Street Wonk #14: Happy New Year!
In Memoriam: Henry Weeks, City of Portland Elections, Candidate Red, Yellow & Green Lights, and Portland for All!
Dear Readers,
Hello! I’m back after an unexpectedly extended hiatus! Shortly after deciding to take November off to attend to some personal matters, I became the de facto guardian of a family member amid a mental health and all-around life crisis. They came to me with little more than the clothes on their back. Until last week, providing care to my son and this family member was a 24/7 job. I’m pleased to report that the situation has stabilized, and I now have a couple of days a week (mostly) to myself again. It feels like a vacation! So, of course, I felt the need to get back to work.
Starting next week, The Agenda will resume on a weekly basis, and I’ll also be sending out regular updates on our local and regional elections. Barring future personal crises and global disasters, launching a Street Wonk website, book club, and speaker series is also on my 2024 to-do list.
Following the City’s agenda can be taxing—the sheer volume of items crossing their desks every week can be overwhelming—but sometimes it’s downright demoralizing, especially when I see current Council members undermining some of the good work my team and former colleagues fought so hard for. But that’s politics, I guess. Two steps forward, one step back (if you’re lucky). This is to say, it got to be a little much last fall, so I’m going to take some pauses as needed this year.
Last month, I chatted with Natalie, a rad human and Street Wonk subscriber, whom I met in a lit class at PCC over a decade ago. She gave me some feedback—mostly positive!—I’ve been pondering for the past few weeks: I sometimes make references in my writing assuming that the reader shares my base of knowledge, which requires searching for additional info. This is not my intent and is one of my biggest pet peeves!
I strive to make Street Wonk accessible to the average reader. I do my best to distill masses of information into concise, relevant, and readable articles. One solution is launching a website with links to past articles, info, and resources. How else can I avoid this common pitfall? I want to help everyone become an expert, not make people feel they’re not up to the challenge! Please leave your suggestions in the comments!
Here’s hoping this will be our year, Portland.
Yours Truly,
Chloe/Street Wonk
In Memoriam: Henry Weeks, Unsung & Unassuming Hero
December 6th, 1940-December 14th, 2023
I was a bookseller in my past life, and Henry Weeks was one of my best and favorite customers. Henry was a lifelong musician, a longtime KBOO volunteer and host, a loving father, and one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. Any day Henry swung by the shop was a good day! Henry wasn’t just a Reading Frenzy supporter but later cheered on my campaign(s) and work on Council, and finally, became a Street Wonk subscriber. It meant a lot to me that I had his support. I regret that closing up shop meant I’d have few chances to catch up with him over the last several years. I hope he knew how loved and appreciated he was by those lucky enough to know him. So long, Henry, it was good to know you.
City of Portland 2024 Elections Update
As you know, this year will be a unique election cycle for the City of Portland. Every seat, including the Mayor and City Auditor, is in play, and over 40 people have already filed their intent to run with the small donor election program! Keep in mind that official filing with the Elections Office doesn’t even begin until June 5th.
There are too many candidates for me to give you even the hottest of takes on each one this week. Instead, I’ll share how I’m assessing candidates and a simple red, yellow, or green light to each one, with a bit of commentary sprinkled in. It’s possible there will be more than three *green lights* per district. Later in the election cycle, I’ll submit a Street Wonk questionnaire to all the candidates and select my top three picks in each district.
The jobs of the Mayor and City Commissioners will significantly change with our new form of City Government. Most readers are likely already aware, but in short, the administrative and legislative responsibilities will be divided between the Mayor’s office and the Council. So, it will be critical that the Mayor has experience, expertise, and a successful track record in administration. For the Council, policy chops are going to be essential.
While political alignment is crucial to my support of a candidate, even someone who’s a 100% match will not get my support without meaningful advocacy and policymaking experience relevant to the office they seek. This may sound like the classic conundrum of you having to get the job to get the expertise required to get the job, but it’s not. There are many ways to gain experience in advocacy and policymaking—The City Council should not be used as a training ground for people who think they have the answers but lack experience, let alone viable policy solutions.
