Reminder that election officials are urging voters to use ballot drop boxes this year due to concerns about the speed and reliability of mail delivery. Official PDX ballot drop site map.
If you like this write-up, also check out my deep dive on Measure 26-267
Preamble
First, some personal news. Since I last endorsed candidates in May, I took a job for a Federal contractor, working on some nerdy data engineering stuff for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Which means I now can speak more credibly about the Medicare pay-for-performance reimbursement processes. (When I say nerdy, I mean nerdy.)
One thing that I learned in that process is that it’s illegal for federal contractors to donate to the campaigns of federal candidates, courtesy of 52 U.S. Code § 30119. The FEC says that doesn’t include W2 employees like me but I can’t even take my laptop into Canada without getting fired, so I’m not taking any chances. I’ll save that scratch for the Jinju Patisserie re-opening.
I can still endorse candidates. First amendment! Freedom of speech, y’all!
However, it feels sort of … uncouth? They’re national races. I imagine you have opinions. You don’t need mine.
Likewise I’m going to opt out of endorsing in the Governor’s race. I think it’s fair to say that, by the standards of the major parties in 2026, it’s mainstream, incumbent Democrat vs. a mainstream Republican, with all the baggage that carries for both of them. Use your best judgement.
Now, to the good stuff. Let’s start with everyone’s favorite.
Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District
Reminder, this is unpaid, non-regulatory body that handles some grants, some educational work, and some advisory work. To say it doesn’t matter is a bit harsh but there’s a reason most papers don’t endorse here. It’s a waste of time and ink.1
That said, there are candidates to vote for. We should try and vote for the best ones. I’ve done a modicum of research here so you don’t have to.
East Multnomah, At-Large, Position 2
Four candidates, three credible ones who submitted to the voter’s guide.
Jeremy Wood - He has some meaningful conservation-related federal contracting experience, speaks to practical things like reading contracts and tracking budgets
Daniel Newberry - The most experienced when it comes to watersheds and hydrology, has served as an executive director for several organizations.
Steph Routh - Significant community and non-profit experience, though less of it in the soil and water space. The most local government experience of the three.
All three bring slightly different skillsets. All of them care about conservation. Ultimately their job is to approve the budget and hire/fire the executive director.
Based entirely on the voter’s guide, they’re all fine. Trouble is from the voter’s guide alone, you have no idea who can actually read a budget, who can actually discuss trade-offs, who can actually get along in a room of one’s peers.
For that reason, I’m going with Routh. Her politics are a bit to the left of mine but I know her by reputation as someone who is both thoughtful and charismatic. For a position like this, that’s more than enough for me.
Steph Routh
East Multnomah, Zone 3
Two candidates:
Silas Morgan - Local farmer / vintner with an MBA and a Geology degree.
Brad Hunter - Currently the Zone 3 director (appointed) and served on the budget chair for a small school district.
This isn’t a scandal-plagued board where we need to throw the bums out. I’ll take the guy with the experience in the seat already, and who wants to stay in it.
Brad Hunter
Judges
If you recognize these names it’s because you already voted on these positions back in May, winnowing the fields from 5 or 6 to 2.
4th District, Position 2
In May I was torn between Juliet Britton and Laura Rowan. Rowan made it to the top two, Britton didn’t. Makes the choice easy for me.
Laura Rowan
4th Circuit, Position 14
In May I recommended Hagedorn. Savage seems like a fine choice too and nothing in the last 6 months has moved me in either direction. Note that the Willamette Week switched their endorsement from Hagedorn to Savage but they also called this race the “rare win-win.” I’m sticking with the horse I rode in on.
Joseph Hagedorn
An Intermission: the Issues
We can’t get into the next section without getting into the elephant in the room. Pretty much everyone in Portland is nominally a Democrat but there are sharp political divides amongst them. It’s probably best understood these days as the DSA-aligned “progressive caucus” (a.k.a. Peacocks) vs. the “Moderates,” a more heterodox group ranging from Steve Novick and Elana Pirtle-Guiney (both broadly progressive but not DSA-aligned) to Eric Zimmerman (Army vet, probably the most conservative member of the council).
You can understand most city council and Multnomah County commission candidates through this lens, either in terms of their positions or their endorsements.
Personally, I have my gripes with both camps. I’m a bit of a swing voter in that regard.
