
Want to understand why I make the recommendations I do? Go check out part I. Your mileage may vary. If you don’t care about that, skip it and start here.
Election day is a week away! Mail those ballots by Thursday, or drop them off at a ballot box after that.
Federal
President
I won’t begrudge you if you want to vote “uncommitted” but my understanding is that Oregon won’t count/report those write-in votes unless they are sufficient to elect that candidate.
I don’t care what you do in the primary; follow your heart.
Vote Joseph R Biden Jr in November.
3rd Congressional District
Blumenhauer is retiring. Who should replace him? There are 3 serious candidates, as far as I can tell. Susheela Jayapal, Maxine Dexter, and Eddy Morales.
One seems like a generally competent city councilor from Gresham.
One has a famous sister and spent 5 years on the most dysfunctional body of local governance (the Multnomah County Commission) doing little to change the course of that dysfunction.
One helped pass a bunch of different housing reforms, from 2019 to 2023. (I’m particularly partial to the 2019 changes that allow for duplexes and the 2022 changes that ban parking minimums.)
Based on that, I rank them:
Dexter
Morales
Jayapal
Vote Maxine Dexter
Statewide
The Willamette Week covers these races better than I can and I don’t have any reason to disagree with their analysis here.
Secrectary of State — Tobias Read
Treasurer — Elizabeth Steiner
Attorney General — Dan Rayfield
Ballot Measures
Measure 26-243 — Bonds for Dikes and Levees
Have you ever been to the High Water Mark? It’s a vegan/punk bar at the corner of Dekum & MLK Blvd. It’s about 100 feet up (by elevation) and a mile south of the Columbia slough.
You know why it’s called the High Water Mark? Because that’s about where the water crested with the 1948 Vanport flood.1
Vote Yes
Measure 26-244 — Zoo Bond
The penguin enclosure at the zoo is, to use the British turn of phrase, “a bit shit.” (Literally — it smells bad in there!) This bond would address that, and some other stuff. I think the zoo is swell and I am an annual member. But is this really needed?
Yes there will be audits on how the money is spent but their auditor repeatedly chides Metro on failures of adequate performance measures, reporting, and management practices. So audits, while necessary, are insufficient.
Ultimately the zoo is not critical infrastructure and interest rates are much higher now than in 2014 when we last voted for a bond, meaning the money just doesn’t go nearly as far in this rate environment.
Vote No
Measure 26-245 — Gas Tax
Climate change is bad and pigouvian taxes are good. Would I rather this done at the Oregon or Federal level? Of course. The Willamette Week thinks this should be a vehicles miles tax for reasons of fairness but I think that’s nonsense — localized air pollution impacts local kids health; I’d rather this (and aggressive taxes/enforcement on studded tires).
Vote Yes
Measure 26-246 — Teacher Levy
Teachers are good and if we don’t renew this levy we’d lose a lot of good ones. Part of me wonders if that finally would force the city and state to fund schooling in a more rational manner than relying (partially) on a levy but given what happened with the strike and the ticking time bomb of PERS, I’m not optimistic that sort of “burn it all down” approach would do anything but hurt kids.
Vote Yes. I won’t judge you too harshly for voting no but that’s a high risk proposition that will hurt a lot of folk.
Local Elections
Multnomah County Commissioner — District 1 & 3
I don’t live in these districts, so my research is limited.
District 1 — Kevin Fitts is endorsed by Deborah Kafourey and Amanda Fritz, so that’s a hard no from me. Margot Wheeler missed the Voters guide filing deadline, which is disqualifying and Chris Henry doesn’t seem like a terribly serious candidate. That leaves Meghan Moyer and Vadim Mozyrsky. Neither excite but both strike me as likely capable. How you vote should probably be based on your opinion on homeless camping bans.
If you are pro-aggressive camping bans, vote Mozyrsky, if you are anti, vote Moyer.
District 3 — TJ Noddings is a housing advocate (good!) but is proposing rent control and rent caps tied to minimum wage. This shows he deeply misunderstands the housing crisis and his response will only make the affordability crisis worse for future generations.