The basics:
Super progressive politics.
Relevant experience in advocacy and policymaking for the position they’re seeking.
Viable policy solutions: It’s not enough to be unhappy about an issue or want change. I want to know what specific policy solutions you will fight for if you win a seat on the Council.
A solid track record in past employment, advocacy work, and/or political involvement. Who and what have they shown up for?
Now, say we are lucky enough to have more than three candidates in a district that meet these basic criteria. I will then assess each of them based on whether they bring critical perspectives to the Council that are currently underrepresented or totally lacking. This is where identity and lived experience come into play. Beyond voting for the candidates we feel most aligned with, we should be striving for a Council that is more representative of our community, whether it’s race, class, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, education, home ownership status, national origin, religion, or ethnicity (note: this is not a comprehensive list). This isn’t because diversity makes us look or feel better; it can lead to more thoughtful and inclusive policies, fewer unintended consequences for vulnerable populations, and a better city for all of us.
I can speak to this personally. I was the eighth woman ever elected. I took my seat on Council beside three Ivy League-educated colleagues and one who attended Cambridge, all well-off. I had to borrow money to survive until my first full paycheck came in February.No one could remember the last time a renter had been elected to Council. At 46, I was one of the youngest Commissioners to serve during my lifetime. Coming from a working-class family and a challenging background, being a high school dropout, a violent crime survivor, a low-income small business owner, a renter, a parent of a child with a disability, and an activist, I was often the voice of diversity in rooms dominated by privilege, despite being a middle-aged white woman. From renter protections to increased accessibility to public safety to prioritizing the most vulnerable and least well-served, to investments during COVID that helped sustain some of our most vital small business and cultural institutions, I know the unique and sometimes difficult experiences I brought with me made a difference to our decision-making process and to our city.
Finally, when faced with two equally appealing candidates who bring valuable experience and perspectives to the table, I will take a hard look at who is behind their campaigns and who is endorsing them. In my experience, some people are master equivacators, able to adapt their language depending on the audience. It can be hard to know where and what they stand for, but the people they choose to run their campaign and who are endorsing them are telltale signs. My red flags include the Portland Metro Chamber (aka PBA), the Portland Police Association, the Downtown Development Group, and, most of the time, The Oregonian.
I googled the name of each candidate plus “for Portland City Council website” and searched the first page of results. Names that aren’t linked indicate that nothing came up in my results. If these candidates have websites, they need to work on their SEO; if they don’t have websites, they probably shouldn’t have announced their campaigns. If you have the link for any of the missing websites, please leave them in the comments, and I’ll update the list in a future issue.
🟢: Yes!
🟡 / 🟢: Signs point to yes
🟡: Need more information
🔴: Nope!
Mayor
Carmen Rubio: 🟢 Hallelujah! Portland officially has one viable candidate for Mayor who sits on the progressive end of the political spectrum. The most common complaint about Commissioner Rubio (full disclosure: we are friendly acquaintances) is that people don’t know what she stands for. Many Portlanders are also deeply disappointed in her role in the City permitting the Zenith expansion. I say, give her some grace—the past three years have been epically challenging, and Portland voters dealt her a bad hand when it came to colleagues. It takes three people on Council to get anything done, and she hasn’t had a single solid ally. The job of the Mayor is already extremely challenging, and the transition to our new form of City government will be rough. Having a Mayor who knows the ropes at City Hall and is our only hope of progressive change is worth a lot in my book.
Durrell Kinsey Bey: 🔴 Would having a Moorish Muslim farmer for Mayor be cool? Perhaps. Does he have any chance of being elected? Outlook not so good. At first glance, you might dismiss Bey as a novelty candidate. While he lacks the experience that this position demands, I hope he moderates his ambitions in the future and runs for office again. Based on his website and some of the efforts he’s been involved with, I’m interested in hearing more about his politics and policy solutions.
Mingus Mapps: 🔴
Auditor
Simone Rede: 🟢 So far, she’s running unchallenged, but as a City Auditor fan girl, I had to include her in this list!
