Three of Oregon’s minor parties weigh in on the state of democracy under two-party system

The near-total dominance of the two major political parties is nothing new.

Democrats and Republicans have distinct ideological and political differences, but for some, it’s their similarities that drive them away from both.

Many voters are not affiliated with any party. In fact, those unaffiliated voters number more than either of the major parties by a substantial margin.

Most of the remaining registered voters are members of the other minor parties: The Independent Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, No Labels, the Pacific Green Party, the Progressive Party, We the People Party and the Working Families Party.

In next week’s Oregon Primary, all voters will be sent ballots that include local and state candidates for nonpartisan offices and measures.

But for those who are unaffiliated or members of a minor party, no partisan candidates will appear, and they cannot vote for any of the major party candidates.

Minor parties do not have their primary process funded by taxpayers, as the two major parties do.

A public opinion survey from January 2026 by DHM Research showed significant frustration with both major parties. And a recent national survey of voter opinions of Congress indicated contempt for both Democrats and Republicans. But what does all this mean for minor parties, if anything?

We ask representatives from three of those minor parties to share how they think two-party rule is working for the electorate at large and what changes they’d like to see to include more voters more often.

Our guests are Annie Naranjo-Rivera with the Oregon Working Families Party, Sonja Feintech with the Libertarian Party of Oregon and Sal Peralta with the Independent Party of Oregon.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. If you are an Oregon voter, you should have received your ballot for the May primary by now. Every voter can get a ballot that includes local measures and candidates for nonpartisan offices, but people who are unaffiliated or are members of a minor party won’t see partisan primary candidates. Only registered Republicans and Democrats have the privilege of voting in taxpayer-funded primaries. That system ends up excluding a larger and larger portion of the electorate; according to the latest state data, more than 44% of Oregon voters are either not affiliated with the party or are members of a minor party.

I’m joined now by leaders of three of those parties. Annie Naranjo-Rivera is the state director of the Oregon Working Families Party. Sonja Feintech is the chair of the Libertarian Party of Oregon. And Sal Peralta is the secretary and co-founder of the Independent Party of Oregon. It’s great to have all three of you on Think Out Loud. Welcome to the show.

Sonja Feintech: Thank you for having us.

Annie Naranjo-Rivera: Thank you for having me.

Sal Peralta: Thanks, Dave.

Miller: Sonja, I wanna start with you. What’s the elevator pitch for the Libertarian Party of Oregon?

Feintech: Well, we started in 1971 on a national level as a response to the Vietnam War, government overregulation and the federal deficit. Oregon actually was one of the first state affiliates in 1971 as well, so we’ve been operating here, I think that’s about 50 years. We had some really immediate electoral wins; 1972, we ran Tonie Nathan for vice presidential, I believe, and she was the first woman in Oregon to get an electoral vote from, I believe it was an elector in Virginia.

Then fast forward through the years ... We’ve remained principled and consistent in our messaging. In the 2000s, we had a very robust slate of candidates that were earning around 4%. Our focus is on maximum freedom, limited government, personal freedoms. And our message to Oregonians is that if you’re tired of government overreach on your taxes and education, personal choices, then Libertarian Party of Oregon is probably for you.

Miller: How do you feel like the Libertarian Party of Oregon is different from the Republican Party of Oregon?

Feintech: Well, we actually are fiscally conservative. We would like to inspire the major parties to be more fiscally conservative. But we are extremely principled in our approach to the government and actually limiting the control of the government, even when it’s maybe something that sounds really good. We still want it to be a limited government.

Miller: Annie, what does the Working Families Party stand for?

Naranjo-Rivera: Well, the Oregon Working Families Party has been around for 20 years. We just celebrated her 20th birthday. We are fighting to create a political home for people who have not found one, [like] folks from the multiracial working class, and to deliver a place for working people to actually have their voices heard, and to deliver policies that make the lives better for working people across the state, from corner to corner. We feel like that’s missing from the two major parties.

Miller: Well, I asked Sonja how the Libertarian Party is different from the Republican Party because a lot of what she’d said, some of the words are ones that you would hear from Republican candidates. A lot of what you just said we hear from Democratic Party candidates. So how is the Oregon Working Families Party different from the Democratic Party?

Naranjo-Rivera: That’s a really good question. In Oregon, we have fusion voting, so a lot of times you’ll see a cross nomination on your ballot. Not in this election, but in the general, you’ll see that. So you will see some crossover, but what we’ve really seen is that many people who call themselves Democrats are not prioritizing and delivering for working people. They’re not thinking about the economic concerns and delivering economic policies for people that are really finding it hard to make ends meet and are struggling. We aim to uplift that and to elect Democrats that are truly going to be champions for our communities.

Miller: Is it too simplistic to say that you see your party as being more to the left than the Democratic Party, a bit more progressive?

