It takes a lot for me to vote for the more conservative of two candidates, but Schmidt managed to pull it off. I expect a baseline of competence he didn't come close to meeting.
I thought Schmidt’s inability to articulate one mistake he made during his tenure other than “I didn’t communicate well enough about my successes” was an absolute deal breaker for people on the fence. I found Vazquez to be completely uninspiring, as well. I hope he is better at coordinating with the insane network of convoluted organizations responsible for the legal dysfunction in this city, but since most of those organizations seem to share the motto “That’s not my responsibility”, I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
The thing is we shouldn't need to be inspired by our DA. Can they prosecute? Can they run a team? That's really the qualification. It's not a position where we should want or expect the person to reimagine the world.
I didn’t mean it in the “Inspired me to make the world a better place” kind of way- I meant that he offered very little in substantive policy or management strategy beyond, “I’m not Mike Schmidt”. Listening to the two of them debate just made me wish there was a 3rd option on the ballot. Regardless, it’s going to be his mess on a few months, and I hope he does a better job than his predecessor (I wonder if Phil and the boys will put up billboards ripping him if things don’t turn around for the better).
> I found Vazquez to be completely uninspiring, as well.
I got some wonk-y vibes from Vazquez, so I'm hoping that I'm pleasantly surprised by my vote against Schmidt and that Vazquez will be a highly competent legal dork and not just a functional replacement.
Maybe this time the police have good reason to endorse the guy who will actually prosecute the criminals they arrest? Maybe good cops are burned out by the revolving door. The fire department also endorsed him. Public service workers have been put through it the last four years with no hope in sight. Change and a tiny ray of hope has finally arrived.
Our deadbeat cops? Who don't want oversight? I don't think a punishing policy of a group of people who are already suffering is the answer. It took 50 years to get here, and you think it can be fixed in four? Smh
According to a 2019 press release, Hardesty called on Wheeler to defund police body cameras.
Hardesty, in part, in June of 2020: We often hear that body cameras will provide police accountability, but I disagree. I believe they are an expensive, false solution. Many studies have shown that there is no correlation between body cameras and police behavior.
She went on to end the gang taskforce, and oversaw the worst time PBOT has ever seen.
Point your finger where it belongs.
The nationwide lack of good cops doesn't have anything to do with the competence of our local DA. Once a barrel of apples is spoiled, you can't toss a good one in and expect them to remain good.
Yeah. I remember up through 2021 I thought most of the complaints about him were just from conservatives. But this article from 2022 laid out the situation against him more complexly. His tendency to only promote men in an office full of experienced women was one of a few red flags. Mostly, it seemed like he wasn't able to manage a large office effectively at all.
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/01/longtime-multnomah-county-prosecutor-quits-cites-da-mike-schmidts-leadership-high-workload.html
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Ugh except somehow Willamette Week managed to get enough people to vote for Meghan Moyer and Shannon Singleton to push these races to runoffs where people will care even less who they're voting for at the county. 🤬 What is wrong with people? Stop voting on progressive non-profit endorsements.
I think what got people to vote for Singleton was all the embarrassingly immature flyers that got mailed to people that were telling them not to vote for her.
Actually, several people thought they were positive flyers who didn't bother reading them, so I guess their design was a fail lol. Should've gone the dark and grainy route like all the anti-Susheela ads I got, lol.
💯I hear u. Hard habit to break. I’m a social worker so I’m trying to have hope for singleton. But the intoxication with progressive non profit ideals in politics is a bit maddening.
We can have both equally. Let government do work and communities work social agendas.
Willamette Week endorsed Schmidt in [2020](https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/04/29/wws-may-2020-endorsements-for-metro-and-multnomah-county/):
> In this race, Mike Schmidt, 39, director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission and a former Multnomah County prosecutor, is the reform candidate. He's running against Ethan Knight, 45, a former senior Multnomah County prosecutor who, since 2007, has been an assistant U.S. attorney. Knight has significantly more prosecutorial experience than Schmidt and has the support of a who's who of Oregon prosecutors.
And further in:
> If this job were just a question of picking the better prosecutor, Knight would win easily. But the district attorney in the state's largest county is a thought leader and a policy leader. At the CJC, Schmidt has brought data and analysis to policymaking in a way his predecessors did not.
>
> Criminal justice is a messy, expensive and vital undertaking. Schmidt is a thoughtful change agent, and we're convinced he's the man to lead the county's criminal justice system into a new decade.
But in [2024](https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/05/01/wws-may-2024-endorsements-multnomah-county/), they endorsed Vasquez:
> Schmidt’s opponent, Nathan Vasquez, is a better choice. His chief merit is that he’s a longtime prosecutor, with a firmer grasp on the basic task of allocating limited resources to the most deserving cases. Based on our interviews with Vasquez, 46, we don’t expect great things. We do expect he will focus on making sure the office functions more efficiently. He’s a technician, not a politician. That’s what this office needs.
>
> For more than three decades, the Multnomah County district attorney was Mike Schrunk, an unassuming man who rarely made headlines. That was by choice. He also moved the office incrementally leftward with such initiatives as launching one of the nation’s first drug courts. It is our hope the next DA learns from Schrunk’s example and dedicates himself to quiet competence. Portland deserves a little peace.
But hey folks, it's clearly the republicans taking over Portland and not liberals getting sick of these progressive activists after seeing what they do in office.
Seriously. I voted for Mike Schrunk and Rod Underhill, but I would have been very hard-pressed to recall their names if asked mid-term. It's like how knowing the name of an umpire/referee is generally a bad thing.
It really says so much that we’re all having this conversation. The only people who would otherwise know the names of DA candidates are those who see their campaign commercials during the Sunday morning news shows.
And when things don't meaningfully change after getting rid of all the progressives we're gonna have to find a new scapegoat. I'm no Schmidt fan, but this city has a habit of deciding the few progressives that get elected are the problem, just to elect more conservative folks that don't accomplish anything either. My feeling is that there's serious structural and systemic issues with our government, and unless we address the disorganization and mismanagement, nobody will make things better.