Vote Julia Brim Edwards
Multnomah County Commissioner — District 2
There are a lot of credible candidates here. Ultimately it mostly depends on your opinion of former mayor Sam Adams, who was effective but has a … checkered past. He was a decent mayor and 2008-2012 was a relatively rosy time for Portland. But I can’t help but believe that his inaction on enabling new housing was part of what allowed for the explosion in rent prices in 2013 and 2014. [Update: Sam Adams responded to this via e-mail. See footnote2 more details]
To be honest, I would basically take any of these candidates over the ones in District 1. Adams knows the system, is willing to take bold stances, and is asking the right questions. Singleton has worked within the system but is sufficiently critical of the system. Both could be good additions to the commission, as would Jessie Burke.
But I’m going to diverge from all the papers in the city and recommend Nick Hara. He’s a local who returned during the pandemic with a strong data background having worked on AOC’s campaign. Of all the candidates he strikes me as the smartest, most thoughtful, and focused on the right problems (not enough data and, more importantly, not enough f’ing units). He’s a bit of an unknown but he also lacks the baggage of Singleton and Adams, and has a stronger, better message than Burke.
Vote Nick Hara but expect Adams or Singleton to win.
District Attorney
Do you want the much-hated reformer (Schmidt) or the back-to-basics candidate (Vasquez)? Schmidt was set up to fail from the start with the pandemic but he did himself no favors with the way he has carried himself and the way he has graded himself. He has had a poor relationship with the police, which (as I understand it from insiders) he’s partially repaired but it was too late to change the narrative. Meanwhile, crime is up since he started and folks are looking for someone to blame. They’ve settled on Schmidt.
Vasquez should be the easy choice. He’s 1) not Schmidt and 2) secondhand, I’ve heard from someone he supervised that he’s solid. But despite being positively inclined, I was rather unimpressed with his interviews. He blames Measure 110 (drug decrim.), and Schmidt, for what are pretty clearly failures of policing. He was (wrongly, in my opinion) against both measures 1103 and 114 (gun control). He seems pragmatic and he’s not nearly as self-aggrandizing as Schmidt, both good, but he’s also endorsed by the Portland Police Association (PPA), which is probably the biggest obstacle to enduring public safety in the city.
Who is the right person for the job? It may, ultimately, be Vasquez but by a much more narrow margin than I’d expect, and with much more uncertainty than I’d like. As a person, I prefer Vasquez, by a mile. But ultimately I think Schmidt has the better positions.
So I leave researching this race thoroughly uninspired and disappointed.
Vasquez is going to win, likely in a landslide. After much waffling and gnashing of teeth, I am going to actually split the difference, as a bit of a protest / vote of conscience.
Mortlandia endorsement: Nathan Vasquez
Who Mort will actually vote cast his vote for: Mike Schmidt
Happy voting, y’all. Democracy in action.
Our Katrina, unironically.
A day or so after I posted this, Sam responded to me via e-mail. I stand by my endorsement of Nick Hara, but I do think he has some fair critiques in his response, so I have reprinted the majority of it here, unedited:
If I might, I want to offer a clarification about your comments about me and housing.
First, I wish I were mayor during "a relatively rosy time for Portland."
I was mayor during the Great Recession of 2009, the worst recession since the Great Depression. The recession was based on a real estate-based subprime market economic implosion. Due to international real estate market forces, near nothing was being built during this time.
The Portland area was one of the worst-hit locales.
Second, I had to cut city budgets due to tax revenue reductions, but I increased funding for rental housing assistance and homelessness recovery. Also, I initiated the creation of the Portland Office of Housing and set aside tax increment financing funds to build affordable rental housing. I sought to consolidate permitting to speed housing development but failed to get a third vote.
As you note, after I left office, the rental housing market prices overheated, and the City was too slow to respond.
Thanks for listening; this stuff tends to get a life of its own.
I recognize I am on the wrong side of public opinion here but I stand by the belief that Measure 110 was a flawed but ultimately good piece of legislation. Yes it ultimately needed fixing but where the statutes are now, after the legislative fixes, is better than where they were pre-110.