Oregon Supreme Court Bans Republican State Senators From Running For Reelection

Ten Republican state senators in Oregon have been banned from running for reelection by the Oregon State Supreme Court after they staged a walkout last year that stretched for weeks and held up legislation. The Republicans were protesting bills put forth by Democrats, but a new law that was passed in the state in 2022 says that any lawmaker with more than 10 unexcused absences can no longer run for office in the state, and the Supreme Court of Oregon upheld the law last week. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

Check out our merch by visiting our store

Subscribe to our podcast

Become a member today!

Support us by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon, and help keep progressive media alive!

Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this video or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Ring of Fire's video content!

Support Ring of Fire by subscribing to our YouTube channel

Be sociable! Follow us on:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Late last week, the Oregon State Supreme Court ruled that 10 sitting Republican state senators are barred from running for reelection in this next election because they violated a state law passed by the voters in the state that says if you have more than 10 unexcused absences, you are barred legally from running in the next election after your current term ends. 10 Republican lawmakers last year staged a six week long walkout, the longest in the history of the state of Oregon. But they staged a six week walkout in order to not have to vote on legislation or to stall legislation regarding abortion rights, regarding transgender healthcare. So you've got all these women rights issues, you've got L-G-B-T-Q issues, and these Republican lawmakers said, we know it's gonna pass and we don't want it to pass because we don't want these people to have rights. Right? Screw them.

So we're just gonna not show up to work so you don't have a quorum, so you can pass this legislation. So they sat out for 10 weeks, or excuse me, six weeks in 20 23, 10 people for six weeks. But in 2022, voters in the state overwhelmingly passed the measure that says if you have more than 10 unexcused absences in any session, you cannot run for office again in the next election following the session where you had the more than 10 unexcused absences. So the issue was taken up by the Oregon State Supreme Court after the Secretary of State said, Nope, 10 Republicans, you can't run. And the Oregon State Supreme Court said, yeah, that's the letter of the law. That's what the people passed. You cannot run for office again. But it's only in the next election. So they're not going to be elected officials for a few years after that.

They are allowed legally under this legislation, they can come back and run again. But I like this. I like this legislation. I like this decision by the Supreme Court for not bastardizing what the voters passed. If this is what the voters wanted, then it should be implemented as is. And these lawmakers honestly shouldn't have even tried to fight it. And what's even dumber to me is that these lawmakers knew, they knew that this legislation had already passed before they did their walkout. So there's no saying like, oh, well we didn't know it was a thing. Yeah, you did. So when they went to the Supreme Court, by the way, they tried to argue that, well, the language of the law is actually a little vague and because you know, the term actually ends in like

January, but the election's in November. So technically like we could do that, the Oregon Supreme Court's like, no, this is dumb. Please stop making these idiotic arguments. So there's now 10 Republican state senators in the state of Oregon who will not be running for reelection this year, next year, whenever those elections are, and there isn't a thing they can do about it.