Politics

Updated: May 24 No other race garnered as much national attention during the May primary as Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District. More than half a dozen candidates ran to fill the seat held by current US Rep. Earl Blumenauer for nearly 30 years. Blumenauer is retiring and didn’t seek reelection. The 3rd District includes most of […]

Updated: May 24 As ballots were still being counted and results still rolling in, Tuesday’s election saw several progressive candidates losing or slated for a runoff in November against more centrist and conservative opponents.  In an election where Multnomah County’s homeless crisis, livability, addiction, and behavioral health issues were centered in nearly every local campaign, […]

The final weeks of the campaign to replace Rep. Earl Blumeaneur in Congress have been dominated by reporting on a single issue: the millions of dollars of outside spending that have flooded in to try to stop the candidacy of former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal.  The money, as The Intercept and other outlets have […]

Kevin Foster contributed to this story.  Over the past two weeks, it’s become clear that Maxine Dexter’s campaign to represent Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District in the United States House has been the beneficiary of millions in donations from political action committees (PACs) with unknown contributors.  Dexter’s campaign has also received hundreds of thousands of dollars […]

When Mike Schmidt was elected as Multnomah County District Attorney in 2020, it was in a landslide: Schmidt won with more than 76 percent of the vote, promising in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic to revamp the county’s approach to criminal justice.  Schmidt’s election didn’t happen in a vacuum. It came instead as […]

As a wave of nearly $3 million in dark money enters Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District race, voters are questioning the donors backing Maxine Dexter’s campaign, and whether the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is among them. A political action committee (PAC) known as 314 Action Fund, has spent  $1.67 million to support Dexter’s campaign. […]

If Portland residents were given access to a percentage of the city’s budget to work on projects most important to them, what would they choose? According to participatory budgeting (PB) advocates, the results could be much more reflective of community needs, and the process would get more people, from more walks of life, involved in […]

Though the audience at Thursday morning’s Multnomah County Board of Commissioners meeting engaged in some heated squabbles, county commissioners were united in their “aye” vote on a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.  The resolution, submitted by Commissioner Lori Stegmann, has been in the works for weeks, and the contents of it remained in […]