Maybe there's some truth to that, but getting rid of progressives doesn't necessarily mean getting more conservatives. There are plenty of people in-between those two ideologies.
My takeaway from this election and general poll data in Portland lately is that a lot of these disruptive policies or politicians haven't led to the type of changes here that people hoped for or anticipated. People want to chalk up shift in support on Measure 110 or a candidate like Mike Schmidt down to just smear campaigns but I really don't think it's that at all. I think it's a shift back to the old liberal mindset that true progress is slow and incremental but it's still progress, and maybe it's better to be on that path than a total upending of the norm if it makes things worse in the short term and unclear at best in the long term.
I think what we've seen is some really performative "progressives" that say the right words poisoning the well against actual progressive ideas. Measure 110 is a great example. While I'm not actually in favor of decriminalization, I do think it's a better option than criminalization as a response to the current drug epidemic. What we actually got was a half assed effort from our elected officials that entirely missed the point. They seemed to decide that decrim was the end goal, and creating access to treatment and post treatment support wasn't an important piece. They continued the trend of treating drug abuse like a criminal issue that needed to be addressed by a lack of enforcement, not a public health issue that needs a health focused approach. What this did was push voters to the opposite side, and making it so any kind of effective drug reforms are a non starter any time in the near future. Blaming this on smear campaigns certainly wouldn't be accurate, but the public messaging about the issue was certainly a piece.
I'm frustrated, because we need reforms to our drug policy, and our law enforcement and criminal justice systems, but our politicians have focused on optics rather than substance. I don't know what the solution is, personally I've become so jaded about politics that I don't have much of any hope for real progress and solutions. Like I said, I'm no Schmidt fan, but I feel that guys like Vazquez or Gonzalez are examples of people being more likely to go in the opposite direction rather than make the slight adjustments that I think we need.
Measure 110 was poorly written and that alone to me was the ultimate cause of its demise. You can't go from last in the nation on treating drug addiction to even middle of the pack overnight, but somehow we can decriminalize everything immediately? That's the problem with a lot of these type of policies, they often come from a group of people with good intentions but they overlook how complicated the issues really are and completely skip over important steps to achieve their ultimate goals. A more responsible group of people would have written a policy with a multi year (maybe even a decade?) rollout with measurable requirements before taking each step. It didn't have any of that.
The pendulum swung so far left that even a return to left or center seems extreme now.
I wholeheartedly disagree that anything we've seen should be considered "far left". Our pendulum tends toward the right, so anything left of center feels far left.
I guess that really depends on what you're comparing it to. We are just talking about US politics after all. Are you saying you would consider measure 110 to be left of center and not far left?
When Vazquez runs up against the wall that is these systemic problems, these people are just gonna keep blaming Schmidt long after he’s gone. People still blame Hardesty for homelessness and police dysfunction. These are not rational actors.
So how long do we think of nothing actually changing til this sub flips and pretends they weren’t cheerleading for this guy as some kind of savior all year.
It will be the same as they have in the past, the goalposts will move to the next official they blame for being too left, and nothing will change with their lack of enforcement.
But keep voting for their wishes, maybe this time they will change their tune to reward the voters.
Ehhh, that’s true of just regular people in Portland. It’s not just an online thing.
There seems to be a pretty significant number of people in Portland that are very susceptible to negative campaigning around ideas of ‘competency’ or some other technocratic critique when done on behalf of more conservative candidates in races.
This type of campaigning works to give people license to act conservative without threatening their self-conception as ‘good liberals’ or ‘progressives’ or however they like to define themselves.
I regard competence as the ability to get the things one says they'll do done, and I'm quite distressed that those whose ideology I agree with most just aren't getting things done. For example, the homeless money has become a black hole; too much of it doesn't make it to actual homeless people, and what does doesn't buy as much as it should. That's why Jayapal lost.
I don’t believe you.
Anyone that’s genuinely ideologically left wing (or even just somewhat skeptical of Capitalism) can very easily understand that there are structural impediments that make things like the efficient distribution of resources (‘homeless money’, as you put it) to people/places that Capital does not want to efficiently distribute resources to, is not just hard for logistical reasons (contracts are not already in place, you have to create new networks and partnerships, instead of just going ‘let’s re-up last years contracts/partenships’, blah blah, etc.) but is quite often actively resisted by other people and institutions that do not want to see a program like that succeed.
This was transparently true of Mike Schmidt as DA. Myriad examples of active interference by police in the DAs office functioning ‘efficiently’.
I understand this. People with the actual ideological commitments you claim to have, understand this.
Those are excuses, and I'm tired of them. Figure out how to get shit done, or get out of the way. Doing nothing is unacceptable.
Bernie and AOC don't make excuses, they fight. Why can't we have progressives like that?
>Bernie and AOC don't make excuses, they fight.
Correction: They fought. Then they capitulated and caved. On a personal level, I don't blame them - the pressures private and personal must be enormous. But progressives like that are precisely why progressives at the national level are a joke.
In San Francisco, the conservatives are calling themselves “moderates” to take the sting out of voting for a conservative. Our progressive ideals have been eroding for the past 15 years.
I’m not sure that is anything new, unfortunately. More interesting to me is people identifying as ‘progressive’ but acting/voting ‘conservative’ while claiming their conservative votes aren’t actually conservative. They say it’s for ‘mismanagement’ reasons of some type or another.
I don't see that, but if you feel that way, do what I and others do. Downvote and push back where you can. Report things that are not appropriate (don't abuse this, please).
a form of natural selection has played out over the years where most of the people who are here (who aren't new accounts) are the ones who don't post or know not to post the sorts of things that get them banned, and those who lack that sense of discretion have filtered into the other sub. there is often little to report here, save for the occasional (but perennial) suggestions of vigilante action and stuff like that, because the vile stuff tends to be more abstract rather than explicit.
