Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.
For reference, Baker City, a larger eastern Oregon population center, is approximately 300 miles from Portland and about 140 from Boise. Pendleton may be about equidistant. I’ve got acquaintances and friends that have only been to the western side of the state a few times in their life and they’re more likely to spend their time in Idaho or Nevada than come west.
The way of life out there is completely foreign to most on the western side of the state, and the eastern side thinks the west is full of “crazy liberals”. It’s been that way my whole life, but the last few years have made it seem completely broken.
I spend a lot of time out east, whether it is Idaho or Oregon, I’ll still spend my time out there- but I’d love to find a way to prevent the divorce (that they’ve been talking about since before I was born).
Less competitive elections, at the federal level, are where we are now. As House seats have been gerrymandered to favor mostly conservatives (though liberals play the game too), we get more districts willing to elect extremists like MTG who are unwilling to compromise and hold positions anathema to the majority of the country.
Competitive elections should be more likely to result in moderate candidates, and therefore moderate elected politicians. In theory, this eventually leads to more compromise, and hopefully more progress. With extremists on both sides, we get lots of sound-bites, lots of feigned (and maybe real) anger, and not a lot gets done (and by "nothing gets done", I'm talking about things like government shutdowns because recalcitrant conservatives like McConnell refuse to play ball).
Stagnation is death.
Competition is vital in politics. What isn’t so good is when nobody can actually win.