Tom McCall and The Subarurals

What politics is growing in your organic raised bed with the drip system?

Sorry that I got this out a little late Sunday morning. I was up reading Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker and thinking about how to feed a renewed Romantic movement.

This piece is a little scary to launch, because I use broad categories for people, and people I love fall into that category. I hope we can consider the uses of category even while it might hurt to not be fully fleshed out in a conversation you are the topic of. :heart emoji:

Reading Leo’s Three Oh Oh Six essay, I thought about how valuable it is to signal belonging with shared language. Knowing how to pronounce a gun caliber is a litmus test, but why do we need them? Who are we trying to filter out?

Without further ado: Tom McCall and the Subarurals

Oregon progressives dominate the wealthy, wet, and warm coastal side of the mountains while the cold and dry east side is largely agriculture-and-extraction conservatives. We have a special history of rough, effective political work across the mountains. When the power had different balance than now, collaboration and mutual benefit was usually necessary. Our greatest politicians are known because they created excitement and progress for all the Oregons.

Most famed is Tom McCall, a Portland television journalist who moved up the Republican political ranks to become governor in 1966. He cleaned up environmental messes, made our beaches public property, and discouraged growth that would change our ways of life.

Later, he toured the nation speaking of The Oregon Story and "the third force" of political moderates in American politics. When he was term-limited out of the governor's office, he endorsed the Democrat that he had originally beaten.

Right now, my state is struggling, though progressives like myself dominate state-wide-office and control both houses of legislation. 

Meanwhile, extremist organizations are famously rising in Oregon. Proud Boys tromping through Portland, the Bundy’a armed occupation of public lands, Timber Unity driving around the capitol in log trucks with AR-15s on board. You will soon hear more about People’s Rights, who are building connections throughout rural Oregon.

I don’t think that the Democratic hegemony and the conservative extremism are unrelated. While the actions of individuals are their own responsibility, trends drive outcomes, and I think the trends in how progressives move to rural areas are contributing to who we are as a blended state.

I want to talk about Subarurals.

It is unfair and too easy to write about categories of people. Let's be clear that no one is perfectly any generic group. 

We need groups to understand our society, as Leo says in Three Oh Oh Six, but I think we misuse them so easily. 

With its group-creation basis, this might be the most clickbait worthy of the Old Truck Good Coffee essays to date. I am hopefully poisoning all the blood-tinged curse-shares that it could inspire by opening with all this moderating matter. 

We all get a simple carb rush from putting others in a box with "the rest of those people."

I need to create the category, though: The Subarurals. 

The Subarurals are probably not multi generational rural people, but they can be. They are probably liberal. They have a passion for some kind of outside recreation like skiing, kayaking, and/or rock climbing. This passion is often the reason that they choose to live in rural areas, and why the able-but-compact Subaru is a good vehicle for them.

They may not drive a Subaru, they may drive a truck. It might even be a pretty beat up truck. They may have some land and grow or ranch something on a small scale. They may live in a liberalizing magnet city in a urban-like boxy condo.

See how mean this is? If we demonize Subarurals, it can be a label that I can stick on just about anyone. Even worse, I am labeling people that are my friends, allies, and the crowds I want to be in. When I am at a trailhead in my running gear exchanging high fives and sipping just the right microbrew, it is me.

Yes, we gentrify. Yes, we push aside the existing people and culture built in a place, but that is not what I want to bring to mind today; It is how Subarurals mess up Oregon politics and, as a result, policy.

They are a smokescreen that makes for multi-car pileups on the bridge between urban and rural Oregon. 

It is that they are empowered. The travel-loving, liberal to the core, rock climbing folks stand up and claim that they represent the rural places they love. Unfortunately, they have the knowledge and resources to make an impact. They become precinct committee persons, are active in the local Democratic party. They run for office or organize each other for political causes. They see success doing that and repeat the patterns of urban messaging for progressive causes. 

In the process they denigrate the pre-existing rural experience with all its complexity.¹ Not consciously, I am sure. But it changes the chemistry of our politics and creates a greater divide between Us and Them. When progressive causes start collecting votes in districts they didn’t before, Subarurals tempt urban politicians with the possibility that they won't EVER have to deal with rural voters. They can build a winning vote count without having mismatched conversations about land use, gun ownership, the nature of work, or the other topics where our surroundings inform our beliefs. When progressive Oregonians can win no matter what, what would you expect rural voters to do? Because that is what it looks like in Oregon now.

I fear that when Subarurals see some success they make the decision to go Full Colonize; politically overpower the vote of the scary rural people. Organize deeper, fund and build coalition, have our city friends come out to knock on liberal doors to get out the vote -- as was done in the early 2000s here in Oregon with The Bus Project².

Subarural lifestyle drives land development that makes it harder for locals to live and more comfortable for more Subarus. They call for more rules on public lands, because there are more people using them, because the Subarus keep moving in.

They patronize cookware shops, fancy pet stores, and wine bars that stick out on the main drag until they are profligate enough that they don't stick out anymore.³

I know they don’t think there is damage in what they are doing. When I talk to folks I think of as having some Subarural to them, they see their drop in the bucket of gentrification as small and offset by the culture, friendliness and tax base contribution that they bring. But, as they settle in, politics and economics are getting pushed in a direction that scares me. 

It is the small language tics that signal the Subarural. The "those people" or "that one bar, you know the one" references to people and communities that held this place together for generations, the How It Used To Be Before You Came Here. Tom McCall’s Oregon.

This essay is cruel and terrible. I am othering someone for othering someone.

