Oregon, District Attorneys, and You
Everyone has seen a courtroom drama they know and love. Whether it is Ally McBeal, The Good Wife, or Suits, the story is usually the same: big-shot corporate attorney, pesky public defender, bitter courtroom rivalry. But who are these prosecutors?
We often overlook the District Attorney as just another seat we elect to office, someone we check a box for and rarely actually Google for their credentials. But District Attorneys, and the prosecutors they employ, do a whole lot more than select cases and remain the annoying antagonist to every ambitious private counsel. District Attorneys directly influence which cases are brought to court, which charges are actually dismissed, and who receives plea bargains or reduced sentencing. District Attorneys have the power to determine what a region’s legal ethos will be.
While they might often be overlooked in government, they are vital to the political makeup of a state. Which is why they are the next branch of Oregon’s local government I tackled.
Oregon has 36 District Attorneys across the state, 10 of whom are female. While there are fewer DAs than any of the other seats of government I’ve analyzed, the gender disparity is larger as well. Roughly 27% of Oregon’s DAs are women. The map is shocking, with more blue than any other map we have built for this project yet.
Additionally, the female DAs are not always located in the more urban regions, which was a trend we noticed with the other elected officials. Instead, they are seemingly spread out across the state, and most prevalent in rural counties. While Hood River and Lane counties are more densely populated, Wheeler and Union counties are some of the most rural parts of Oregon.
Not all District Attorneys included their demographic information in their voter registration, opting for confidential instead. Not particularly surprising, as it is a nonpartisan position, but still important to note. All of the other positions we have analyzed, including County Commissioner, have also been nonpartisan, but with much smaller rates of confidential classification. 7 of the DAs kept their information confidential, or roughly 19%.
The DAs that did not, however, followed many of the trends we have found in the other officeholders. There were 13 Democrats, 13 Republicans, 5 Non-Affiliated, and 4 Independent District Attorneys. We saw fewer female DAs than when comparing other elected positions, so there was no party which had more women DAs than male DAs. While Democrats had more women DAs than other parties, women only constituted 39% of Democrat Party DAs.
Male District Attorneys
Of the male DAs, 11 (44%) were Republicans, 8 (32%) were Democrats, 3 (12%) were members of the Independent Party, and 3 (12%) were Non-Affiliated with any political party. The male DAs were spread out across the state, including in Portland, the most progressive metropolitan area. The party affiliation still followed a typical trend in Oregon, with more conservative individuals hailing from the more rural areas. There was one other DA (Wade McLeod, from Sherman County) that we could not find information on political party and his office did not respond to outreach.
Female District Attorneys
50% of the 10 female District Attorneys are registered Democrats. The rest are either Republican (20%), Non-Affiliated (20%), or Independent (10%). The liberal DAs are from Western Oregon, while the conservative DAs are from Eastern. This also follows the trends we have noticed in County Commissioners, School Board members, and Oregon’s voters.
The affiliation of Oregon’s DAs are somewhat similar to the rest of the state. The ratio of Democrats almost perfectly lines up, while the Republican affiliation is marginally larger than the general population. The two parties who differ significantly from their ratio of voters to District Attorneys are Non-Affiliates and the Oregon Independent Party. The Independent Party almost doubles its ratio of District Attorneys (10.81%) when looking at its percentage as voters (4.35%) to District Attorneys, and Non-Affiliated District Attorneys (10.81%) are less than a third as common as Non-Affiliated voters (34.12%)
Overall, there are consistent discrepancies in Oregon’s local elected positions between the ratio of voters aligned with a party — or Non-Affiliates — and their elected representatives. In every position, Republicans hold more power than is reflected in voter population alone. This is attributed to the geographic location of these affiliations, as the conservative population is more widespread than the liberal voters, who are concentrated in the metropolitan areas.
But it also begs some questions: are Oregon’s Non-Affiliated voters electing more conservative politicians? Do their political priorities lean more right than left? And, lastly, with the second highest voter registration being Non-Affiliated, why are there so few Non-Affiliated officeholders on all levels of elected government?
If you want to learn more yourself, check out our interactive map of Oregon’s voters and local government officials.
