October 2-3 I’ll be in Portland OR, speaking to the 2026 Oregon Event Conference. The organizers have asked me to talk about the rise and fall of Paleoconservatism—something that, because of my appalling age, I lived through. Recently, I discussed the issues on the podcast of Oregon-based X influencer @SilosRising and he has now posted it to his Cascade Frontier substack. (“Sklos” is Greek for “dog,” which is why I greeted him with “Woof! Woof!”)
We covered a lot of ground, but something we discussed struck me as particularly important.
It’s often said that immigration patriotism would not be a winning issue in the Pacific Northwest, because it’s still so white and relatively unaffected. But it was a winning issue in Columbia County just north of Portland, back in 2008. A heroic patriot named Wayne Mayo single-handedly got an anti-illegal immigration initiative, Measure 5-190, on the ballot. In spite of massive opposition from the usual suspects, it passed decisively. Then it was sabotaged by a judge, just like California’s Proposition 187. And, just like Proposition 187, the Oregon State GOP was MIA.
So completely was Mayo’s initiative Memory-Holed that, when a friend got the GOP Senate nomination in Oregon a few years later, I found that he’d never heard of it.
It’s a taken a lot of work, plus stupidity and cowardice, to keep the immigration issue out of American politics.
What a terrible name “ Paleo Conservatism “ - sounds like a dinosaur that went extinct
Did Tim Wise come up with that one ?