“Oregoners” is up now on Amazon at https://denniskneale.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/OREGONERS-COVER-PHOTO-rotated.jpeg
This column first ran on Newsmax.com at:
https://www.newsmax.com/denniskneale/oregonians-kotek-taxes/2026/05/21/id/1257105/
Oregon Voters Revolt, Spelling Trouble for Democrats in ’26
Oregon’s largest newspaper had some bad news to report recently, and it offers a cautionary signal to blue cities and states across the nation.
In the Portland area, one of the most liberal enclaves in the country, some voters are fed up with the homeless crisis, high taxes, soft-on-crime policies, and other ills that have arisen from years of liberal Democrat policies.
A new poll commissioned by The Oregonian shows that 40% of people in Portland are so fed up with high taxes, and other annoying factors, that they may move elsewhere in the next five years.
Of those who want to leave, half say they would exit Oregon altogether.
Additionally, the survey reveals that in the larger, tri-county Portland metro area, 36% of respondents may leave, almost 60% of them to a different state.
They listed high taxes as one of the two top reasons for making an exit, as did 55% of the Portland city dwellers who said they may leave the area.
High home prices and public safety also top the list of reasons to depart.
This follows another poll taken last fall by Public Opinion Strategies, which found that two-thirds of voters in Oregon say the state’s economy is on the “seriously wrong track” and expect wages to stagnate or decline.
More than half said they would consider leaving the state.
Thus the title of my new book, “Oregoners: How One State Chased Away Businesses and People.”
For more than 40 years I lived in one of the bluest of blue states: New York, more specifically, Brooklyn.
But New York (state pop. 20 million, 8.5 million in New York City) is so huge that it takes a longer time for the ill-effects to show up after years of misguided liberal policies.
Oregon, by contrast, is so much smaller, at 4.2 million with the Portland metro area posing 43% (1.8 million) of this total, that the damaging outcomes of wrongheaded policies show up in much sharper relief.
And they show up sooner.
This makes the state of Oregon, and its star city, a canary in the coal mine for blue states.
In recent years Oregon has lost thousands of jobs, high earners, and rich taxpayers from such state stalwarts as Intel, Nike, Dutch Bros Coffee, and Columbia Sportswear.
A central reason is high taxes, and Oregon just keeps piling them on.
In assessing Portland metro’s troubles in the new Oregonian poll, some 19% of voters said poor leadership was the biggest drawback, and 11% cited high taxes.
Another 11% cited housing affordability. But the homelessness crisis was, by far, the #1 concern for the highest share of the 600 voters surveyed in the Portland metro area.
Some 33% of people named homelessness as the most important problem locally.
This, despite the metro area’s spending more than $700 million a year on roughly 20,000 “unhoused” people, to use the au courant politically correct term.
In 2025, an official one-night count by Portland State University cited a 67% increase in the ranks of homelessness in two years.
Meanwhile, the Portland City Council may shut down 24% of the city’s permanent
shelter beds as part of a 20% cut from its homeless budget, shrinking it to $65 million.
Oregon boasts a multitude of tax types, including a personal income tax at the state and city levels, a Preschool for All tax, an arts tax, a corporate activities tax, a Portland Clean Energy Fund climate change tax, a homeless services tax, and still more.
After Multnomah County (encompassing Portland and a few other cities) passed the preschool tax in 2020, in the next three years 310 of the 1,000 richest taxpayers in the county had moved to a new locale.
Meanwhile, a new $4.2 billion tax increase over 10 years for the state Department of
Transportation may turn out to be a bridge too far. Voter groups collected 250,000 signatures to get Measure 120, rescinding the tax package, on the November ballot; they needed only 78,000.
Gov. Tina Kotek, D-Ore., who is running for reelection, and her fellow Democrats bumped up the measure to the primary on May 19 to avoid getting thrown out of office with their new tax plan, which may go down in defeat.
Now, stunningly, the possibility arises that Gov. Kotek may be vulnerable in November. November. The Oregonian poll reveals that almost 60% of voters in Portland metro have a negative view of the governor, and only one-third have a positive view.
This, despite her representing north and northeast Portland in the state house for 15 years, including nine years as speaker.
The last time Oregon elected a Republican governor was in 1982. Oh my.
Dennis Kneale, a former anchor at CNBC and Fox Business, is host of the “What’s Bugging Me” podcast on Ricochet and is author of “The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk,” and “Oregoners: How One State Chased Away Businesses and People.” Read more Dennis Kneale Insider articles — Click Here Now.