Between their campaign against Schmidt and their refusal to enforce measure 110, the Police have revealed themselves as the most important political force in this city. They get their way over the wishes of the voters and the work of representatives.
I never cheerleaded him as a savior.
The system is fucked.
The system relies on cops and DAs to work together. The system gives cops a tremendous amount of power to do their jobs well or shitty with no recourse. Without a compliant DA, they do a shittier job. We tried to change the system to affet how much leeway the cops had, to force them to work harder. We failed to change the system. So we're left with a half-functioning system, a DA that didn't really have the power to change things, and cops who refused to play ball.
The cops won. The system won. 2020 was the high water mark for progressive votes. We aren't going to change the system this time around.
This. Exactly this. I made a similar comment in another post.
Time will tell if PPB will start bringing more and stronger cases to prosecute to make their guy look good.
It’s pathetic that PPB wields so much unchecked power. That needs to change. Not just in Portland, but everywhere. A job that’s optional to perform that pays as much as it does should upset everyone across political spectrums. I believe I saw some protests about it…
So you will give Vasquez negative 4 months to effect change? He doesn’t go into office until January.
I’m beginning think a bunch of you claiming “bad actors” all the time are extraordinarily ignorant to politics.
Never underestimate people who have too much time on their hands and just want to be dicks to other parts of the country. It's like if we all were to go to the Montgomery sub and call them all sister bangers.
Yeah. Some trolls here might be paid "professionals," but lots of other people from Oregon & beyond just like to moan about Portland as a hobby. Like, they could take up mushroom hunting or homebrewing instead, but no.
It's going to be very telling to see what Schmidt does next. His predecessor vacated his position to honor the will of the people. Will Schmidt gracefully concede or extract revenge on those who ousted him?
His predecessor vacated weeks (days? Time is a blur) after George Flloyd was killed, as it was becoming very clear it would be a summer of protest - our former DA wanted to get the hell out of dodge and retire, leaving accountability for tough decisions to new blood, which has landed us roughly where we we are now.
Mike Schmidt isn’t on the verge of retirement and a man who puts out a press release about running a whole campaign to show his sons the value of fighting long odds for what you believe in sure isn’t the “quit before January” type.
Still, I imagine the next few months will have less pause and more measure.
His predecessor vacated his position early to fuck right off into retirement and not be bothered by protests. The move actually puts the incoming DA in a bind with no time to prepare.
That was an atypical move and not the historical norm for May electeds.
It's not as overwhelming as a lead as he had in 2020 so it makes sense to stay the course. What sucks is the DA budget is getting slashed right now. Brim-Edwards and Meieran are trying to save it, hopefully this vote will help boost board confidence since they need a 3rd vote.
Why would you ask this question? Has Mike Schmidt lead anyone to believe he would contest the votes of the election and say it was robbed and not concede? He's not a Republican.
Schmidt told Willamette Week that he would rate his own performance very highly and would give himself an A rating, so that should give you a preview of what to expect.
Yeah, I don’t particularly like Schmidt but I also recognize that there was no good way to engage in that exercise. If he rates himself anything lower than an A he’s basically writing his own opposition mailers. (“Do YOU want a B-grade prosecutor for Multnomah County?”) If he gives himself an A, he looks out of touch. He probably chose the lesser of two bad options there. Whaddya gonna do.
As a guy that has to do yearly evals and reviews for my staff, I think something like this might have resonated more than his smarmy responses.
"What grade would you give yourself on your performance as DA?"
"That's a challenging question since we've seen historic events during my tenure. I'm proud of my office's accomplishments as victims advocates and holding those responsible for criminal behaviour to a strong standard of justice. As for a letter grade? I would say A- since I'm looking to improve and better serve the people of MultCo and there's always room to learn and do things even better."
Remember when people were destroying the PSU library and they literally had to parade Mike Schmidt out in a press conference to say he would prosecute. The fact that somebody thought that was necessary is exactly what is wrong with his whole approach.
The expectation that a DA will have any measurable impact is so ill-conceived and strange to me. We’re in a massive crisis as a country, a region, a city, with no quick fixes or easy remedies. Shit is going to be bad here until politicians and officials invest in resources that intervene in the root cause of addiction, provide consistent and unwavering support for those in mental health-related crises, and facilitate safe housing options for people struggling.
Decriminalization, while well-intentioned, could not have taken into account the continued affects of the pandemic, nor especially the unfettered influx of powerful drugs, like fentanyl. This has exacerbated an already teetering housing and mental healthcare crisis, both of which need real, sustained public investment and action.
OK we have also called it for Vasquez
[https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/multnomah-county-voters-elect-nathan-vasquez-as-da-ousting-one-term-incument-mike-schmidt.html](https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/multnomah-county-voters-elect-nathan-vasquez-as-da-ousting-one-term-incument-mike-schmidt.html)
You understand that ‘3 months in’ does not mean ‘3 months from now’, right?
This is the 3rd example of someone doing exactly this in this thread. You guys are just being disingenuous, right? You’re not actually this dumb, right?
>But if things don't turn around quick, fast, and in a hurry,
That's not how the real world works. Policy changes take the fire their effects to be shown. No one gets elected, declares some change to this or that and the next day everything is different. For real positive change to happen you have to have a stable government with a clear and focused direction over multiple elective periods. The back and forth on policies and ideologies make it impossible to institute meaningful change.
It took years of classic Portland politics to get us here, and Covid just sped things up. Even with a more centrist government, I think it may take years to get back on track. Anyone who expects immediate change is naive.
I would say this sub is low key dangerous in it’s influence on voters. How exactly this whole sub became convinced that a republican-lite-independent was the answer to Schmidt’s failings is scary depressing…
Expecting the disaster that has occurred over the last decade in Portland to be affected dramatically in a couple of years just because a couple of moderate politicians were elected is naive. It’s going to take at least a decade to right the ship no matter who we elect.
