They're both in their 50s -- two guys you've
never heard of. They've never met, probably never will. But last week, from
300 miles down the road, one of them felt a shove from the other.
One's a longtime court bailiff and Oregon Department of Justice employee, a
lifelong law-and-order Republican who sometimes likes to stop by the
Milwaukie Elks Lodge for a cold one on the way home.
The other, the son of an international petroleum engineer, was schooled in
democratic socialism while attending state-run schools across Europe and
Asia. These days he spends his working hours pulling diesel engines from big
rigs down in Ashland.
The Republican is Thomas Tearnen of Clackamas. The longtime Democrat is Pat
Hayes.
Last week, they both quit -- not their jobs, but their political parties.
For Tearnen -- an easy-going guy who voted for Nixon, Reagan and George H.
Bush -- the decision came slowly.
He's always considered himself a patriot -- not a hawk, but somebody who
shared the Republican stance on strong national defense.
Since the days of Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield and Norma Paulus, he's embraced
Republicans "because they believed in staying out of your private life and
they didn't believe in spending money we didn't have. But they believed in
funding social programs to a responsible level."
Increasingly, in the past few years, he's been unable to find a connection
between his long-held Republican pragmatism and the party's 21st century
vision.
"Who am I going to vote for? Ron Saxton? Kevin Mannix? Those candidates have
nothing to offer me. Any more, none of them do.
"Opposing abortion and gay marriage will not fix anything. And don't tell me
it's God's law you're following. It's like they say -- if Christ came down
and saw what was going on in his name, he'd change his name to Bob.
"Instead of telling people how to live their lives, tell me this -- how are
we going to fund schools?"
Still, becoming a Democrat was not an option. "No issues, no leaders, no
vision." Tearnen doesn't like that he will no longer be able to vote in
primaries. But the Republican push to the extreme right, he said, left him
with no choice. "I had to be able to look at myself in the mirror in the
morning."
Ten days ago, he drove to the Clackamas County elections office in Gladstone
and pulled the plug on 34 years of Republican support. Now he's proud his
political designation is "Not Affiliated With Any Party."
Last Tuesday, his letter to the editor explaining his decision was published
in The Oregonian, in which he also praised U.S. troops fighting overseas and
then said, "If we do not speak up, we fail not only ourselves, but them as
well."
On Tuesday, Hayes picked up his morning paper and read Tearnen's letter.
Wednesday morning he drove to the Jackson County Courthouse and joined the
swelling ranks of "Not Affiliated With Any Party."
"People say, 'You realize you can't vote in the primary.' " Hayes said. "But
the primary is not what I'm interested in. I'm interested in good government
and good leadership. And I'm not seeing that anywhere in Oregon.
"Maybe I'm not your typical blue-collar worker. But we're not a bunch of
beer-swilling morons; we're a lot smarter than people give us credit for.
Both parties have abandoned us in favor of extreme political views. It's our
job to reject that."
Both Tearnen and Hayes say they're interested in learning more about former
Bend Republican Ben Westlund, who's making a run at the governorship as an
independent. But they're far from committing to him, or anybody else.
"I'm feeling nervous about the future of this country right now," Hayes
said. "But we'll get over this. We always do. There are people out there who
we don't even know about who will step up and lead us."
Yes, there are.
Including two guys in their 50s who have never met.