Naranjo-Rivera: I wouldn’t frame it that way. We are for working people, so we’re not left or right. We’re pro policies that deliver and improve the economy for, again, the working-class folks across the state. So it’s not really left or right, progressive or not, it’s simply policies that people need. We’re talking about things like health care. We’re talking about how folks are going to keep food on the table. And a lot of times, our Democrats that we see out there are funded by corporate interests and wealthy special interests, the billionaire class, and that’s who they’re beholden to. You see that reflected in how they’re governing, and whether or not they’re delivering or considering the concerns of working-class folks.

Miller: Sal, to turn to the Independent Party of Oregon, is it fair to say that, unlike the Oregon Working Families Party or the Libertarian Party, the Independent Party of Oregon is a little bit more movable policy-wise. Is that fair to say?

Peralta: I’m not really sure if that’s fair to say. I would say the party was founded in response to the Democrats and Republicans conspiring to prevent non-affiliated candidates from filing and running by petition to restrict competition.

Miller: I guess the reason I bring that up … I’m glad you started there because, in my mind, the focus has always seemed to me very much about the political process and what you see as fairness or a lack of fairness in the political process, as opposed to the kind of priorities that we just heard from Annie and Sonja, which are more about policies themselves, whether it’s about limited government or helping people who are struggling to get food on the table. The first thing you just said there is about the process, the way we elect politicians.

Peralta: Right. And I think the reason that’s important for the Independent Party is how we elect politicians really influences what politicians get elected and what platforms that they run on. For example, one of our priorities for many years has been campaign finance reform, which we attempted to put a measure on the ballot, collected 100,000 signatures in coalition with other groups, and then ended up passing something in the legislature two years ago. That was a landmark for both our party and the state, in the sense that we’ve never had campaign finance reform passed, and I think without that pressure, it wouldn’t have passed. So we’re not as flexible in terms of the things that we deeply believe in.

When you think about the process, 90% of Oregon is not competitive between the Democrats and the Republicans, 90% of the districts in the country are not competitive between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Miller: And arguably, they’re getting even less competitive as we speak.

Peralta: Inarguably, because the Republicans have essentially gerrymandered the entire South within a short period of time, after the falling of the Civil Rights Act. So that has created a structure in this country that is very fragile, is very susceptible to one party, once they gain sufficient power, choosing to dominate and shut out the other party – and that’s what we’ve seen. As third parties, we’ve experienced that for the last 100 years, where the two parties have created essentially two one-party systems in the country and they only fight over about 10% to 15% of the turf in the middle.

And that’s why, when people think about moderates, they tend to think corporate or more supportive of the lobby. But the reason for that, I believe, is the structure of our campaigns limits the number of competitive races to just 10% to 15%. Those become essentially money races.

Miller: Sonja, I wanna go back to you. You talked about having big success, some number of years ago, with candidates that got, you said, about 4% of the vote. It does make me wonder – and I want to ask all of you this – what does success mean to you? How do you define success as a third party or a minor party?

Feintech: Yeah, that’s a great question. So as far as representing our membership, we’re very focused on activism, lobbying, focusing on the legislature, sponsoring bills for issues that we care about. As far as elections go, there is a big focus on trying to run for winnable races. We want there to be a focus on the races that aren’t as exciting, right? Like city council races, mayor and public utility boards. I think that I would love to encourage people in general to really focus on those races more.

Four percent to 5% though, it really sends a message when we run races like that strategically. When any third party does that, it sends a message to the dominant parties that, hey, we’re polling. Those aren’t just our votes. We are pulling from you. We’re pulling from the navs. Whatever message we’re sending out is having an effect. So a lot of what we do is through policy influence, but also by influencing those major parties to consider us.

Miller: Annie, how do you think about success? What does success mean to you?

Naranjo-Rivera: Well, a lot of people feel disconnected from politics right now, because the system hasn’t been built for working people. So our work’s about more than just elections, but also building relationships, developing leaders, building the bench, and training folks to run for office and training staff to support those races. Our North Star is building governing power for working people, so we will know we have succeeded when we have done that. And then, obviously elections matter, so primary interventions is really what we’re focused on right now.

Miller: Primary, is that just another way to say primarying an incumbent?

Naranjo-Rivera: Absolutely. So there’s this idea; people are out at No Kings days and they’re like, “We don’t want kings! We don’t want tyrants!” But there’s this idea that’s very prevalent in the two major parties, and I’ll say for the Democratic Party, that once somebody wins a seat, they’re anointed and no one should dare to primary them. We believe that actually, in a democracy, having competitive primaries is healthy and creates better outcomes. So we are getting involved in that in a big way this year.

Miller: How do you decide– and I guess this gets to tactics – about whether you want to just put forward your own candidate, who is simply going to have Oregon Working Families Party after their name, or to cross nominate and to say, OK, here’s a Democratic candidate, but they’ve also earned our nomination? How do you think about that?

