![]() Wilde rallied citizens to testify in favor of new boundaries that would still have left him still in a safely Democratic seat but likely would have given nearby conservative areas to a GOP lawmaker.ĭemocrats passed a new legislative map that will likely ensure those rural areas have a Republican representative - and Wilde’s house is in it. The jutting boundary of House District 11, he said, unnaturally tied liberal and populous Eugene to more rural areas, effectively disenfranchising conservative voters who would be stuck with a Democratic representative. Last year, as lawmakers were preparing to rejigger boundaries for the state’s 90 legislative districts, Wilde parted company with others in his party by insisting that his Eugene House district had been gerrymandered in Democrats’ favor a decade before. It is true that Wilde feels like a sacrificial lamb. “You can’t spell ‘martyr,’” she said, “without ‘Marty.’” Redistricting and the aftermath Barbara Smith Warner, a Portland Democrat who has been a Wilde target, offered a sharper take. David Brock Smith, a Port Orford Republican who is no stranger to the kind of eye-poking Wilde has taken up of late. Wilde is just exposing the dark corners of the process that the public doesn’t really see or understand,” said Rep. Wilde has been undeterred, and in a year when a growing list of lawmakers have signaled they will not seek re-election, he is perhaps ensuring he will be least missed by his party colleagues. Wilde’s behavior has become a curiosity in the fast-expiring short session - delighting minority Republicans happy to have an assist in skewering their rivals and maddening Democrats who are not used to one of their own so thoroughly bucking the script.īut just as Republicans often see their protests fall flat, this prodigal Democrat has found himself largely shouting into the void.įour separate attempts by Wilde to rescue bills that were trapped in committee have gone nowhere, with even Democrats who in theory support the proposals unwilling to back his procedural maneuvers. If we don’t see you standing up for the people, no one else will either.” “Once someone starts running away, others will follow. 16, in a speech that strongly suggested House Speaker Dan Rayfield had turned his back on democratic principles he’d once supported. Wilde has been targeting fellow Democrats for what he says is hypocrisy in his last legislative session. Marty Wilde, D-Eugene, on the House floor. He has repeatedly stood to call out his party leaders for not supporting what he says are principles of good government. He embraced Republicans on the chamber floor as “the party of democracy” and penned an op-ed sharply critical of what he says is a top-down Democratic power structure. As lawmakers have worked through their even-year short session, Wilde has ceased meeting in private with other Democrats to discuss upcoming bills.
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