I also often find that framing too simplistic. Though the contentious votes end up being 6 - 6 between the Peacocks and Moderates, a lot of votes are 12 - 0. And whether or not it ever comes up to a vote at all comes down to whether or not a council member is focused on the right problem, has meaningful solutions for it, and can sell their colleagues on their approach.
So I think the best way to actually rank them is to bucket them on how they handle the most important issues. (Existing councilors have much more of a paper trail. For the challengers it’s much more speculative.)
On Housing
Our most important issue because it’s everyone’s number one cost, and it also tends to impact a lot of businesses, both their prices and whether certain types of businesses can even afford to exist at all.
So: do they support supply-side reforms to a) increase the amount of building we have and b) streamline and speed up permitting? How do they feel about counterproductive measures like rent control?
Verdict?
Good: Zimmerman, Clark, Novick, and maybe León.
Mixed: Basically everyone else.
Most of the progressive caucus are good on the building side, and it’s to their credit.
However, virtually all of them support various tenant’s protections that sound great at first blush but nearly all increase housing costs.2 From a goals perspective, I’m on board with the Peacocks. It’s good to keep people in their housing! Rent should be affordable! No one should go homeless!
Unfortunately, what sounds good in theory is a lot uglier in practice.
I find that it’s precisely because I share the same values as the Progressive Caucus that I often diverge from them on policy. They have a tendency to lead with their heart rather than their head and the evidence often doesn’t support their preferred approach. It’s most acute here, with housing, but it’s really a more general critique.
Bad: Torres
Meanwhile Torres sounds ok at first blush (she wants 4,000 new units per year) but scratch the surface a bit and I’m concerned. For starters, that goal is insufficiently ambitious. More troubling, she explicitly wants development “appropriately scaled”, which is typically code for “chop a few floors off a perfectly good project so the Boomer neighbors will tolerate it.” No bueno.
The Peacocks have their hearts in the right place but the wrong policy prescription. I’m not sure Torres even has the former.
Insufficient information to judge: Cronlund, Arnold, and a bunch of the longshots.
On Transportation
What I want is non-controversial. I want folks to be able to travel safely, by foot, by bike, by bus and by car. Where there is conflict in those modes, we should prioritize the healthiest, greenest, most affordable modes. This is mostly TriMet’s purview rather than the city’s, but I think we should prioritize frequency and reliability in our public transport infrastructure. I’m also a big believer in vision zero; lives should not be cut short by car collisions.
The policy positions that fall out of my non-controversial, pro-social, pro-urban beliefs are three-fold.
We should figure out ways to restore TriMet’s budget3
We should continue to invest in crosswalks and bike infrastructure.
We should pilot Waymo.
The first two are complicated because budgets are tricky and we may need to make hard decisions about trade-offs but they are otherwise straightforward and uncontroversial.
The third is… messy. A lot of folks don’t want Waymo to come here. Lots of reasons why — they are nervous about the tech, they hate tech companies, they are worried about job displacement, and so on and so forth.
I get it. It’s new. It’s weird. I am sympathetic to folks who are uncertain and want to be a bit cautious with the rollout here.
However, there’s also a push for an outright ban. And I don’t want to mince my words here. Folks who want to ban Waymo are going to get people killed.4
I know they’re worried about livelihoods. So am I. But lives are more important than livelihoods. A Lyft driver can drive for DoorDash instead.5
I also don’t have much time for folks who were protesting Uber and Lyft in 2014 coming around 12 years later trying to entrench those same (big tech!) interests.
My goal is simple. A demonstrably safe company (Waymo), picking up, for hire, a small number of passengers. It can be a pilot limited to 10 cars for all I care. But this will expose the citizenry to the idea, so that we can have a real conversation about it in the coming years.
If we can’t do that, we don’t have any hope of achieving vision zero.
Good: Clark
Mixed: Evenstar, León, McDonald, Novick, Torres, Otero, Sollitt, and Hallett
Bad: Morillo, Green, and probably Koyama Lane
Insufficient information: Zimmerman, Cronlund, Arnold, Corcoran, Beausoleil Smith
On the Moda Center
I’ll admit that, for various reasons, I didn’t track this one super closely so there may be nuances I missed. But at a high level, sports team owners should pay for their own damn arenas. The Portland situation is admittedly a little more complicated but is it that much more complicated? I’m skeptical.
I love the Blazers. It’d be crushing to see them leave. Nonetheless, here I side with the progressives. I appreciate that they are playing hardball. Soak the rich.
