Oregon politics has been thrown into chaos for more than a week after Republican legislators fled the state and took refuge in neighboring Idaho. As police were ordered to bring them home, rightwing militia groups vowed to defend them, raising the prospect of violent confrontation.
The issue that sparked the disorder in the Pacific Northwest state: climate crisis.
The Republican senators were responding to an incremental, market-based, cap-and-trade plan aimed at curbing climate crisis. But, when faced with the climate bill, Republicans pulled their senators out of the state, and denied the Senate a quorum.
Earlier in the session, they did the same thing when faced with a bill raising taxes for education, and Democrats broke the deadlock by abandoning bills intended to limit exemptions to vaccination and introduce gun control measures.
Related: Oregon senator walkout: ‘patriot’ groups vow to protect Republicans who fled state
But this time, Democrats looked set to call their bluff, triggering a sometimes shocking escalation in rhetoric as police were asked to bring the fleeing senators to heel. Senator Brian Boquist – a former special forces officer and the owner of a business that reportedly deployed “paramilitary force” in overseas conflicts – hinted he would violently resist arrest.
Boquist told reporters: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”
Faced with the effort to stop the climate crisis bill, several armed rightwing groups said they would defend them. On Thursday, a convoy of logging trucks blocked the streets of the state capital, Salem, while hundreds of protesters – some sporting the insignia of patriot movement groups – demonstrated outside the state house against the climate crisis bill, despite the fact it was no longer even on the table.
Having killed the climate crisis bill, the Republican senators now say they are set to return to their jobs on Saturday. “Our mission was to kill cap-and-trade,” said senator Herman Baertschiger “And that’s what we did.”
Rightwing patriot movement groups have, along with many Republicans, long expressed disbelief in human-induced global heating, and have sometimes embraced conspiracy-minded beliefs about environmental measures.
The so-called “Agenda 21” conspiracy theory – which holds that there is a UN-driven plot to undermine US sovereignty, and exert “full spectrum dominance” over a submissive population – is heavily discussed on the websites of groups such as the Oath Keepers.
Some observers also saw the protest as evidence of a widening divide that exists in Oregon, and other western states, between urban liberals and rural conservatives – a miniature version of the national split between red states and blue.
But it also pointed to the mainstreaming of patriot movement groups as a part of Oregon’s conservative coalition. This has led to accusations by many that the local Republican party has become dangerously extreme and even courts “an armed wing”.
Joe Lowndes, a political scientist at the University of Oregon who researches rightwing politics, said: “If the Oregon Republican party were a European political party it would be an authoritarian far-right party. It really has that character, that extraordinary truculence,” he said.
Related: White House physicist sought aid of rightwing thinktank to challenge climate science
During the standoff over climate crisis, Lowndes said, Republicans “were essentially gloating about having an armed wing of the party. That’s when you cut into the structure of constitutional democracy”.
He says that climate crisis politics represents a “sweet spot” for Republicans in Oregon. “There’s a distinct way that Republicans can use rightwing populism around that issue, bringing in farmers and loggers while you’re doing the work of wealthy interests,” Lowndes said.
Senate Republicans did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The situation has led some to warn that conservatives elsewhere in the US may be similarly obstructive in the difficult but urgent efforts to address the climate crisis and may seek to adopt similar tactics.
“Unlike Vegas, what happens in Oregon doesn’t stay in Oregon,” said Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, a progressive nonprofit.
He added: “It should be a warning and a wake up call to the rest of the nation that, even when a governance system exists, even if you have a supermajority, that democratic practice itself is still vulnerable to being undermined, and that’s what we’re seeing.”
Citing the presence of often-armed patriot movement groups, and the unwillingness of Republicans to draw “a clear moral line” around such groups, Ward said: “If we were in Afghanistan, if we were in Iraq, if we were in Sudan, if we were in the former Yugoslavia, and this was taking place, we would call it a political crisis, and we would call it a threat to democratic practice.”
Others have observed an emerging nationwide pattern among conservatives of stretching or disregarding the norms that have previously helped political systems to function.
Joseph Fishkin, a law professor at the University of Texas, co-wrote an article on the practice of “constitutional hardball” whereby such groups take extreme actions to violate previously existing norms.
“This would be an example of the kind of escalation that qualifies as constitutional hardball,” he said.
A spokesperson for the senate Democrats admitted: “We are in uncharted territory, but we are taking a long-term view and will not be deterred from passing significant climate action legislation,” adding that Democrats may change quorum rules to prevent future deadlocks.
Such a long-term view may be at odds with the pressing nature of the climate crisis – and the current political crisis in the state.
Ward was adamant that Democrats needed to do more.
“Our leaders need to actually stand up and lead and not cower, not appear to be hiding. Representative democracy is worth fighting for. Having resilient and sustainable communities is worth fighting for,” he said.