HER FIRST TIME

It was nearing closing time at our county Democratic HQ. She walked in the door carefully, not advancing towards the desk where I sat, or the work table where Juli and Margo sat, but staying close to the door. She wanted a paper, 'I voted sticker'. It was her first time voting. Upon hearing that, we congratulated her and asked her some of her first impressions. She is an 18 year-old Hispanic girl who pre-registered at 16. She has been waiting these two years for this day. Juli bought her an I VOTED Button so she can save it in her scrapbook. " You Will remember this day all of your life", Juli said. We then shared our own first-time voting experiences.

What a mixed bag of voting experiences this young Hispanic girl must be experiencing. My own first time, I voted to re-elect Tom McCall, a Republican, for governor. I have never regretted that vote, even as I detest the party he was part of. In subseqent elections I would vote to re-elect Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood. I would not regret those votes either. It did not occur to that young me that those two Republicans could have changed the majority status for Senate Republicans. I was not even aware that Democrats had a comfortable majority in the Senate. Politics was different in those days. Some Republicans were actually pleasant. The kind you could have coffee with and not be checking your watch constantly.

While she didn't say who she voted for or why, we can be pretty confident of her choices. One candidate has vilified people who look like her. Given the ad hoc nature of that candidate and his government employees,  she might not be comfortable where ever she lives, should he win. We can be pretty sure she has read Something about Project 2025. We can be pretty sure that some people in that party would make voting more difficult for her people. She may or may not be pro-choice, but the Democratic candidate will promote laws where the Victor makes medical decisions for their patient, not a stupid Republican male that has worked with that party to make sure that Republicans have the right to choose the people who vote for them in that state. Maybe she views this as a seminal event; the very real possibility that we have a second president of color in our history, and that that president of color is a female. Maybe it was all of these things. What we can be sure of, is that this young woman is very likely never to be a Republicans voter. My first voting experiences could have beren the gateway to becoming a regular Republicans voter, had the rest of the party not been repugnant to my political sensibilities. Tom McCall was a Republican moderate. Among the many things that he gave us for posterity was, the Oregon Public Beach Law. The Oregon Bottle Bill, and the Urban Growth Boundary law that prevents urban encroachment on exurban farm land. He even put on a rock festival to draw anti-war activists out of Portland during the American Legion Convention. As for Hatfield and Packwood, they were against the Vietnam War. Even those three icons of Oregon politics could not entice me to join the party that estilo held a strong wing of Joe McCarthy followers and John Birch Society adherents. Perhaps this young Hispanic woman Will be inspired by the integrity of Liz Cheney, without her father's baggage, but I'm pretty sure she Will see Liz Cheney as an exception in a party that has failed to display the tiniest shred of integrity in her lifetime and no longer represents the higher principles of democracy she was raised to believe. Rep. Cheney has, with stark irony, been joined by her father and William Krystol.

I learned as a first-time voter that popular democracy meant that you voted for the candidate that upholds your political values. She has learned that popular democracy is a defense from those who would steal government and replace it with an authoritorian form;  a population that would be forced to "get over their dictator-phobia".