Mark Z. Barabak: How tech and the great outdoors transformed Oregon and the fight for the White House
Karen and Steve Packer were done with California.
The crowds, the traffic. It came to a head around Labor Day more than a generation ago, on a weekend getaway to Twentynine Palms. Around midnight, the couple's quiet was invaded by a rowdy group of motorcyclists who pulled in near their campsite, music blasting.
The Packers began job hunting, which led them from Irvine to the growing tech industry just outside Portland. For the two natives of the Northwest, the move to Oregon felt like going home.
It also put the couple on the leading edge of political change.
Washington County, where the two landed, used to be agricultural and solidly Republican. Today, fields that once sprouted wheat and barley are home to sprawling corporate campuses, acres of upscale subdivisions and an influx of Democrats like the Packers, who arrived in Beaverton in the early 1980s and helped turn Oregon into one of the country's most reliably blue states.
In 2020, Joe Biden carried