City Council District 1 (East Portland):
Cayle Tern: 🟡
David Linn: 🟡
Jamie Dunphy: 🟡
Steph Routh: 🟢
Terrence Hayes: 🟡
Thomas Shervey: 🟡
City Council District 2 (NE Portland):
Alan Blake: 🟡
John Middleton: 🟡
Laura Streib: 🟡
Marc Koller: 🟡
City Council District 3 (SE Portland):
Chris Flanary: 🟡 / 🟢
Daniel DeMelo: 🟡 /🟢
Matthew Anderson: 🟡
Rex Burkholder: 🟡 / 🟢
Robin Ye: 🟢
Sandeep Bali: 🔴
Steve Novick: 🟢
Tiffany Koyama Lane: 🟡 /🟢
City Council District 4 (Westside):
Chad Lykins: 🟡
Eli Arnold: 🟡
Moses Ross: 🟡
Olivia Clark: 🟡
Sarah Silkie: 🟡
Tony Morse: 🟡
Portland For All
Are you as concerned as I am that progressive Portland is too fractured and needs to get its act together? Here’s one way we could make that happen: Portland for All.
“Neighbors, colleagues and friends from across the city came together to form Portland for All because we love Portland.
We cherish so much about this city. And for all of our strengths, we still see Portlanders being left behind, and it’s grown worse since the start of the pandemic.
We came together because we are frustrated by the loud and harmful voices that use fear to try to divide us. We reject approaches that exacerbate problems and cause harm.
Portland is at its best when we work together to address the root causes of our toughest issues. We are at our best when we treat our neighbors, colleagues and friends with dignity and love. We are at our best when we are inclusive, compassionate and effective.”
Call to Action
We all deserve safe communities--sign on to reject “broken windows” policing. Multnomah County District Attorney candidate Nathan Vasquez wants to bring heavy-handed “broken windows policing” back to our region. Championed by disgraced former Manhattan District Attorney Rudy Giuliani, this approach requires officers to over-police lower-income communities to meet arrest quotas. Join Basic Rights Oregon, Building Power for Communities of Color, Latino Network Action Fund, and Safety and Justice Oregon in rejecting Vasquez's campaign. Read and sign here.
Welcome back, Chloe! Love the post, but I see a couple issues I'm hoping you can address.
1. The district map you included in the post is incorrect. That's one of the maps the commission considered, but rejected, mainly because it would have resulted in Sandy Blvd dividing several neighborhoods in NE Portland. The one they settled on and was adopted follows the neighborhood boundaries around Sandy Blvd in a stair-step pattern. You can find it here: https://www.portland.gov/transition/districtcommission/map
2. As a person with red-green colorblindness, I often face this situation where people very naturally use a "red/yellow/green" color system for "bad to good" because it's intuitive to follow the way traffic signals work. However, traffic signals use a special type of green color that makes them still completely legible for those of us with red-green colorblindness. The colors you use in this post are just standard red and green with a similar level of saturation, and as a result I can't really tell the difference between the ones that are meant to be opposites! Given how common this color-perception disability is, with about 5% of all men and 1% of all women having some form of red-green colorblindness, I always encourage people to keep this in mind when choosing a color scheme. The easiest thing to do is replace green with blue, since blue is also often associated with "positive" in people's minds, and blue doesn't really get confused with any other color in the vast majority of color-perception issues (the gene for seeing blue is on a totally different chromosome, whereas the genes for red and green are right next to each other on the same chromosome, hence they get confused in some people). You can also do things like make one of them light and the other dark, like light green and dark red or vise versa, or mix in another color into one of them (traffic lights do this, mixing some blue into the green light). Or avoid colors altogether and use hatching or shading.
Thank you for your consideration.
Bond measures direct public money for specific purposes. For instance, a bond for more preschools or to solve homelessness can’t be applied to the City’s General Fund, which is used for internal public offices and entities that don’t raise money. How will candidates supply funding for the Park or Fire Bureaus, or internal offices such as City Attorney or Risk Management? I’m just trying to play Devil’s Advocate with you Chloe. I really hope you can cover some of that or include it in your candidate’s ratings.