
This article was produced as a collaboration between Bolts and Portland Mercury.
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In a new campaign video for Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton, a narrator asks: âWhy does safety matter?â Several people then give vague answers about family and community until a woman with a worried expression delivers perhaps the most direct response: âBecause I donât want our county turning into Portland.â
Although more than a thousand Portlanders live within Washington County, Oregonâs second most populous county, Barton has made the city a boogeyman in his race for a second term in the nonpartisan prosecutorâs office. Ahead of the May 17 election, Barton has accused his opponent of wanting to defund law enforcement and framed himself as the only barrier keeping suburban Washington County from descending into Portland-level lawlessness.
âWe have the advantage, I think, of watching Portland's mistakes and not repeating them,â Barton said in an interview with the Beaverton Valley Times last October. âOne of those mistakes is the defunding of the police and public safety systems within Portland. We know that simply taking money away and taking resources away from public safety is a dangerous road to go down.â
Like many US cities, Portland has seen an increase in violent crime since 2020âa year that brought a global pandemic, racial justice protests, investment in police alternatives at Portland City Hall, an increase in visible homelessness, and turnover at the district attorneyâs office in Multnomah County, which encompasses most of Portland city limits. Bartonâs ads allude to the fact that in 2020, Portland officials also shifted $15 million from policing toward community programs and a pilot project to send mental health clinicians to some 911 calls instead of armed officers, reducing the cityâs annual police budget by about 3 percent compared to the previous year; Bartonâs ads do not, however, mention that the police budget headed to Portland City Council for approval next month is about $15 million more than what the city approved in 2019, the largest in the cityâs history.
In a recent community forum hosted by Washington County, Barton rejected the idea that his campaign was trying to divide voters in the Portland region. âIâm not creating any type of division between Multnomah County and Washington County, the leaders in Multnomah County are crazy,â said Barton. âThey have ruined the public safety system.â
Fears about Portland âdefundingâ police have been central to Bartonâs campaign against his opponent Brian Decker, a former public defender who also has experience working as a federal prosecutor. In campaign ads, Barton accuses Decker of being âan extremist who wants to defund police and abolish prisons.â Barton, who declined to be interviewed for this story, points out as justification that Decker helped establish the Washington County Justice Initiative, a nonprofit whose website calls for âdefunding police, prosecutors, and prisons.â
Decker says Bartonâs ads are an inaccurate portrayal of the kind of reforms he actually supports. âI have said we need to fund essential police services and we need to reallocate funds to fund addiction treatment, homeless services, mental health care, and other social services,â Decker said. âMost people in Washington County agree with that, but Barton conflates that with zeroing out the budget of the police, because he knows that rhetoric will rally his right wing base.â
Previously a Republican bastion, Washington County has veered to the left since the 1990s, with a steady succession of Democrats representing the county at the state legislature. While the district attorneyâs office is nonpartisan, Bartonâs politics skew conservativeâespecially compared to Decker.
This is Bartonâs second contested district attorneyâs race, which itself is a rarity in Oregon. In 2018, Barton beat out Max Wall, a well-financed progressive candidate who joined the race at the last minute. Thanks to Wallâs support by billionaire George Soros, the campaign became the most expensive district attorney race in Oregonâs history. Decker, who currently has $238,000 in his campaign coffers, has raised much less than Bartonâs previous challenger, while the incumbent has just over $277,000 in cash on hand, including hefty donations from Nike founder Phil Knight, Columbia Sportswear CEO Tim Boyle, and local conservative political action committee ActionPAC. Deckerâs biggest donations have come from Aaron Boonshoft, a local philanthropist funding an Oregon campaign to decriminalize sex work, Oregon Department of Justice attorney Nicholas Greenfield, and former Oregon Democratic Senator Chip Shields.
The outcome of the May 17 election could influence criminal justice policy in Oregonâs second-largest county. Decker criticizes the incumbent for favoring long sentences, charging an inordinate amount of youth as adults, and offering little in terms of actual rehabilitation to incarcerated people. Decker says these factors contribute to Washington County having the highest recidivism rate in Portlandâs tri-county metro area. Decker is also interested in bringing restorative justice programs to Washington County, which can allow crime victims to choose a mediation process with a defendant over a trial, allowing both parties to resolve their issues and reach an agreement outside of the carceral system.
âWe need more options,â said Decker. âWhen you act like locking people up is the only strategy, and then you come across a case where thatâs not the right solution, you end up doing nothing to create a safer community. I want to use every appropriate resource.â
He says his past work prosecuting criminal cases qualifies him for the DA job, while his work as a public defender in Washington County would help him reform whatâs not working in the countyâs criminal justice system.
âWashington County is the most extreme county Iâve ever worked in, and thatâs because of the tough on crime, war on drugs, lock 'em up and throw away the key fanaticism coming from the DAâs office,â Decker said.
Bartonâs lobbying work indeed illustrates a certain resistance to reforms. He has discouraged lawmakers from scaling back Oregonâs mandatory minimum sentencing policy for violent crimes, called Measure 11, which charges adolescents as adults, and pushed back against a bill that would require judges to take domestic abuse into consideration during sentencing if it was a contributing factor to a defendant's criminal behavior. Barton also opposed Measure 110, a law that decriminalized small amounts of illegal drugs and funded substance abuse recovery programs. Barton has instead promoted what he calls âresponsible reforms,â including the creation of a pilot diversion program for criminal defendants with mental health issues and a new resource center for children impacted by domestic abuse.
Bartonâs demonizing of Portland and weaponizing of the debate around police funding worries Bobbin Singh, director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC).
âBarton says he doesnât want to turn into Portland, which is saying he doesnât want to talk about racial justice issues or talk about accountability within law enforcement,â said Singh. âAs a Washington County resident and person of color, when I hear rhetoric like that, itâs alarming.â
Washington County has grown to be Oregonâs most racially and ethnically diverse county, according to the 2020 Census. Singh sees Bartonâs approach as in line with a national conservative backlash to the racial justice protests of 2020, which sends a clear message to the countyâs residents of color.
âEither Barton is doing it intentionally to create this wedge between voters, or he doesnât know what heâs doing and heâs ignorant to it. Either way, itâs reckless and dangerous and sends a strong signal that weâre not welcome here.â
For Singh, Bartonâs campaign draws historic parallels to the political environment following the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
âThe response to the civil rights movement of the â60s was tough on crime policing,â said Singh. âAny time we see success on civil rights, like the response to George Floydâs murder, we see a national pushback thatâs tough on crime. I think thatâs what weâre seeing here.â
Shannon Wight, deputy director of Safety and Justice Oregon, an organization that lobbies for criminal justice reform bills, says Bartonâs campaign has painted him as a progressive reformer by evoking the idea of âresponsible reformâ and acknowledging past harms the criminal justice system has inflicted on marginalized communities, showing heâs at least paying attention to larger calls to change the system. By invoking Portland as an allusion to violent crime and homelessness, however, Wight argues that Barton is pointing to problems he helped engineer by âprioritizing locking people up, tough sentencing policies, and ignoring peopleâs real needs.â
Blaming Portlandâs rise in crime on marginal changes in police funding and wrongly claiming that his opponent wants to zero out law enforcement budgets seems to be working for Barton.
Tigard Mayor Jason Snider, one of seven Washington County mayors who have endorsed Barton, said he spoke with Decker and agreed with him on many frontsâfor instance, âI agree that we donât need to be throwing the book at people for minor crimes.â But what made Snider uncomfortable about Decker, he said, âwas hearing that he had a âdefund the policeâ agenda. There are a lot of things that need more investment in the community, like mental health and recovery, but that doesn't mean we need less police.â