Oregon Senate Republicans have staged a walkout to deny the chamber a quorum to do any business.

Only 18 senators were present when Senate President Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego, called the 30-member Senate to order at 10:30am.

The roll call fell two short of the 20 senators needed to create a quorum to do any business.

Oregon is one of a handful of states where a simple majority is not enough to reach a quorum to do business.

Under the Oregon Constitution, each chamber is required to have two-thirds of members present. 

Wagner sent out the sergeant of arms to find the missing senators. When the officers reported back that they had not been able to locate the lawmakers in the building, Wagner adjourned the Senate until Thursday morning.

House Minority Leader Tim Knopp, R-Bend, was on the floor, a role he has played before as a monitor of the Democratic majority’s activity. Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, was also present

Even with his presence, the 16 Democrats and two Republicans were not enough to make up for lawmakers who were absent either with permission or unexcused.

Democrats have been working around the illness of Sen. Chris Gorsek, D-Troutdale, who has been on an excused absence. That leaves just 16 Democrats who can attend sessions.

Six Republicans, including Sen. Bill Hansell, R-Athena, and Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, had been excused from the session by Wagner.

The key number to push the Senate below the quorum was provided by unexcused absences of four Republicans and one independent who usually votes with Republicans.

The absentees include Republicans Dennis Linthicum of Klamath Falls, Lynn Findley of Vale, Daniel Bonham of The Dalles, Cedric Hayden of Roseburg, and Independent Sen. Brian Boquist of Dallas.

Under a law approved by voters in 2022, lawmakers with 10 or more unexcused absences during session are barred from seeking reelection.

The walkout stalls any business in the Senate until a quorum can be reached. If a compromise isn’t hammered out, it is conceivable that the session could hit the June 25 constitutional deadline to adjourn without passing a state budget or acting on hundreds of bills still in the legislative queues.

Republicans have used the walkout to halt consideration of bills in past sessions. The 2020 short session ended with just a handful of bills passed before the 35-day constitutional deadline automatically ended the session and hundreds of bills died.

In 2019, a Republican Senate walkout over a carbon cap bill led to a last minute compromise that brought lawmakers back for a whirlwind weekend session to get the budget passed prior to the constitutional deadline to adjourn after 160 days.

Republicans held a one-day walkout in 2022 to protest Gov. Kate Brown using emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic to close businesses, limit hours and require masks in most public places.

The percentage was taken by early drafters of the constitution who used the Indiana Constitution as a model. Indiana no longer has the two-thirds requirement, but the concept lives on in Oregon.

It’s one of the parliamentary weapons, along with slowing the reading of bills, that have been used by the Republican majority in recent sessions to slow or stall lawmaking. 

The Legislature has not made an effort to amend the constitution to remove the archaic elements.

In a 2021 Oregon Capital Bureau report on “potholes” in the constitution, state officials said unusual or archaic rules are available for a minority of lawmakers to gain instant leverage against majority rule.

“These are tools,” House Chief Clerk Timothy Sekerak said in 2021. “If a tool is available, someone is going to use it.”