Naranjo-Rivera: That’s a really good question. So in the primaries, you’ll see things, like what we’re doing in Senate District [15] with Myrna Muñoz, who’s primarying incumbent Senator Janine Sollman, a Democrat, so that’s a Democratic primary – please vote for Myrna. And there we’re very heavily involved, and we’re taking on an establishment. We’re taking on huge corporate donors – Walmarts, McDonald’s, Chevron, people like that – to do that.

Then in a general election, you’ll see collaboration, like for instance, the Independent Party and the Working Families Party, have previously and will again this year, cross-nominate folks and run them. Sometimes, we definitely have the option of running our own candidate; in 2024, we ran Mary King for treasurer as a WFP candidate. We have to do that every four years to maintain our minor party status. So you’ll see things like that in the future. And it’s definitely something we consider because if the candidates available aren’t really putting their money where their mouth is, we’re going to have to do better.

Miller: Sal, what does cross nominating actually accomplish, in your mind?

Peralta: Well, cross nominating, basically for us, is a way of aligning a candidate’s priorities with the priorities of our members. It gives us an opportunity to educate the candidate on our values and the priorities of our members. And then during the election, they’ll make commitments in terms of what they’re running on that hopefully will translate into policy successes.

Miller: Do you think that’ll work? Because I’m wondering if the Democratic and Republican leaders, or the folks who are also thinking about running campaigns, if they’re like, this is great, you minor parties, you can cross nominate, we’ll give you a little piece of this pie. You can have your letters in parentheses just like we do and we’ll, then, just still be in charge of the system. It seems like … I imagine they’re thrilled and they get to still stay in charge.

Peralta: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think that, absolutely, it is a lot of that, but actually, you raised a really good point. Historically, we have focused on cross nominating as the Independent Party. But this year, we’re running a lot more of our own candidates for the state legislature out of frustration with what you’re describing; a sense that we didn’t have the level of influence or support that we hoped on some of the issues in in recent years and the commitments that were made maybe didn’t live up to the extent that we had hoped. For that reason, we’re running more candidates for the state legislature this year and I think we’ll do fewer cross nominations.

I also wanted to say, for me, winning looks like winning. We’ve elected more than 100 people to local offices, currently nonpartisan offices. We’ve tried to build influence for our members by doing those cross nominations. And then this year, we’re trying to set up as many one-on-one races involving our members against Democrats and Republicans with the idea of trying to unseat some of those people and get a seat at the table at the legislature.

Miller: There are some echoes there of what Sonja was saying earlier, when you say winning equals winning and focusing on lower-level races, even if they’re nonpartisan. You’re saying these are members of the Independent Party of Oregon, so even if they’re running in nonpartisan races, you know that they’re a part of your team and you’re getting them on the ground floor in various elected bodies.

Peralta: Yes, and if I could, I’d like to go back to the partisan races because, again, around the state, 90% of the districts are not competitive between Democrats and Republicans, I think because Democrats and Republicans have become so culturally distinct as political parties. What the Independent Party offers, and maybe the libertarians, some of the other parties, is sort of an outlet valve. So if you’re a mayor in rural Oregon somewhere and you’re frustrated with your representative, your Republican representative, you can run as an Independent, even if you’re currently a registered Republican.

And by the same token, we have candidates in Portland who are frustrated with the quality of life, the fact that they’re spending so much and not getting as much value for what’s been put in, and they’re wanting to run for public office against some of the Democrats because they feel like we can do better as a state.

Miller: We asked folks on Facebook how well they think the two-party system is working in Oregon and what role minor parties should play in primary and general elections.

Scott Dunn wrote, “Currently, third party voting just gives votes to whoever wins. Third parties won’t really be viable until we get rid of things like gerrymandering, the Electoral College, Citizens United … Then use STAR voting. Ranked choice at least, but I prefer STAR.”

Steven J. Higham said, “It’s not [working]. The partisan lock on the primaries is unfair. Why should we have to belong to a particular party to vote? Oregon needs to open the primary to a ‘top-two’ system. Way too many voters are left out.”

I saw some nods here as I was reading those comments. Sonja, what changes, if any, would you like to see in our voting systems?

Feintech: I mean, I know the conversation right now is about the primary. So, our primary system is we have a nominating convention. In the past, we had a lot of trouble meeting quorum, so that was a huge frustration for us, just with the way that our bylaws are. But we had some shifts in that, so now it’s a lot more accessible for us…

Miller: That was an internal change in your own party.

Feintech: Right. And it made it really difficult because we had to pay so much money for mailers. We’re a minor party. We don’t have a huge war chest of money. And I know that’s a problem with minor parties as well. Sending out mailers or ballots to everyone, when we’re not subsidized by taxpayer money like the major parties, was gonna be impossible.

