How Measure 117 Rank-Vote was defeated

Angelita Sanchez
Timber Unity PAC – Director
Oregon Republican Party – Elections Chair

During the short session this year, I was working in Salem in Senator Hayden’s office. I noticed a ballot measure that was passed by legislative referral. It was HB2004 or what would be known now as M117, Ranked Choice Voting. It had just been pushed through. I thought to myself, I have to do something.

Flashback to October of 2023, when I was attending a Wasco County fundraiser, I had the honor of sitting next to Governor Sarah Palin. We talked at length about RCV, how it was coming to Oregon and what it did to her race in Alaska. I said we have to act now and she agreed.

On the flipside, I have seen failed petition attempt after failed petition attempt. It’s such a heavy lift to gather 100’s of thousands of signatures by volunteer effort only. And it makes volunteers and PCP’s feel very defeated.

So I made a plan and researched how to submit ballot measure oppositional statements in the Voter Pamphlet statement. It’s not that easy if you have never done it before. And I had felt terribly guilty that #timberunity did not include an oppositional statement in the VPS against Measure 113, the quorum absence ballot measure. As a matter of fact, #timberunity Attorney Shawn Lindsay said in another meeting I attended “There was no opposition statement against Measure 113 and it was political malpractice.” I again thought to myself, I just could not let it happen again on this, not for this big of a change in our elections process. I felt like all of our hard work would be upended if it passed.

So I put two and two together. What if the ORP spearheaded an initiative that got PCP’s active and successful in pushing back against RCV? What if the ORP had their first ever oppositional statement? What type of timeframe and process are we looking at? I thought to myself, how encouraged would everybody be if we focused on doing something and were successful?

I called Chair Hwang and Vice Chair Plowhead in February of 2024 and proposed this idea. They loved it. I also talked to my Chair of Linn County, Ben Roche. I told him we needed to lead this effort and he agreed. So I researched the timeline, made a plan and presented a packet of information to the Linn County Republican executive committee. They were ready to forge ahead.

Next, I posted about it on The ORP PCP Facebook page, on March 2nd. I also spoke about it at the ORP March 15th, State Central Committee Meeting and challenged the counties to act. I continued pushing back and spoke with a handful of county chairs and PCPs about the petition process and oppositional plan, and the rest is well, history.

I’ll read what I wrote on Facebook from March 2nd, 2024.

“I realize that we are all gearing up for the end of session, and the next State Central Committee meeting. But after that, we have to fight for our lives.

Rank choice voting has been placed on the November ballot. I do not know of any PAC’s or any traction from people in our party. If we do not find a way to campaign hard, and campaign effectively on this issue, essentially all the hopes and dreams of taking back our State…or rolling back bad policy…are essentially over.

We desperately need to come up with a game plan. I’m of the opinion that it’s going to have to be a hardcore grassroots effort, as we are the only ones that will lose it all. This is the extreme left selling this idea to voters in this state. And we have a ton of catch up to do…

It’s interesting to me that they are marketing this change as simple and more fair. And with what the voters believed with all the measures they voted for last cycle, they will be gullible enough to take the bait. All of our hard work this cycle to try and replace our walkout hero’s, all the good bills that have passed, or bad bills we have blocked…all with the potential to be overturned by this one ballot measure. We must STOP RANKED CHOICE VOTING.

To file an opposing measure statement in the VPS it’s $1200 or 500 signatures. All 36 counties must make this happen, and all the other opposing PAC’s! It’s critical.”

When the time came to file petitions for oppositional statements, we were shovel ready. The plan worked flawlessly. We gathered the signatures with ease. By the time Chair Roche turned in our own Linn County oppositional statement petition into the SOS, the employee told him that she was processing about 50 opposition statements via petition, ones primarily against RCV. So many that the SOS said they had to set aside a day solely for this, as they had never seen anything like it.

Ultimately that efforts equaled around $60,000 worth of grassroots buying power. And the ORP as a whole gathered more than 15,000 unique petition signatures for our statements. Again, I don’t think the state had ever seen anything like this before.

When the online VPS was first published, I believe I counted that collectively we published 54 oppositional statements by pure grassroots effort, countering their 49 in support. Those supporting statements were primarily written by two people, ones were directors of the Yes on M117 effort. It did catch the proponents way off guard, and caused them to scramble.

We didn’t have a lot of resources but we did have a boatload of people power. I thought to myself, what if we would not have taken it upon ourselves to be proactive? All those supporting astroturf statements and very little if any, opposed. We would have surely lost.

And not more than a day or two, after the VPS was published online, I learned PDXReal tried to take up the cause too. They planned a forum that nobody wanted to speak at, but now was fully slated with 3 opposing voices and 3 supporting voices. Imagine that. And because of the forum and the opposition, OPB and even the Oregonian realized they needed to have a discussion. The Oregonian reached out to our champion, Representative Ed Diehl and invited him to their endorsement panel forum. His testimony as well as others, pushed their recommendation to a NO on Measure 117. We also reached out to Willamette Week and asked them about a forum, and sure as all get out, they had one, invited us and heard both sides. They also gave M117 a recommendation of NO.

We had won. In my mind, we had won! We had two of the most prominent voices telling Multnomah county voters to Vote NO on M117.

Our little saplings grew into a forest of opposition overnight. Last I heard, my PAC “Protect Democracy” spent around $10,000 to oppose, while the “Yes on M117” spent nearly $10 million dollars of out of state dark money, to try and buy their way in. So much so that even Vice Presidential candidate, Governor Tim Walz tried to endorse the measure and pitch to Oregonians, last minute as a Hail Mary. It was unbelievable. I was happy they had to spend all that money and lose.

Portland voted last cycle for a local measure to experiment with this sort of elections this cycle. They had an extreme hybrid of RCV. The Oregonian recently reported that 20% of voters did not participate in the city council race and that 29% of the poorest folks in Portland also didn’t not participate. Everything we knew to be true, was in fact true. And now everybody knows it too.

Ultimately, the little engine that could, DID. And Measure 117 went down in flames. A real David vs Goliath situation, right before our eyes. And we won, We The People WON! True Story.