The most crushing defeat for Democrats on November 8 was quite obviously Hillary Clinton’s. The party’s next most significant loss, however, may well be that of Brad Avakian. He was an obscure candidate for what might seem to be a relatively inconsequential position. But as it turns out, Oregon’s secretary of state race provides an instructive lesson about the Democratic party’s culture-war extremism.
Avakian briefly gained national headlines last year when, in his capacity as the Oregon commissioner of labor, he fined Aaron and Melissa Klein, the proprietors of Sweet Cakes By Melissa, $135,000 for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian commitment ceremony. (Gay marriage was not yet legal in Oregon at the time.) The Kleins said they would be happy to serve gay customers, but they drew the line at participating in a specific ceremony contradicting their religious beliefs. What was especially notable about the fine Avakian doled out was its egregiously punitive nature. Owing to public outrage, the Kleins had shuttered their bakery a year and a half earlier. Aaron Klein had then taken a job as a garbageman to support his family.
However, Avakian had his eye on higher office. It was very likely the case that Avakian saw the publicity surrounding his draconian treatment of the Kleins as a launching pad for his campaign to become Oregon’s secretary of state. From there it would have been a short hop to governor.
But it didn’t work out that way. Avakian didn’t just lose his race—it was the first statewide victory for a Republican in the now-solidly blue Beaver State in 14 years. A Republican hadn’t been elected secretary of state since 1980. Compounding Avakian’s humiliation, Hillary Clinton won the state by 10 points. Merely having a “D” by his name should have dragged him across the finish line.
It helped that Avakian faced a skilled Republican opponent. Dennis Richardson was a respected former gubernatorial candidate who, impressively, garnered a number of high-profile newspaper endorsements. Still, the Oregonian‘s endorsement of Richardson specifically criticized Avakian for articulating “a more activist role defined more by his borderless ambitions” and further warned about Avakian’s promise to abuse the mostly nonpolitical powers of the secretary of state to audit political enemies. They did not specifically ding Avakian for policing thought crimes at Mom-and-Pop bakeries, but given the notoriety the episode earned him, the subtext was there. If Avakian’s brand of aggressively enforced identity politics didn’t earn him the support of liberal editorial boards or voters in Portland’s suburbs, it’s hard to imagine it’s a winning political platform outside very small, very liberal jurisdictions.
Yet nothing about Avakian’s agenda was outside the mainstream of his party. Across the country there were episodes where the Democratic-media-industrial complex wantonly and aggressively tried to undermine religious liberty and enforce the party’s intolerant and destructive beliefs about sexual ethics. Across the country, florists, bakers, T-shirt printers, pharmacists, and pizza parlor owners found themselves the object of two-minute-hate campaigns because they dared to believe that the First Amendment spells out a reasonable balance between merely operating a commercial enterprise and being forced to swallow one’s religious convictions. All the while, Democrats were too blind to see that they were sending a message to America’s Christians: We’re coming for you.
President Obama came to power ostensibly opposing gay marriage. He leaves office using the force and might of the federal government to push transgender high school locker rooms, oblivious to how such radicalism cuts against Americans’ core beliefs. Contrary to the outgoing president’s arrogant rhetoric, nothing about cultural change is inevitable. Our culture reflects what we choose to cultivate. The limits of bake-me-a-cake-or-else liberalism have now been revealed. The sooner Democrats come to grips with the unpopularity of their punitive social crusades, the better off their party—and our country—will be.