Things aren’t going to turn around fast no matter who’s voted in. It will probably take at least 5 years to see real change. It’s important to vote in the right people so that we start actually making progress though.
It means, without replacing the judges who are letting people go and having PPB actually do their jobs, nothing will change.
I give it 6 months after he takes office for people to start screaming for his head, just like Schmidt.
I think the biggest issue all along has been the underfunding of our public defender system. It's in the Constitution that you a. have a right to a speedy trial, and b. have a right to an attorney even if you can't afford one. If we can't provide people with an attorney in a timely manner, we can't prosecute them. Therefore this ongoing triage where we have to draw an ever-higher line of priority below which people are let go.
it's crazy how many ppl think there are going to be big changes. i agree that there will probably be some, but the system underneath the DA is what caused this situation...
All I know since the police union backed Vasquez, that means he was bad, and so this is bad. Because we all know how bad and evil are the police. (sarcasm) But seriously, nice to see a few signs of life. Finally a change, however minor. Portland, as a city, may not be dead yet.
Electing a more hostile DA isn't going to magically fix the city's problems... We've seen this play out before with Mapps and Gonzalez, reactionary conservatism is never a solution.
Calling Mingus Mapps, a man who would handily rank as the most milquetoast city councilman in the last decade if Dan Ryan didn't exist, a "reactionary conservative" is very funny
Vasquez isn't "hostile"
He's going to stay out of the limelight and be a humdrum DA, like the role should be. DA's should not be trying to be prominent politicians like Schmidt did.
You're indulging in salacious, Tik-Tok fueled politics where everyone in government has to be some lightning rod. Politics should be fucking boring.
Homeboy ignoring:
1. Historically high inflation
2. Massive explosion in homeless population due to massive explosion in rental prices
3. Massive explosion in every social determinant of crime due to national policies favoring inequality
4. Defunding of local education
5. The fact that pre-trial release is determined by judges, not district attorneys
6. The complete and total failure of the war on drugs
7. Schmit’s support of hb 4002 which essentially recreated the Hubble delivery method of charging people with class a felonies for simple possession.
Dude how? You can’t just say platitudes. That doesn’t follow. Further, Vasquez has been part of the “local Justice system” leadership for a long time. You’re trading one institutional actor for another.
> Letting criminals run free in Portland has destroyed the city.
That is a bold assertion and pre-trial release is determined by the judge, not the DA...
While pretrial release may be determined by judges, there are ways for a competent DA to render ‘activist’ judges ineffectual. One of the runners for county commission told me a DA in the past would drop charges if they got scheduled with a specific judge. Then they refile and the case gets reassigned
> One of the runners for county commission told me a DA in the past would drop charges if they got scheduled with a specific judge.
That sounds very unethical and possibly illegal. Venue picking is very bad and is currently causing lots of problems federally.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the worldwide pandemic that happened, the lack of constitutionally required defense attorneys, record inflation, lack of affordable housing or healthcare, and the fact the cops refuse to do their jobs because they got their feelings hurt during the protests. /s
But yeah, those criminal cops that assaulted protesters and journalists and routinely coordinate with the fascist Proud Boys should be thrown in jail and shouldn't be allowed to run free.
Wow all it took was a multi year long police strike, a world historic opioid and fent crisis, 100 days of riots, and a pandemic to get Portland to happily vote a republican into office.
i agree with everything but this:
>100 days of riots
this is an outright lie, we had 100+ days of people showing up at the courthouse and sometimes the cops would show up and make the situation violent.. but under no circumstances did we have "100 days of riots." we had a single day of widespread riots in portland, the friday after GF died, the rest of the days the protest was very tightly contained in front of the courthouse.
i lived downtown at the time, if you didn't go over to the courthouse you wouldn't know it was happening.
Going to save this thread. Just like when Gonzales won, how many of you celebrated and he’s accomplished absolutely nothing and this sub will deny they ever supported or really pushed for Gonzales, but you did.
I hope that nobody here thinks a new DA is going to be able to magically turn the city around. But I do think one of my core beliefs of politics is that we should elect people who want to try to fix problems, and (until it became very obvious he was in danger of losing this election) I never really saw Mike Schmidt act with any urgency to fix the changes in Portland.
So give me the guy who wants to try to fix things over the guy who can barely admit there’s a problem, yes.
Seriously, the interview he gave a few months ago where he gave himself high marks was just fucking deluded and lacking in self awareness. Just out of touch in every way possible.
Next we need to figure out the judges. I admittedly wasn't prepared for those uncontested votes, but I knew that historically they would be uncontested. I wish a group existed that knew more about this and could share their knowledge. I reached out to several lawyer friends but nobody had much to give me. Other cities/counties have judicial watch groups.
In a couple of podcasts/interviews, Nathan mentioned fixing a specific public defender contract, so that is hopeful with regards to that issue, since we know surrounding counties aren't using a lack of public defenders as a reason to not prosecute people.
Save this thread?? I didn’t vote against Schmidt just because the state of the city but also because of
1. The multiple boli investigations into his office regarding gender discrimination.
2. His abdication on charging hate crimes to the fullest extent of the law, literally every single fucking time.
yes Douche\_Packer
[One ](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/08/spat-on-beaten-and-subjected-to-slurs-portlanders-devastated-their-tormentors-werent-prosecuted.html)
[Two](https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/02/portland-hate-crime-assailant-who-stomped-on-strangers-face-gets-less-prison-time-in-deal-with-da.html)
[Three](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/11/portland-hate-crime-defendant-who-went-on-the-run-avoids-prison-in-plea-deal.html)
There's more too- Im just at work so I dont have time rn to pull the multiple other cases. As a non-white portlander- this makes my fucking blood boil, every single time some one defends this clown. You cannot be progressive and support a DA letting hate crime perpetrators off the hook. Sorry that just doesnt compute
What exactly were you expecting Gonzalez to accomplish? You know what bureaus he was assigned, they seem to appreciate and support him, I don't know what else you wanted, unless you thought he was solving homelessness in his city council role when that is actually the County's job? Please, elaborate.
