Numerous publications, and many candidates, are saying that control of the Oregon state senate is at stake in this election. Facially it's true of course, because there are enough seats up that if either party won enough, they would control the senate. Looking at individual races, though, I am doubtful that control is really in play this year.
Democrats currently have a 16-14 majority in the senate, which certainly looks close. There are two relatively marginal districts that Democrats hold which are up this year, too. District 16 is on the North Coast, with Columbia County and parts of Washington and Multnomah counties, too. This is the Democratic district up with the lowest performance by the president last year, about 54.2% of the two party vote. There moderate Democrat Betsy Johnson had no Republican file to challenge her, and she actually won the Republican nomination via write-in, so her only challenger is someone running on the Independent Party and Working Families Party lines. Failing to recruit a strong candidate in this district really cut down the Republican Party's ability to take the senate.
Among all of the other Democratic seats up, they only recruited two reasonably strong challengers. Meanwhile there are six Republican seats up this year, and only one of them is strongly Republican. Two more of them lean Republican a bit, but in one Democrats didn't field a candidate. Democrats are playing for the remaining four races, making it that much harder for Republicans to gain the two seats they would need to take the senate.
District 3: Incumbent Alan Bates (D) v. Dave Dotterer (R)
Obama percentage in 2012: 55.2%
State House vote in 2012: 43.3% Democratic (the Republican seat was uncontested)
Victory in 2010: 50.3-49.7%
Dotterer took on Bates in 2010 and just narrowly lost. I have been told by numerous sources that Bates was taken by surprise by how close it was, and had taken the race for granted. That's not the case this year, as he's been fundraising fairly well and has even run TV ads. So is Dotterer, though, in fact so are most of the candidates in the races here. The 3rd district is in Jackson County, with Ashland and Medford as well as Phoenix, Talent, and Jacksonville. The area saw high Democratic turnout in the primary this year, and I expect high turnout this fall too, due to similar reasons: GMO ballot measures.
What had been a pretty close money race has more recently seen Dotterer pull in a lot of donations, and he now leads in total raised by a lot, but that's partially because business PACs just dumped a lot of money into races. With Dotterer's ad buys, though, Bates now has a roughly 2-1 cash on hand advantage.
I expect the work Bates is doing, and decent turnout among Democrats will carry the day for Bates, but this is still the Republicans' top pick-up opportunity in the state, and so they're working for it too. I consider the race to Lean Democratic.
District 8: Incumbent Betsy Close (R) v. State Rep. Sara Gelser (D)
Obama in 2012: 59.2%
State House vote in 2012: 52.8% Democratic
Victory in 2010: 55.1-44.9%
Betsy Close (R-Albany) is not the popular moderate Republican who was re-elected by 10 points in 2010. That was Frank Morse, who retired in 2012. Close is more conservative, and was appointed to fill the vacancy. Gelser represents Corvallis in the state house and has been aggressively raising money and talking to voters. While other candidates are tweeting about issues, she tweets about volunteers signed up and doors knocked. She's raised roughly twice what Close has, and an internal poll showed Gelser leading Close 52-42 back in July.
I thought that when Morse retired we'd win this seat with even just a decent candidate. Sara Gelser isn't taking this one for granted, and should she win it won't just be because the district leans Democratic generally, but because she's working for it. All signs are pointing to this as a likely Democratic pick-up. I consider the race to Lean Democratic.
District 11: Incumbent Peter Courtney (D) v. County Commissioner Patti Milne (R)
Obama in 2012: 58% Obama
State House vote in 2012: 58.2% Democratic
Victory in 2010: 54.8-45.2%
I could pretty much just post what I did back in February about this race. This is a fairly strong Democratic district, around the upper limit of where even a strong Republican could compete, and Senate President Peter Courtney is no push-over. He held on easily in 2010, and redistricting made the district even a little more Democratic, picking up more of downtown Salem. It's the most Hispanic senate district in the state, stretching from central Salem up the I-5 corridor to Woodburn. That generally means low turnout, but even in 2010 that wasn't a decisive factor, and with Measure 88 on the ballot that really may not be an issue.
Courtney has among the most massive warchests of any state legislator, while his challenger's fundraising has been middling. She's relying on her prominence as a county commissioner, I suppose, but Courtney is definitely advantaged here. This is really the Republicans' only hope for a pick-up outside of district 3, though, so they're really talking this race up. I consider it to be Likely Democratic, though.
District 15: Incumbent Bruce Starr (R) v. former State Rep. Chuck Riley (D)
Obama in 2012: 57.7% Obama
State House vote in 2012: 53.1% Democratic
Victory in 2010: 52.3-47.7%
Riley, who represented half of this district from 2005-2011, challenged Starr in 2010 and held him to an pretty narrow victory. Riley represented Forest Grove, Cornelius, and part of Hillsboro, while the rest of the district is more of Hillsboro, the small town of North Plains, and a bit of rural area. This is an extremely diverse and Democratic-trending area, but Starr has played a relative moderate and has held the district for over a decade now. Whether he's entrenched himself is another question.