Good: Koyama Lane, Morillo, Sollitt, Green, León, and Hallett
Mixed: Novick, Otero, Evenstar, and Corcoran
Bad: Clark, Zimmerman, Torres, Arnold, Cronlund, and McDonald
Insufficient information: Beausoleil Smith
To demonstrate my Blazer fan bona fides, I humbly submit this extemporaneous social media post from May 2, 2014, the 300-levels.
On Policing
This whole topic deserves a much more detailed post. In lieu of that, let’s just say I am extremely skeptical of the police union, which I consider the single biggest obstacle to real and necessary accountability for the force. I am generally optimistic about Portland Street Response and want it to scale as it proves its value.
Nonetheless, I believe the police should be well-compensated and I think we should hire more officers (though less because I want more policing and more because I want us to pay less in overtime). They have a hard job and we ask a lot of them. We should pay them more and, in return, they should be very comfortable with us firing those in their ranks who perform poorly or who have behavioral issues.
I also think that homeless sweeps are cruel and necessary, and they should be continued (in as humane a fashion as possible).
Perhaps I’m naive, but I actually think where I sit is broadly the position of the median Portland voter.
Good: Novick and Cronlund
Mixed: Torres, Hallett, Sollitt, and McDonald
Bad: Clark, Zimmerman, Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Otero, and León
Really Bad: Arnold
Insufficient information: Evenstar, Corcoran, and Beausoleil Smith
On Vibes
It’s hard to go deep on every issue partly because it’s not always clear until years ahead of time as to what issues will end up actually coming to a vote. So for the rest, it kind of comes down to … vibes.
What vibes do I like? People who focus on outcomes, who are clear-eyed about trade-offs, who dig in to get shit done. I’d rather someone completely focused on the most important problem (to the detriment of everything else) than someone who can do a million things but doesn’t prioritize what matters.
One can do this as a DSA-aligned elected (see: Mamdani, Zohran) or as a more moderate one (see: Lurie, Daniel).
What I don’t care for is virtue signaling (a common affliction among certain councilors) and I am perpetually frustrated with councilors who are more worried about taking stands on national and international issues than local ones, or who take the side of boutique interests over the health, safety, and pocketbooks of our residents.6
This is an imprecise science of course. Nonetheless, here’s my best guess:
Good: Novick, Clark, Otero, and Cronlund
Mixed: Zimmerman, Torres, Sollitt, Arnold, Corcoran, Koyama Lane, and León
Bad: Green, Morillo, Evenstar, and Beausoleil Smith
Insufficient information: Hallett and McDonald
City Council
We can rank up to six, though you don’t have to use them all. Realistically, the folks with a real shot are the six incumbents (Novick, Koyama Lane, Morillo in district 3; Clark, Zimmerman, and Green in district 4), with Torres (D3) and Arnold (D4) the most likely to knock someone off.
Given that, there’s value in voting a little bit strategically, giving your top vote to your top candidate and your last ranked vote to a “lesser-of-two-evils” candidate among those eight.
I live in district 2 but here are my recommended slates nonetheless.
District 3
Steve Novick
Esther León
Cristal Otero
Joel Corcoran
Tiffany Koyama Lane
Angelita Morillo
Novick is the clear winner among the incumbents. Between Koyama Lane and Morillo I prefer Lane — less of a fire-breather, more persuadable. I’m unhappy with all three on the housing but ultimately that’s what tips it for me to the Peacocks over Torres.
District 4
Olivia Clark
Jayne Cronlund
Eric Zimmerman
John McDonald
Mitch Green
I very much didn’t expect to support incumbents over their strongest challengers but perhaps sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.
County Commission
The County Commission is the too-oft-ignored stepchild of local governance, which is wild given its impact. City Council gets all the press but the Commission handles a budget of ~$4B and they manage homelessness services, the jails, and, most relevant these days, Preschool for All (P4A).
Kind of a big deal!
Based on my conversations with insiders and a boatload of audits over the years, Multnomah County is also known for being terribly run. Worse than the city, PPS, Metro, or TriMet. I’m sure there are many reasons for this but twelve years of poor leadership from Deborah Kafoury and Jessica Vega Pederson, is a good place to start.
To me I’m looking for:
Folks who are outcomes-focused when it comes to homelessness, and who can work with the city to ensure services are effectively delivered.
