" comes from Seattle. Think about it. A place to stuff all the undesirables. How could any economies based on resource extraction be "liberal". Fortunes were made the Klondike Gold Rush and other grifts. Those grifters are local saints. People have confused our independent minded conservatives, socially liberal, with left leaning. Nope. Prior to the Bible thumpers, we Nordics mostly merely tolerated other groups. But the core of PNW identity is manifest destiny and capitalism. Think Alaska with less suicide. Business leaders in Seattle and Spokane smashed the labor unions. The trogs jailed the Japanese immigrants and stole their land. While early white settlers had mostly good relations with natives, the trajectory was what you'd expect. The neocons were birthed in the PNW. We're home to the Discovery Institute. The National Prayer Breakfast was birthed in Seattle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Prayer_Breakfast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Prayer_Breakfast "Liberal" Seattle and Portland is only in contrast to other cities. The only truly "liberal" thing Oregon has done, IMHO, was proactively protect their rural, farm, and wild places. HUGE controversy when WA State tried to do the same (Growth Management Act). Driving around Oregon feels qualitatively different. And the mostly protected coast is a gem.