Quietly but steadily, a counterrevolution against the radical redefinition of the American social contract engineered by Oregon’s progressives over the years has been gaining steam.

Last spring, Beaver State voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have compelled taxpayers to foot the legal bills assumed by derelict tenants evicted by their landlords. The city of Portland, blighted by homeless encampments and the criminality that accompanies them, began rolling up its archipelago of vagrant bivouacs following a legal settlement with the city’s dispossessed taxpayers. However cosmetic it may be, the state’s long overdue effort to recriminalize the public use, possession, and distribution of hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl was a belated act of sanity borne of necessity. The state has even finally allowed its residents to pump their own gas.

Progress in the fight against imperious progressivism has come in fits and starts. By any reasonable metric, Oregon is still the possession of a radical vanguard that gradually captured the state’s politics over the course of this century. But as stunning results of Tuesday night’s primary contests attest, the counterattack is gaining ground.

“The left took it on the chin in Oregon Tuesday,” Politico reported. With the support of Oregon’s voters, the state’s establishmentarian Democrats summoned just enough spine to beat back the far-left activists hoping to extend their command over the levers of government.

Shaina Maxey Pomerantz, the self-styled “people’s champion,” who promoted her candidacy for state attorney general as an opportunity to throttle the “conservative values that may pose challenges to longstanding civil rights protections,” lost by almost 50 points.

In Multnomah County, home to the city of Portland, incumbent district attorney Mike Schmidt appears headed to defeat, with local prosecutor and former Republican Nathan Vasquez holding a sizable lead in the not-yet-called race. Schmidt campaigned for his office “during the social justice movement of 2020” on a plan to deprioritize the prosecution of “low-level crimes” — a mission statement that apparently extended to violent rioters and protesters accused of vandalism, theft, and the threat of violence and even resisting arrest or assaulting public-safety officials pending “the highest level of scrutiny.” That platform propelled Schmidt to a commanding victory in 2020, but Portland’s Democrats have had second thoughts. They’ve opted to replace their lax DA with a candidate who promised to clean up the streets and prosecute alleged criminals. Imagine that.

But the backlash Oregon’s voters are busily engineering is not limited to their dissatisfaction with the conduct of justice (or lack thereof) in their state. The state’s aspiring progressive lawmakers also took it on the chin.

State representative Maxine Dexter handily defeated Susheela Jayapal, sister to congressional progressive caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal. Even though she was backed by what Politico described as “a star roster of progressives,” including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her powerful sister, Jayapal won less than 30 percent of the primary vote with just under two-thirds of the returns counted as of this writing.

Conventional Democrats and average voters joined hands to prevent far-left activist Jamie McLeod-Skinner from pulling off another upset at the ballot box. In 2022, McLeod-Skinner defeated incumbent Democratic congressman Kurt Schrader in the fifth congressional district’s primary. The progressive insurgent lost the general election to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, but McLeod-Skinner’s far-left supporters hoped for a restoration. With 70 percent of the vote in, the Democrat backed by the party’s national congressional committee, state representative Janelle Bynum, had secured more than two-thirds of the district’s primary vote.

Oregon’s progressive political culture took shape over the course of decades. It won’t be rolled back in one or even several elections. But Oregon voters who seek the return of something resembling circumspect and prudential governance from their elected officials are making themselves heard.