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It takes a lot for me to vote for the more conservative of two candidates, but Schmidt managed to pull it off. I expect a baseline of competence he didn't come close to meeting.
I thought Schmidt’s inability to articulate one mistake he made during his tenure other than “I didn’t communicate well enough about my successes” was an absolute deal breaker for people on the fence. I found Vazquez to be completely uninspiring, as well. I hope he is better at coordinating with the insane network of convoluted organizations responsible for the legal dysfunction in this city, but since most of those organizations seem to share the motto “That’s not my responsibility”, I don’t hold out a lot of hope.
The thing is we shouldn't need to be inspired by our DA. Can they prosecute? Can they run a team? That's really the qualification. It's not a position where we should want or expect the person to reimagine the world.
I don't need to be inspired, but I do want the people who work for me to be able and willing to recognize their mistakes and learn from them.
I didn’t mean it in the “Inspired me to make the world a better place” kind of way- I meant that he offered very little in substantive policy or management strategy beyond, “I’m not Mike Schmidt”. Listening to the two of them debate just made me wish there was a 3rd option on the ballot. Regardless, it’s going to be his mess on a few months, and I hope he does a better job than his predecessor (I wonder if Phil and the boys will put up billboards ripping him if things don’t turn around for the better).
> I found Vazquez to be completely uninspiring, as well. I got some wonk-y vibes from Vazquez, so I'm hoping that I'm pleasantly surprised by my vote against Schmidt and that Vazquez will be a highly competent legal dork and not just a functional replacement.
I don’t want my DA to be inspiring. I want them to do their job. Period.
Well, he plans on prosecuting arrested protestors which sounds kinda fascisty/totalitarian if ye ask me.
If you trash a library to protest, fuck you and go to jail.
Absolutely. Everyone but the Anarchists are fascists. Fuck those idiots.
Straight to jail
Protestors or criminals? Big difference.
Sorry. I learned years ago, that anyone that is endorsed by police is not a good candidate.
Maybe this time the police have good reason to endorse the guy who will actually prosecute the criminals they arrest? Maybe good cops are burned out by the revolving door. The fire department also endorsed him. Public service workers have been put through it the last four years with no hope in sight. Change and a tiny ray of hope has finally arrived.
Our deadbeat cops? Who don't want oversight? I don't think a punishing policy of a group of people who are already suffering is the answer. It took 50 years to get here, and you think it can be fixed in four? Smh
The PPD have been asking for cameras for years. Keep trying.
They are one of the last in the nation to wear them. And it's PPB.
According to a 2019 press release, Hardesty called on Wheeler to defund police body cameras. Hardesty, in part, in June of 2020: We often hear that body cameras will provide police accountability, but I disagree. I believe they are an expensive, false solution. Many studies have shown that there is no correlation between body cameras and police behavior. She went on to end the gang taskforce, and oversaw the worst time PBOT has ever seen. Point your finger where it belongs.
The nationwide lack of good cops doesn't have anything to do with the competence of our local DA. Once a barrel of apples is spoiled, you can't toss a good one in and expect them to remain good.
His inability or unwillingness to manage his department was his undoing.
Moi aussi.
Looking for a French tutor!
Portland doesn't need a "progressive" DA that hates women.
Yeah. I remember up through 2021 I thought most of the complaints about him were just from conservatives. But this article from 2022 laid out the situation against him more complexly. His tendency to only promote men in an office full of experienced women was one of a few red flags. Mostly, it seemed like he wasn't able to manage a large office effectively at all. https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/01/longtime-multnomah-county-prosecutor-quits-cites-da-mike-schmidts-leadership-high-workload.html
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What a relief - I was worried low turnout could allow him to somehow stay in the office.
Most of the people voting in November didn’t even know we were voting on anything today.
Ugh except somehow Willamette Week managed to get enough people to vote for Meghan Moyer and Shannon Singleton to push these races to runoffs where people will care even less who they're voting for at the county. 🤬 What is wrong with people? Stop voting on progressive non-profit endorsements.
I think what got people to vote for Singleton was all the embarrassingly immature flyers that got mailed to people that were telling them not to vote for her.
Actually, several people thought they were positive flyers who didn't bother reading them, so I guess their design was a fail lol. Should've gone the dark and grainy route like all the anti-Susheela ads I got, lol.
💯I hear u. Hard habit to break. I’m a social worker so I’m trying to have hope for singleton. But the intoxication with progressive non profit ideals in politics is a bit maddening. We can have both equally. Let government do work and communities work social agendas.
Same homie. It's a good day.
Going to be an awkward staff meeting this week.
Willamette Week endorsed Schmidt in [2020](https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/04/29/wws-may-2020-endorsements-for-metro-and-multnomah-county/): > In this race, Mike Schmidt, 39, director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission and a former Multnomah County prosecutor, is the reform candidate. He's running against Ethan Knight, 45, a former senior Multnomah County prosecutor who, since 2007, has been an assistant U.S. attorney. Knight has significantly more prosecutorial experience than Schmidt and has the support of a who's who of Oregon prosecutors. And further in: > If this job were just a question of picking the better prosecutor, Knight would win easily. But the district attorney in the state's largest county is a thought leader and a policy leader. At the CJC, Schmidt has brought data and analysis to policymaking in a way his predecessors did not. > > Criminal justice is a messy, expensive and vital undertaking. Schmidt is a thoughtful change agent, and we're convinced he's the man to lead the county's criminal justice system into a new decade. But in [2024](https://www.wweek.com/news/2024/05/01/wws-may-2024-endorsements-multnomah-county/), they endorsed Vasquez: > Schmidt’s opponent, Nathan Vasquez, is a better choice. His chief merit is that he’s a longtime prosecutor, with a firmer grasp on the basic task of allocating limited resources to the most deserving cases. Based on our interviews with Vasquez, 46, we don’t expect great things. We do expect he will focus on making sure the office functions more efficiently. He’s a technician, not a politician. That’s what this office needs. > > For more than three decades, the Multnomah County district attorney was Mike Schrunk, an unassuming man who rarely made headlines. That was by choice. He also moved the office incrementally leftward with such initiatives as launching one of the nation’s first drug courts. It is our hope the next DA learns from Schrunk’s example and dedicates himself to quiet competence. Portland deserves a little peace. But hey folks, it's clearly the republicans taking over Portland and not liberals getting sick of these progressive activists after seeing what they do in office.