In political conversations in Oregon, I believe that we have to discuss Subarurals because we are not collaborating like we used to. Without the motivation to collaborate, different-thinking individuals are frustrated, disenfranchised, and open to invitations to extremism. Instead of involving themselves in politics that ignores or denigrates them, rural people organize as Timber Unity⁴. They elect conspiracy nuts⁵ and folks who live to disrupt civil life⁶.

Am I going too far? Rural extremism is not the fault of rock climbing remote workers, surely. I hope no one thinks that there is one simple thing to blame for my state’s dysfunction; I don't think the Subarurals’ role gets to be overlooked. 

When I look at who is organizing politically in rural Oregon for Democrats, there are two groups. 

The first are party organizations with deep roots in their communities. The number of Democrats out here is not zero. I have discovered several leaders who, like me, were raised in a divided house with a Democrat and a Republican parent. They know stories of the Smiths, Packwoods, McCalls, Roberts, and Hatfields that led the state to this point. They have good friends who don’t vote the same but work alongside them and go fishing and hunting with them.

The second are activists with less investment in the social network. They are concerned about single issues — I hesitate to enumerate them because I care about each one with a fearsome urgency; women’s voices, racism, climate change. List not exclusive. 

It is easier for the urban political machine to engage with the second category on singular, urgent “this is the most important thing” issues. It is almost like they are not confident that their values and policies would appeal to the rural Americans who once built granges and are the archetypes of blue collar working America evoked by Merle Haggard and Bruce Springsteen.

I am learning how Democratic activists navigate in rural areas. I became interested in an issue of concern for rural Oregon and connected with a progressive leader on the issue. Our phone conversation started with her asking me why this was important to me, then she explained her connection to rural Oregon along with her urban experience with political messaging. I in turn had to explain where I came from, when I left, the skills I built in the city, and when I returned. We need to know who are who so we can speak to each other appropriately.

Along with discussing economic development, land use, cost of living, native tribal rights, housing equity, education of our community’s kids, and LGBT issues, rural Democrats discuss how to overcome the Oregon Democrat brand when talking to our neighbors. The conventional wisdom in rural Oregon is that Democrats don’t give a damn for us.

I recently heard a long time state senator from Portland speak. I perked up when he spoke about talking with McCall about the future of Oregon. Speaking in the 80s, McCall said that he was seeing that people no longer had friends and family from across the mountains, and he was concerned. He knew that we needed to sit at table with each other. He feared that the divide would become greater without it.

Subarurals are not the only progressives in a rural town. But if you need progressive votes, organizing Subarurals is like fishing in the kiddie pond. Those votes are reliable as long as you lean as far as possible to the left. If you say urban-friendly progressive phrases, they will repeat them with you in incantation. 

McCall was a passionate fisherman, like myself. He is buried on the East side of the mountains, not far from where I live.

He is still here. I went into the fly shop here on a beautiful high desert day. It was at the height of a governor's race where a rural Democrat had broken ranks and ran as a third party candidate against the urban Democrat chosen by primary voters. It was a tense election — a third party candidate usually signals frustration and finger pointing.

I was anxious to find out what was catching. Though I had only recently moved back from the all-blue side of the mountain where John Oliver jokes can be a part of small talk, I am learning to slice politics out of small talk topics. 

The older guy at the counter asked me where I was heading. I said the name of a fishing a spot well known by locals. The road down to the water has been blocked off in my lifetime so you have to walk a half mile in. It is a beautiful piece of river, and the fishing is good. Not as good as it once was, everyone agrees. But still good. 

"You know Tom McCall had the road there put in because it was his favorite fishing place in Oregon," he said, his head down counting the flies I had picked out.

"One more reason to appreciate Old Saint Tom," I said.

"We need politicians like him now. So bad." He peeked up at me.

I managed to just say "Its true" and bade goodbye. I wanted to get to the exit before my mouth opened again. I had so much to say and ask, but that was not the time.

Many Subarurals are from out of state. They don’t know our heritage. I can’t reference Tom McCall with them. They don’t know how we made it work, how we made Oregon. Others are from Portland, but hell Tom McCall died in 1983. The memory fades.

Subarurals have their own ways, which Saint Tom openly tried to keep out of Oregon. The Subarurals are a force here now. It makes for a more powerful progressive voting bloc that can elect anyone it pleases and pass any ballot measure that is stamped “approved” by one of a select list of popular progressive interest groups. 

But it makes for a weaker Oregon that loses the very reason it is special. They are not doing it on purpose, but Subarurals are clogging the collaboration that has made Oregon a place of innovative policy and interesting fishing buddies.

1. Let’s all agree that the existing rural power structures are imperfect and involve a fair amount of terrible. Let’s talk later about the plusses and minuses of what was there before the Subarurals moved in. It is not all one. 

2. The Bus Project has been rebranded “Next Up.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Up_(organization)

3. I go to those same shops, for the record. Support local business, enjoy good tastes, and make sure my dog eats quality food.

4. A conservative organization in Oregon. Has disrupted the legislature. You see signs urging you to join along rural Oregon highways. https://www.facebook.com/timberunity/

5. Brian Boquist, repeatedly re-elected to the legislature, can speak for himself when it comes to conspiracy nuttiness https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/ORLEG/bulletins/3874f85

6. After planning and announcing it at a conservative group’s meeting, Rep. Mike Nearman opened a secured door to allow armed protestors into the legislature. He was expelled, but I am not the only one that expects he would have won re-election if he had not been expelled. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/533460-video-surfaces-of-orgeon-gop-rep-holding-capitol-door-open-for/