When Vic Atiyeh was in the last year of his life, he was happy to accept an accolade from a former aide calling him “Oregon’s last great governor.”

But as his personal archive was opened in 2013 at Pacific University — where he had been a trustee — Atiyeh also said he did not want his legacy to be the last Republican governor of Oregon.

Yet voters have elected only Democrats to the governor’s office since Atiyeh, formerly a state legislator from Beaverton and a businessman in Portland.

It’s the longest streak for either major party in Oregon history.

Republicans dominated statewide offices when Atiyeh was governor 40 years ago. They were led by Oregon’s U.S. senators of that era — Mark Hatfield and Bob Packwood, each with five victories — but also the secretary of state, state treasurer and attorney general, even though Democrats controlled the Legislature.

Republicans have become a threatened species at the statewide level. Just two Republicans have been elected to statewide office in the past two decades.

Their ranks are shrinking further.

Knute Buehler once carried the GOP banner in Oregon. Now he’s left the party.

In November, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden won the race for the White House, unseating one-term incumbent Republican Donald Trump. The win was certified and recertified after several statewide recounts, and was acknowledged by states’ elections officials, governors, secretaries of state, the U.S. Justice Department, an estimated 60 judges in about 100 lawsuits — often dismissed because of a lack of evidence — and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

But then came Jan. 6, when supporters of President Trump listened to several stirring speeches, then marched on the U.S. Capitol and invaded it by force, in an effort to overturn the will of the voters. Five people died. Many of the attackers used social media to brag about the incursion — in real time — while security cameras and the Washington press corps caught countless photos and videos of the effort to overthrow the election.

Despite all that, the executive committee of the Oregon Republican Party took a stance saying Trump actually won, and adopted a resolution branding the violent breach of the Capitol as a “false-flag operation” by parties other than the ones who bragged live on Facebook and Twitter as it was happening.

That’s when Knute Buehler, the 2018 Republican nominee for Oregon governor, left the party altogether.

Buehler, a physician and former state representative from Bend, says there is a route for Republicans to win again — but not by embracing “wacky conspiracy theories.”

“Our political system works best when there is a balance of power, and not when one party dominates, especially for such a long duration,” Buehler said. “Things get unbalanced and you do not get good policy. Instead you get a lot of people who are disenchanted, who feel shut out of the process and disregarded.

“But,” Buehler added, “it is a pretty hard route for a Republican right now, especially with the events in January.”

Decline and fall

Bob Packwood’s rise to the U.S. Senate in 1968 coincided with continued Republican dominance in Oregon over a couple of decades, despite a Democratic voter registration edge dating back to 1956. “But we have no bench” of potential candidates for statewide office, Packwood said, either in the Legislature or elsewhere.

Thousands more have left the party without fanfare.

According to the Oregon secretary of state, whose office compiles figures at the end of each month, registered Republicans statewide dropped by almost 8,500 from November to January. Republicans now constitute just 25.5% of all registered voters, compared with 36% 20 years ago.

Oregon’s share of registered Democrats also declined during those decades, even as their totals surged past the 1 million mark, from 39.4% in 2001 to 35.5% in 2021. The share of voters not affiliated with any party grew from 21.7% to 31.8%.

In those two decades, voters have elected Republicans statewide only twice.

One was Gordon Smith, who won a second term in the U.S. Senate in 2002 but lost six years later. He became president of the National Association of Broadcasters. He maintains a home in Pendleton, but has said he will not seek public office again.

The other was Dennis Richardson, a former state representative who lost to Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber in 2014, but was elected secretary of state two years later. Richardson died of cancer in 2019.

One of Richardson’s early endorsers for governor in 2013 was Atiyeh, who knew about second chances. He was elected governor on his second try in 1978 (he lost four years earlier) and was re-elected in 1982.

He endorsed most of the subsequent GOP nominees, with the likely exception in 1998 of Bill Sizemore, who won just 30% in a landslide loss to Kitzhaber.

But Atiyeh never endorsed his party’s rightward drift and focus on social issues.

“I never left my party,” he said in 2012. “My party left me.”