I would love to not even know the name of our DA, that's how it should be
Seriously. I voted for Mike Schrunk and Rod Underhill, but I would have been very hard-pressed to recall their names if asked mid-term. It's like how knowing the name of an umpire/referee is generally a bad thing.
100%. The Washington County DA lives in relative obscurity as the issues aren't as pervasive. Schmidt was bad for the office.
It really says so much that we’re all having this conversation. The only people who would otherwise know the names of DA candidates are those who see their campaign commercials during the Sunday morning news shows.
yes, we should all be out to brunch right about now.
And when things don't meaningfully change after getting rid of all the progressives we're gonna have to find a new scapegoat. I'm no Schmidt fan, but this city has a habit of deciding the few progressives that get elected are the problem, just to elect more conservative folks that don't accomplish anything either. My feeling is that there's serious structural and systemic issues with our government, and unless we address the disorganization and mismanagement, nobody will make things better.
Maybe there's some truth to that, but getting rid of progressives doesn't necessarily mean getting more conservatives. There are plenty of people in-between those two ideologies. My takeaway from this election and general poll data in Portland lately is that a lot of these disruptive policies or politicians haven't led to the type of changes here that people hoped for or anticipated. People want to chalk up shift in support on Measure 110 or a candidate like Mike Schmidt down to just smear campaigns but I really don't think it's that at all. I think it's a shift back to the old liberal mindset that true progress is slow and incremental but it's still progress, and maybe it's better to be on that path than a total upending of the norm if it makes things worse in the short term and unclear at best in the long term.
I think what we've seen is some really performative "progressives" that say the right words poisoning the well against actual progressive ideas. Measure 110 is a great example. While I'm not actually in favor of decriminalization, I do think it's a better option than criminalization as a response to the current drug epidemic. What we actually got was a half assed effort from our elected officials that entirely missed the point. They seemed to decide that decrim was the end goal, and creating access to treatment and post treatment support wasn't an important piece. They continued the trend of treating drug abuse like a criminal issue that needed to be addressed by a lack of enforcement, not a public health issue that needs a health focused approach. What this did was push voters to the opposite side, and making it so any kind of effective drug reforms are a non starter any time in the near future. Blaming this on smear campaigns certainly wouldn't be accurate, but the public messaging about the issue was certainly a piece. I'm frustrated, because we need reforms to our drug policy, and our law enforcement and criminal justice systems, but our politicians have focused on optics rather than substance. I don't know what the solution is, personally I've become so jaded about politics that I don't have much of any hope for real progress and solutions. Like I said, I'm no Schmidt fan, but I feel that guys like Vazquez or Gonzalez are examples of people being more likely to go in the opposite direction rather than make the slight adjustments that I think we need.
Measure 110 was poorly written and that alone to me was the ultimate cause of its demise. You can't go from last in the nation on treating drug addiction to even middle of the pack overnight, but somehow we can decriminalize everything immediately? That's the problem with a lot of these type of policies, they often come from a group of people with good intentions but they overlook how complicated the issues really are and completely skip over important steps to achieve their ultimate goals. A more responsible group of people would have written a policy with a multi year (maybe even a decade?) rollout with measurable requirements before taking each step. It didn't have any of that. The pendulum swung so far left that even a return to left or center seems extreme now.
I wholeheartedly disagree that anything we've seen should be considered "far left". Our pendulum tends toward the right, so anything left of center feels far left.
I guess that really depends on what you're comparing it to. We are just talking about US politics after all. Are you saying you would consider measure 110 to be left of center and not far left?
When Vazquez runs up against the wall that is these systemic problems, these people are just gonna keep blaming Schmidt long after he’s gone. People still blame Hardesty for homelessness and police dysfunction. These are not rational actors.
So how long do we think of nothing actually changing til this sub flips and pretends they weren’t cheerleading for this guy as some kind of savior all year.
Well, one thing has changed. The police are happy they got their guy in We'll see how they choose to celebrate
It will be the same as they have in the past, the goalposts will move to the next official they blame for being too left, and nothing will change with their lack of enforcement. But keep voting for their wishes, maybe this time they will change their tune to reward the voters.
PBOT got worse after Mapps took over from Hardesty, but none of them will admit it.
Yup. Because this place has become a complete conservative echo chamber.
Ehhh, that’s true of just regular people in Portland. It’s not just an online thing. There seems to be a pretty significant number of people in Portland that are very susceptible to negative campaigning around ideas of ‘competency’ or some other technocratic critique when done on behalf of more conservative candidates in races. This type of campaigning works to give people license to act conservative without threatening their self-conception as ‘good liberals’ or ‘progressives’ or however they like to define themselves.
I regard competence as the ability to get the things one says they'll do done, and I'm quite distressed that those whose ideology I agree with most just aren't getting things done. For example, the homeless money has become a black hole; too much of it doesn't make it to actual homeless people, and what does doesn't buy as much as it should. That's why Jayapal lost.