So, we have our nominating conventions now. It’s way better access for everyone. We expect it to be really interesting. You guys were talking about cross nominations; we recently opened ourselves up to that as well. So we’re really looking forward to see how that kind of works out this year and what comes of that.

Miller: But they were saying that they’ve done it and now they’re sort of moving away from it. But now you’re going to start it and see how it goes?

Feintech: We’re fresh. We haven’t been burned out on it yet. We’ll see. We’ll, we’ll check back in. [Laughter]

Miller: Yeah, fair enough. Sal is more burned out at the Independent Party.

Feintech: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll check back in about how it goes, but we’re excited about just a different level of influence this time around.

Philosophically, I believe that the party is not really excited about taxpayer funded most things, just as a philosophical, very principled thing that we are into. So the idea of having our party taxpayer funded for the ballot kind of rubs us the wrong way a little bit. We like the autonomy of our system. We like the way that it’s currently working. We don’t like having an overarching system over the top of us, but we’re also Libertarians, so that’s kind of how we do things.

Miller: Annie, what about you?

Naranjo-Rivera: I just wanted to circle back on nonpartisan races, and it relates to how we can move forward. In 2024, we saw huge, incredible results in Portland City Council with multi-member districts. For the first time ever, people out in East Portland had representation guaranteed. Seven of the 12 people who were elected there, we worked very heavily on those races. So seven out of 12 of those folks are WFP victories. We can actually have an impact in nonpartisan races and we see proportional ranked choice voting, in this case, as something that was tried, something that had incredible results. There is diversity, there’s new representation. There’s a lot of younger people and new voices that have been brought into governing, to the benefit of the city. So, do we believe in changing the system? Absolutely. And I think things like that can be tried.

In addition, like other nonpartisan places where we can have an impact are like, WFP did 59 school board races in 2025. We won 39 of those – that’s huge. And people aren’t running as Democrat, Republican or anything specifically, but the WFP signals to people, these are folks who care about working people. These are folks that are from my community that are going to fight for me and are going to deliver the kind of policies that I want to see.

Miller: Sal, we’ve talked over the years about various electoral systemic changes that you’ve pushed for as an individual and as a member of the Independent Party of Oregon. What are you pushing for right now?

Peralta: Well, we’ve been involved in an effort to push for an open primary. And it’s not a top two. It’s, I think, a top five that allows for minor parties to kind of express themselves in the primary as well. With the changes to the campaign finance law and the legislature in the last session, I think it’s likely that the reform community is going to go forward with the ballot measure to implement a stronger campaign finance law.

In terms of changes, I think generally one of the changes that needs to happen is voters need to realize that 90% to 95% of the funding that goes into our campaigns comes from the lobby, comes from institutional players. And the only way we’re going to get real change in this country is if voters start rejecting candidates who are funded by the lobby, funded by the institutional players, and instead, candidates who take their funding from their local communities. That really requires a leap of faith on the part of voters. It requires an act of trust. Without that, we’re not going to move away from this sort of death spiral that we’re in as a country with the polarization that we’ve been experiencing from the major parties that’s divided us and weakened us as a nation.

Miller: Annie, you are now joining us as a representative of the Oregon Working Families Party, but for years you worked for Democratic Party candidates and on campaigns. What did you learn from working for major party campaigns that you think about now, working for a minor party? You have about a minute-and-a-half to answer that.

Naranjo-Rivera: Just that small question. I registered as a Democrat when I was 18 and I did do a significant number of years of work in the Democratic Party. Why I came to the Working Families Party? I was in the legislature as chief of staff for Representative Chaichi, one of our very outspoken champions for working people, who’s a renter, and who’s living the values and putting forward policies for working people. And there just aren’t enough Farrah Chaichis.

It became very obvious to me when I see corporate entities that can afford to pay lobbyists to be in Salem 24/7, lobbying and getting these meetings with elected officials, and then when I see working people that have scraped together enough money to get a bus to come to Salem, and then their hearing is canceled, and they have no voice in the political process, that we really need a different reality.

That comes from multiple places. One, movement building, which is a big part of what we’re doing, empowering folks so they know how to participate in the political process, and getting those champions elected. They need to be trained. We need to cultivate those campaigns. So that’s why I’m at the Working Families Party and I’m building that reality that does not exist currently within the Democratic Party.

Miller: Annie, Sonja and Sal, thanks very much.

Feintech: Thanks.

Naranjo-Rivera: Thank you so much.

Peralta: Thank you.

Miller: Annie Naranjo-Rivera is state director of the Oregon Working Families Party. Sal Peralta is secretary and co-founder of the Independent Party of Oregon. And Sonja Feintech is the chair of the Libertarian Party of Oregon.

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