Folks who have credible plans to improve P4A, to ensure we’re actually both getting kids enrolled and getting our money’s worth. I want P4A to succeed. It’s a lifesaver for families, which may help our demographic challenges in K-12. But the rollout has been torturously slow and poorly mismanaged. Per the Oregonian, there are 957 unfilled seats while 617 kids sit on waitlists. This is largely due to geographic mismatches with the lion’s share of the openings available in East Portland while the demand is in Southeast and on the West side.
District 2
To say this is an uninspiring bunch is understating it by a pretty good margin.
The frontrunners are Bri Williams (social worker, former P4A staffer) and Serena Cruz (former commissioner from 1999-2006, county COO under Kafoury and Vega Peterson).
The rest include Zaghloul, a reform-oriented inside/outsider, Ong Norris, a DSA-aligned candidate looking to expand programs, Herman Greene, a former school board member with some baggage, and Tony Robertson, a civil rights manager at the state labor bureau.
As agents of accountability and reform, absolutely none of their pitches are credible.
I don’t want to spend any more time talking about this race. It’s a shame Singleton didn’t run for re-election here (or Sam Adams run again) because they both would have been better choices. Whoever we elect will be a mistake.
My Ranking:
Nabil Zaghloul
Serena Cruz
Bri Williams
Multnomah County Chair
Now this race is more interesting to me. For good reason. There’s a pretty good argument that this is the single most powerful elected position in the entire metro area. They serve as both the county executive and a voting member of the commission. As a friend said to me recently, “patients and providers can be slipping on the ice outside but I can’t close the clinic until the Chair says so.”
Like district 2, it’s a lot of retreads, as all of them have served on the county commission before. Like district 2, all of them promise reform. In this case, though, I actually believe them.
If you read the voter’s pamphlet, they honestly all sound kind of the same. When you look over their endorsements, you can start to see that Singleton is probably the more progressive one, Brim-Edwards probably the most moderate, and Meieran somewhere in between.
To me, these choices come down to two axes.
Who is the biggest break from the Kafoury/Vega Pederson era?
My best guess: 1. Meieran 2. Brim-Edwards 3. Singleton
Who is the most effective at moving the needle within the county to effect change
My best guess: 1. Singleton 2. Brim-Edwards 3. Meieran
I think any of them will be an improvement over the status quo and it’s a genuinely difficult choice. I expect Meieran to be eliminated first so this is mostly Singleton vs. Brim-Edwards choice and Singleton has proven to be adept enough at budget management that I’m inclined her way.
My ranking:
Sharon Meieran
Shannon Singleton
Julia Brim-Edwards
Good luck. Happy voting.
It is very silly. My rant from 2024, reprinted in full:
Why is this ridiculous?
Because this took me the better part of half an hour to do this research. Most of the papers don’t endorse in any direction. Either most folks are blindly filling out their ballot, leaving it blank, or wasting as much time as I just did. The fact that we are wasting our time voting for a non-regulatory, voluntary board is absurd.
As much as I have mixed feelings of the Multnomah County Commission, this board should just be appointed by that commission, who covers basically the same service area and are actually folks with whom voters interact and about whom they can have vaguely educated opinions. This is just a case of Too Much Democracy.
Folks in the progressive caucus did push, successfully, the ban on using AI when setting rental prices. I haven’t seen much evidence one way or another on this tenant protection and I’m very much open to it. But eliminating no cause evictions, requiring relocation fees, and rent control all restrict supply, increase costs, or both.
For context TriMet had to do meaningful cuts due to a budget shortfall. TriMet is its own regional agency, not part of the city, but the city controls the streets the buses run on and can help fund service, so it’s worth calling out.
Also, how many jobs are we even talking about here? I haven’t found good data for Portland yet. In DC their likely next mayor — who wants to slow Waymo’s rollout to protect drivers — estimated that only about 200 District residents drive rideshare full-time. DC is a comparable sized city in a much larger metro area so I’d expect fewer than 200 drivers here.
Your mileage may vary on what is performative. Some are obvious. Others are more debatable. Many folks would point to the foie gras ban as performative but to me that one is simple, straightforward, and has a direct impact within city limits. What we say and do about foie gras has a heck of a lot more impact on a bunch of ducks than what council says and does about Israel/Palestine or Russia/Ukraine, regardless of whether we’re on the right side or not.