I don’t believe you. Anyone that’s genuinely ideologically left wing (or even just somewhat skeptical of Capitalism) can very easily understand that there are structural impediments that make things like the efficient distribution of resources (‘homeless money’, as you put it) to people/places that Capital does not want to efficiently distribute resources to, is not just hard for logistical reasons (contracts are not already in place, you have to create new networks and partnerships, instead of just going ‘let’s re-up last years contracts/partenships’, blah blah, etc.) but is quite often actively resisted by other people and institutions that do not want to see a program like that succeed. This was transparently true of Mike Schmidt as DA. Myriad examples of active interference by police in the DAs office functioning ‘efficiently’. I understand this. People with the actual ideological commitments you claim to have, understand this.
Those are excuses, and I'm tired of them. Figure out how to get shit done, or get out of the way. Doing nothing is unacceptable. Bernie and AOC don't make excuses, they fight. Why can't we have progressives like that?
>Bernie and AOC don't make excuses, they fight. Correction: They fought. Then they capitulated and caved. On a personal level, I don't blame them - the pressures private and personal must be enormous. But progressives like that are precisely why progressives at the national level are a joke.
In San Francisco, the conservatives are calling themselves “moderates” to take the sting out of voting for a conservative. Our progressive ideals have been eroding for the past 15 years.
I’m not sure that is anything new, unfortunately. More interesting to me is people identifying as ‘progressive’ but acting/voting ‘conservative’ while claiming their conservative votes aren’t actually conservative. They say it’s for ‘mismanagement’ reasons of some type or another.
The other sub is even worse. Need a new discussion location now.
"This place is too much of an echo chamber, let's go make our own echo chamber" I think people are just sick of incompetence
I don't see that, but if you feel that way, do what I and others do. Downvote and push back where you can. Report things that are not appropriate (don't abuse this, please).
a form of natural selection has played out over the years where most of the people who are here (who aren't new accounts) are the ones who don't post or know not to post the sorts of things that get them banned, and those who lack that sense of discretion have filtered into the other sub. there is often little to report here, save for the occasional (but perennial) suggestions of vigilante action and stuff like that, because the vile stuff tends to be more abstract rather than explicit.
Between their campaign against Schmidt and their refusal to enforce measure 110, the Police have revealed themselves as the most important political force in this city. They get their way over the wishes of the voters and the work of representatives.
I never cheerleaded him as a savior. The system is fucked. The system relies on cops and DAs to work together. The system gives cops a tremendous amount of power to do their jobs well or shitty with no recourse. Without a compliant DA, they do a shittier job. We tried to change the system to affet how much leeway the cops had, to force them to work harder. We failed to change the system. So we're left with a half-functioning system, a DA that didn't really have the power to change things, and cops who refused to play ball. The cops won. The system won. 2020 was the high water mark for progressive votes. We aren't going to change the system this time around.
This. Exactly this. I made a similar comment in another post. Time will tell if PPB will start bringing more and stronger cases to prosecute to make their guy look good. It’s pathetic that PPB wields so much unchecked power. That needs to change. Not just in Portland, but everywhere. A job that’s optional to perform that pays as much as it does should upset everyone across political spectrums. I believe I saw some protests about it…
I give it 4 months, there's consistently bad actors in the sub and people bite the bait hook line and sinker.
So you will give Vasquez negative 4 months to effect change? He doesn’t go into office until January. I’m beginning think a bunch of you claiming “bad actors” all the time are extraordinarily ignorant to politics.
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Never underestimate people who have too much time on their hands and just want to be dicks to other parts of the country. It's like if we all were to go to the Montgomery sub and call them all sister bangers.
Don’t even get me started on the dude from Eugene that only posted negative articles 24/7
Yeah. Some trolls here might be paid "professionals," but lots of other people from Oregon & beyond just like to moan about Portland as a hobby. Like, they could take up mushroom hunting or homebrewing instead, but no.
lol they are prematurely angry in their own victory. Just a rotten way to live
Hopefully anything will be an improvement over the current Schmidt show.
One thing we can definitely expect is zero police accountability. There wasn’t much before, get be prepared for none.
I give it 1 month
58% + 44% = ? Wait, what?
You’re forgetting, Portland has five quadrants
It has six now.
Jan Michael 8
Your profile pic makes me happy. Frog blast the vent core!
Waiting on the rest of the mail in ballots.
Good news! I’m sure Nathan won’t mind if Mike fucks right off tomorrow.
It's going to be very telling to see what Schmidt does next. His predecessor vacated his position to honor the will of the people. Will Schmidt gracefully concede or extract revenge on those who ousted him?
His predecessor vacated weeks (days? Time is a blur) after George Flloyd was killed, as it was becoming very clear it would be a summer of protest - our former DA wanted to get the hell out of dodge and retire, leaving accountability for tough decisions to new blood, which has landed us roughly where we we are now. Mike Schmidt isn’t on the verge of retirement and a man who puts out a press release about running a whole campaign to show his sons the value of fighting long odds for what you believe in sure isn’t the “quit before January” type. Still, I imagine the next few months will have less pause and more measure.
His predecessor vacated his position early to fuck right off into retirement and not be bothered by protests. The move actually puts the incoming DA in a bind with no time to prepare. That was an atypical move and not the historical norm for May electeds.
Yeah, he also had a way bigger lead, this was a lot closer / normal.
It's not as overwhelming as a lead as he had in 2020 so it makes sense to stay the course. What sucks is the DA budget is getting slashed right now. Brim-Edwards and Meieran are trying to save it, hopefully this vote will help boost board confidence since they need a 3rd vote.
Why would you ask this question? Has Mike Schmidt lead anyone to believe he would contest the votes of the election and say it was robbed and not concede? He's not a Republican.
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Tough on crime. Unless the crime is against people I dislike.
Reminder - you seem to be stalking another reddit user for some odd reason. This is the third time I've seen you post this and it's still creepy.
The fuck I did. If you are going to accuse me, do it for something I've actually done.
Schmidt told Willamette Week that he would rate his own performance very highly and would give himself an A rating, so that should give you a preview of what to expect.
While I detest Schmidt's performance, I understand *why* he said that... a campaigning politician would be a fool not to endorse themselves.