In 2002 Kulongoski did about 5 points worse in the district than statewide, and Starr outperformed Republican gubernatorial nominee Kevin Mannix by over 10 points. In 2006 Kulnogoski ran about 2.5 points worse in this district than he did statewide, and Starr ran about 7 points ahead of Kulongoski's opponent, Ron Saxton. In 2010 Kitzhaber ran about 1.65 points behind his statewide numbers, and Starr outperformed Chris Dudley by about 1.4 points. Starr won in 2002 by 28 points, in 2006 by about 10 points, and in 2010 by less than 5. His shares of the vote have been dropping absolutely, as the district is coming closer in line with the statewide vote, and as there are fewer and fewer swing voters. In presidential races, by comparison, in 2004 the district was about D+3, in 2012 it was about D+6. Starr is on the edge of a rapidly crumbling cliff.
Starr still has advantages, though. He has a wide fundraising lead, for one. Riley's fundraising has been pretty low. But coming to the rescue are outsides, including billionaire Tom Steyer, who's putting money into OLCV to aid Riley, and Michael Bloomberg, who put in $22k to help him against Starr, who's proudly anti-gun control.
Riley says his polling has shown the race a "dead heat", which tells me he's probably narrowly down, but there will also be a complication this year. In 2010 Starr narrowly beat Riley in a two-way race. Now Starr will have to deal with a Libertarian on the ballot. In HD-30 in 2012, which is the half that Riley didn't represent, Democrat Joe Gallegos retook the district in part thanks to a Libertarian candidate taking more votes than the margin between Gallegos and the Republican. Given the advantages both sides have, the complication of a three-way race, and that Starr will likely have to overcome Merkley and Kitzhaber winning his district widely, I'd give the edge to Starr but I consider this to be a tossup.
District 20: Incumbent Alan Olsen (R) v. Jamie Damon (D)
Obama in 2012: 48.8%
State House vote in 2012: 43.6% Democratic
Victory in 2010: 50.25-49.75%
This is formerly the district of Kurt and Martha Schrader, where incumbent Alan Olsen scraped by Martha Schrader in 2010 by a mere 227 votes. Redistricting made it about 4-5 points more Republican, giving up a stretch of territory leading up to Milwaukie and Portland in exchange for more rural areas east of Oregon City, taking in Estacada, but the core of Canby, Oregon City, and Gladstone are still there.
That Democrats looked weak here in 2012 diminished my hope of winning the district back this year. Obama narrowly lost the district, Brent Barton in HD-40 so narrowly won, and unlike in 2008 and 2010 Democrats underperformed the top of the ticket in this area. In 2008 Democrats Toby Forsberg and Brent Barton performed extraordinarily well in state house campaigns here, and in 2010 Barton and Martha Schrader outperformed the Kitzhaber campaign by about 5 and about 3 points, respectively. Democrats especially were able to overperform in the rural areas of the district east of Oregon City. SUSA just showed Kitzhaber up 12 points, and I think that's probably close to how he'll do. If he does that, he'll probably barely lose this district or even win it, and Jamie Damon will need to do just a bit better to clinch this. If she's running strong like Clackamas Democrats did in 2010 and 2008, she can pull it off.
And there's reason to believe she can. Olsen (R-Canby) was driftwood washed ashore in 2010, winning a race nobody expected him to by a hair, and he's impressed few since. And while Damon (D-Eagle Creek) lost her first race in 2012, she's been competitive in fundraising and apparently internal polling has shown her slightly ahead. As a result outside groups are coming in to help her. Given all of the above I think the race probably tilts toward the Republican, but I think it's a tossup.
District 26: Incumbent Chuck Thomsen (R) v. Robert Bruce (D)
Obama in 2012: 53.49% Obama
State House vote in 2012: 50.4% Democratic
Victory in 2010: 53-47%
This district used to be slightly more conservative, and represented by Democrat Rick Metsger. He retired from the senate in 2010 and we lost it. The area saw competitive races in 2008, 2010, and 2012, and this year will likely again. Yet at this point I think we are likely to fall short. Incumbent Chuck Thomsen has successfully cast himself as a moderate, and this district, home of Congressman Greg Walden, is willing to vote for relatively moderate Republicans, despite leaning slightly Democratic.
Making things more difficult for Democratic nominee Robert Bruce, he lags far behind Thomsen in money, and it doesn't seem like he's getting the kind of outside support our other challengers are getting. Still, both parties seem to have a high floor here and an underfunded challenger for a state house district based in Hood River nearly won last time, so there is a chance of a surprise. Overall I consider this race to Lean Republican.
Conclusion
The best outcome for Republicans would be losing nothing and defeating both Alan Bates and Peter Courtney, picking up two seats and shifting the senate to a 16-14 Republican majority. But to do that they'd have to knock of the well-funded Senate President in a strongly Democratic-leaning district, and also hold onto an even more Democratic district in Corvallis and Albany that they're likely to lose. I think the most reasonable good outcome for Republicans would be to hold fast at the current 16-14 Democratic majority by losing SD-08 and picking up SD-03. I doubt we're losing SD-03, though, and at the same time we have good shots at picking up SD-15 and SD-20, and with a small chance of even snagging SD-26. In the end I think it is unlikely we'll come out of November without a Democratic majority with between 16 and 18 seats.
Typing it doesn't make it happen, though. We all have to vote, and those with time or money need to volunteer or give. My ratings are based on Democrats doing what we need to do: the candidates running decent campaigns, the volunteers showing up and contacting voters, and the voters, well, voting. Without everyone doing their part it it won't work. And with important ballot measures on the ballot, even if you live in the least competitive, super Republican or Democratic districts, we all have reason to vote this year.