Dana Haynes on local and national election surprises

PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) — Tuesday's election brought us surprises and tense moments locally and nationally. Dana Haynes, Director of Editorial Content at the Portland Tribune, has been a political insider in the city, including as a staffer for former Portland Mayor Charlie Hales.

On this week's Eye on Northwest Politics, Haynes shared some key takeaways from election night, including Portland's election of Keith Wilson for mayor. Haynes recalled when Wilson first appeared on his radar when he was running for City Council several years back.

"At the time, we thought although he is a newcomer, he will be back. And when he hit the ground running on this race, he was on message," Haynes recalled. "Every time I saw him, the man had one message. It was homelessness, homelessness, homelessness. And he never veered off it so early on."

Regarding the upcoming changes to the structure of City Hall, Haynes describes it as a "vastly, entirely different creature" from the current iteration.

"First off, this fellow is not going to be the commissioner for the police department or any other bureau. He's not going to be running a bureau the way the mayors have for 100 years," he said. "Secondly, he's going to have to deal with the city manager. We've never had one. We have one in every other city in Oregon, we just don't have one here. Secondly, there's going to be a City Council president that might be the most influential, important person in City Hall, which has always been the mayor. How are those two going to get along? I guess we're going to find out."

The state of Oregon had Measure 117, which would have taken ranked-choice voting statewide. However, it was overwhelmingly voted down. Haynes believes this was due to the measure being not only poorly written, but poorly timed.

"I think it was the wording of it and the fact that the legislature opted themselves out of it," he said. "People thought, 'Oh, they don't want it, but they put it on the ballot. That seems odd to me.' So I think the timing was poor. If they had let Portland and Multnomah County, in two years, run a few of these and then try it statewide, I think it might have succeeded."

Meanwhile, Measure 118, which was also voted down, would have given $1,600 in free money. Haynes said this was likely due to this being "a scam run by outsiders who are not Oregonians."

"It would have blown a huge hole in the state budget. And I think that message coming from every stripe of Oregon politics was enough to convince voters that this was a con job," he noted.

Shifting to the national stage, Donald Trump going back to the White House come January and his victory was pretty decisive. Regarding what the media could have missed when it came to Trump's return to power, Haynes noted we need to stop believing in what the polls indicate.

"My theory is that polling was a science in the 20th century and the 21st, I think polling no longer works, partly because of cell phones, partly because people just don't want to tell you how they're going to vote. They don't think it's any of your bloody business," he said. "So I think there's going to come a time – and I was hoping it would have been a couple of years ago – when we just simply stopped believing the polls, because the polling science has failed in this century."

Nationally, the Democrats leaned to abortion and protecting democracy as their core issues. Republicans focused on the border, the economy, as well as some transgender issues. Haynes believes this boils down to the messenger, not necessarily the message.

"Donald Trump has some flaws as a human being, but he's an incredibly good messenger. He gets his message across to the people he needs to get his message across," he said. "If another conservative Republican had tried to do that same message, he might have gotten slaughtered. So I think the messenger might be more important than the message. I think that's been the take-away for me right now, but I also think there's going to be doctoral theses and books written about this for the next 30 years, at least."

Watch the full interview in the video above.