My name is Susan Fischer-Maki. I grew up in Southern Oregon and have built my life here in Josephine County. In that time, I have known many Republicans. They have been members of my family, friends, coworkers, business owners, public servants and community leaders. Some have been people I have worked alongside for decades. I’m not a registered Republican, so we haven’t always agreed about politics, and sometimes we have disagreed quite a bit. But when I think about the Republicans I have known and respected, I don’t first think about a particular policy position or something written by a party platform. I think about how they carried themselves.
They worked hard. They showed up. They took responsibility. They helped their neighbors, kept their word and tried to be honest even when honesty was inconvenient. When things got difficult, they stood strong. They took pride in their community. And when there was a problem, they didn’t spend all their time complaining about it online. They rolled up their sleeves and figured out what they could do.
I don’t know that any of my Republican friends would have sat down and called those things “Republican values.” They were simply values they lived. And lately I have found myself wondering: Are these still the qualities we expect from Republican elected leadership in Josephine County?
That isn’t a rhetorical question. I genuinely think it is one worth asking.
For much of my life, the Republicans I knew tended to have a strong sense of personal responsibility. If you made a decision, you owned it. If you made a mistake, you acknowledged it. If something wasn’t working, you tried something else. There was also a certain toughness to it, but toughness wasn’t about being the loudest person in the room. It wasn’t measured by how angry you could become or how harshly you could describe someone you disagreed with.
The Republicans I have known often believed strongly in individual responsibility, but that individualism didn’t mean turning your back on your community. Quite the opposite. You helped your neighbor put up a fence. You coached Little League. You joined Rotary or volunteered at church. You served on a nonprofit board. You supported the local business down the street. You showed up when somebody was sick or a family was struggling. You didn’t have to agree with everyone in town to understand that you were all part of the same community.
I have been thinking about that a lot lately.
Character Matters
One of the people who has caused me to think more deeply about this is Jim Goodwin. Jim spent years leading Josephine County’s Juvenile Justice Department, working alongside law enforcement, judges, public defenders, local government officials and community organizations on public-safety issues affecting Josephine County. Jim is also a former Grants Pass City Councilor who understands the difficult job of elected leadership.
Jim has described himself as having been a young, active and inspired conservative during the 1980s and 1990s. When he recently endorsed my campaign, he shared a phrase from the conservative politics of his younger years that has stayed with him ever since:
“Character matters.”
Jim wrote that those words still guide him today. When deciding whether to support someone for public office, he said, “I refuse to vote for an individual at any level of government if I am unable to check the character box.”
I’ve thought a lot about that line, and not simply because Jim is supporting me. Character matters. Do we still believe that? And maybe more importantly, do we apply that test as rigorously to people on our own political side as we do to people on the other side?
A Different Kind of Republican Leadership
People who have lived in Josephine County for a while will remember another local Republican: Brady Adams. Adams was a businessman and banker from Grants Pass who represented Southern Oregon in the Legislature and served as president of the Oregon Senate for the 1997 and 1999 sessions.
He was unquestionably a Republican. His political priorities included reducing government spending, overseeing the state budget and returning excess tax revenue to taxpayers. But that wasn’t the entirety of his public life. Adams served on the boards of more than 20 nonprofit organizations and led more than 50 community projects. He helped create BearFest. He supported public art. He was involved in restoring the Grants Pass riverfront and had a role in efforts to restore libraries in Josephine County. When the Oregon Legislature honored him after his death, lawmakers remembered both sides of that legacy: fiscal conservatism and deep investment in community, our community.
That combination is worth remembering because Brady Adams could believe government should spend less money without believing that everything government did was bad. He could be a Republican without treating Democrats as enemies. He could argue forcefully about taxes and budgets and still spend enormous amounts of his own time strengthening community institutions.
There was room for disagreement because governing a community required something beyond disagreement. Eventually, somebody had to build something, solve the problem and bring people together. That “can-do” spirit is one of the things I have always admired about many of the Republicans I have known.
Candidates, Not Just Parties
Former Josephine County Commissioner Keith Heck recently expressed a similar idea when he endorsed me. Keith is another Republican I have known and respected even though we don’t agree about everything.
His endorsement began with a simple sentence: “I believe it wise to consider ‘candidates’ not just Parties.”
Keith went on to talk about character, respect and the ability to disagree without simply trying to overpower the other person. He also offered his own sharp criticism of what he described as the current Republican “Anti-Everything” Party. The larger question, for me, behind Keith’s words is one I think deserves consideration: Has party loyalty become more important than the qualities we once expected from the people carrying the party’s name?
When I look around at our local politics today, I have trouble reconciling what I see with the Republicans I have known throughout my life. I remember a politics that emphasized personal responsibility, while so much political conversation today seems centered on finding someone else to blame. I remember people who took enormous pride in this community, while political messages can sometimes make Josephine County sound like a place where almost everything is broken. I remember disagreement followed by a handshake, while increasingly disagreement can become evidence that someone is on the wrong “side.”
Perhaps most of all, I remember a can-do attitude. Problems were there to be solved. That doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. Sometimes leadership means saying no. Sometimes the fiscally responsible decision is to stop spending money. Sometimes government is the problem. But “no” can’t be the end of governing. At some point, somebody has to answer the next question: What should we do instead?
That is where I find myself returning to the Republicans I have known and the qualities I associated with them: hard work, personal responsibility, honesty, integrity, helping your neighbor, community pride, strength in adversity, a willingness to show up, a can-do spirit and, perhaps above all, character.
I don’t think those values belong exclusively to Republicans. I hope they don’t. But they are qualities I have seen again and again in Republican friends, family members and colleagues throughout my life. In fact, some of the people who most encouraged me to run for state representative in House District 3 have been Republicans.
That has meant a great deal to me. They haven’t changed their political beliefs. They are looking beyond a party label and asking questions about the people who want to represent them. Will this person tell me the truth? Will this person show up? Will this person listen? Will this person take responsibility? Will this person work with people they disagree with when doing so helps the community? Will this person put Josephine County ahead of political theater?
Those seem like healthy questions for all of us to ask, regardless of the letter next to our name.
I am not interested in telling Republicans what they are supposed to believe. That isn’t my place. But I have known, worked beside, learned from and been friends with Republicans throughout my life. I know what I have admired about them, and I think our community benefits when we occasionally put the political labels aside long enough to ask ourselves what those labels are supposed to represent in the first place.
So instead of ending this article with my answer, I would love to hear yours.
What does being a Republican in Josephine County mean to you?
I invite you to join the conversation. You can find me on Instagram at @susanforjosephine, contact me on Facebook, follow the campaign and stay up to date through my website at SusanForJosephine.com, or reach out directly using one of the contact options available there. You can also submit a question for me to answer as part of my ongoing Community Questions series. I welcome your questions, perspectives, and ideas, whether we agree on everything or not. I look forward to hearing from you!
In my next article, I will share why I am a Democrat, and why that label is only one part of the story.