Stay up to date on Portland news and politics. Looking for fun? Here are the best Things to Do in Portland today.
It’s Friday, Nov 2, and Election Day is just four days away! If you haven’t voted yet, remember that it’s too late to mail in your ballot; find a handy ballot box around town instead. Expected a ballot and haven’t received one? Read our arts editor’s harrowing account of apartment mailboxes, bureaucracy and “a very nice clerk named ‘Jared.’”
Choo-Choo: The Portland City Council unanimously voted yesterday in support of a new MAX line that will connect Portland to Tigard. They’re still not sure how much of the estimated $2.6 to $2.9 billion will be paid for by the city.
Tracking Hate: OPB published a report yesterday about how hate crimes are difficult to track in Oregon because of “a very specific legal definition, one that police, sheriffs and district attorneys say often falls short of satisfying people who have experienced hateful behavior.”
Faithless: The Portland Business Alliance, one of the key opposition groups to the Portland Clean Energy Initiative, locked local faith leaders who support the measure on moral grounds out of their office yesterday.
Great White Woman Hope?: The New York Times published an article about how this election could hinge on suburban white woman voters—again—and that they might be turned off by Trump’s nationalist rhetoric:
“Rather than seeking to coax voters like these back into the Republican coalition, Mr. Trump appears to have all but written them off, spending the final days of the campaign delivering a scorching message about preoccupations like birthright citizenship and a migrant ‘invasion’ from Mexico that these voters see through as alarmist.”
Money Trouble: Also per the Times: “Goldman Sachs is facing one of the most significant scandals in its history, a multibillion-dollar international fraud that investigators say was masterminded by a flamboyant financier with a taste for Hollywood and carried out with help from the Wall Street firm’s bankers.” Time to get those golden parachutes ready!
It All Goes Back to Halliburton: In the constant game of musical chairs that is the Trump administration, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is the latest cabinet official to face allegations of corruption. He may be subject to a criminal investigation into his “involvement in a Whitefish, Montana, land development deal backed by David J. Lesar, chairman of the oil services firm Halliburton.”
Hope-rah: Oprah is in Georgia this week to stump for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Abrams, who would be the nation’s first black woman governor if elected, is running against Republican Brian Kemp, who has used his position as Georgia secretary of state to suppress the vote in this election.
Fortunately for Abrams, Oprah likes her elections like she likes her tomatoes—real.