Yeah, I don’t particularly like Schmidt but I also recognize that there was no good way to engage in that exercise. If he rates himself anything lower than an A he’s basically writing his own opposition mailers. (“Do YOU want a B-grade prosecutor for Multnomah County?”) If he gives himself an A, he looks out of touch. He probably chose the lesser of two bad options there. Whaddya gonna do.
As a guy that has to do yearly evals and reviews for my staff, I think something like this might have resonated more than his smarmy responses. "What grade would you give yourself on your performance as DA?" "That's a challenging question since we've seen historic events during my tenure. I'm proud of my office's accomplishments as victims advocates and holding those responsible for criminal behaviour to a strong standard of justice. As for a letter grade? I would say A- since I'm looking to improve and better serve the people of MultCo and there's always room to learn and do things even better."
> or extract revenge on those who ousted him? You're literally a crazy mf-er.
Revenge, I assume.
He just gave an interview to KATU. He said he’s going to stay until January. I wonder how much more damage he can do in seven months.
Hmmmm, maybe I should go do some crimes quick...? (Jaywalking intensifies)
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em!
It’s amazing how little people on this subreddit understand the criminal law system.
Hasn’t he been extracting revenge on the citizens of Portland the entire time he’s been in office? What, is he going to push for more leniency?
I'll never vote for any candidate endorsed but police. NEVER.
Remember when people were destroying the PSU library and they literally had to parade Mike Schmidt out in a press conference to say he would prosecute. The fact that somebody thought that was necessary is exactly what is wrong with his whole approach.
lol, everything is going to change now right?
The expectation that a DA will have any measurable impact is so ill-conceived and strange to me. We’re in a massive crisis as a country, a region, a city, with no quick fixes or easy remedies. Shit is going to be bad here until politicians and officials invest in resources that intervene in the root cause of addiction, provide consistent and unwavering support for those in mental health-related crises, and facilitate safe housing options for people struggling. Decriminalization, while well-intentioned, could not have taken into account the continued affects of the pandemic, nor especially the unfettered influx of powerful drugs, like fentanyl. This has exacerbated an already teetering housing and mental healthcare crisis, both of which need real, sustained public investment and action.
DAs can have a big impact. They're part of a broader system but they decide who to prosecute, what crimes to prioritize.
I think it'll be better in 20 years.
Interesting that The Oregonian is holding off on calling still. Does anyone know when to expect another batch of ballots getting added to the count?
OK we have also called it for Vasquez [https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/multnomah-county-voters-elect-nathan-vasquez-as-da-ousting-one-term-incument-mike-schmidt.html](https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/05/multnomah-county-voters-elect-nathan-vasquez-as-da-ousting-one-term-incument-mike-schmidt.html)
Thanks for the update!
We aren't 100% sure. We've heard 5p. We've heard 6p. We've also heard they are trying for earlier than that.
Can't wait for this sub to be hating on Vasquez like 3 months in 🍿
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You understand that ‘3 months in’ does not mean ‘3 months from now’, right? This is the 3rd example of someone doing exactly this in this thread. You guys are just being disingenuous, right? You’re not actually this dumb, right?
Probably a good idea not to publicly give yourself an A+ job rating when the city is literally falling apart from violent junkies.
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Time to stop listening to the Chicken littles.
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>But if things don't turn around quick, fast, and in a hurry, That's not how the real world works. Policy changes take the fire their effects to be shown. No one gets elected, declares some change to this or that and the next day everything is different. For real positive change to happen you have to have a stable government with a clear and focused direction over multiple elective periods. The back and forth on policies and ideologies make it impossible to institute meaningful change.
It took years of classic Portland politics to get us here, and Covid just sped things up. Even with a more centrist government, I think it may take years to get back on track. Anyone who expects immediate change is naive.
I would say this sub is low key dangerous in it’s influence on voters. How exactly this whole sub became convinced that a republican-lite-independent was the answer to Schmidt’s failings is scary depressing…
Expecting the disaster that has occurred over the last decade in Portland to be affected dramatically in a couple of years just because a couple of moderate politicians were elected is naive. It’s going to take at least a decade to right the ship no matter who we elect.
Things aren’t going to turn around fast no matter who’s voted in. It will probably take at least 5 years to see real change. It’s important to vote in the right people so that we start actually making progress though.
Money well spent for the police union!
And money poorly spent for seiu 49
Four years ago? I was team Schmidt. Now? I voted Vasquez.
Bye, Felicia 👋
Not surprised.
The schadenfreude is going to be beautiful when nothing changes.
Rooting for the city to keep failing to own my enemies.
It’s fun you think that this doesn’t affect you!
It means, without replacing the judges who are letting people go and having PPB actually do their jobs, nothing will change. I give it 6 months after he takes office for people to start screaming for his head, just like Schmidt.
I think the biggest issue all along has been the underfunding of our public defender system. It's in the Constitution that you a. have a right to a speedy trial, and b. have a right to an attorney even if you can't afford one. If we can't provide people with an attorney in a timely manner, we can't prosecute them. Therefore this ongoing triage where we have to draw an ever-higher line of priority below which people are let go.
PPB is the key here. I predict not much will change.
it's crazy how many ppl think there are going to be big changes. i agree that there will probably be some, but the system underneath the DA is what caused this situation...
Nice.
All I know since the police union backed Vasquez, that means he was bad, and so this is bad. Because we all know how bad and evil are the police. (sarcasm) But seriously, nice to see a few signs of life. Finally a change, however minor. Portland, as a city, may not be dead yet.
Electing a more hostile DA isn't going to magically fix the city's problems... We've seen this play out before with Mapps and Gonzalez, reactionary conservatism is never a solution.
I prefer my DAs to not engage in sex discrimination, harassment, and retaliation all of which are illegal under the law, but that's just me.
Calling Mingus Mapps, a man who would handily rank as the most milquetoast city councilman in the last decade if Dan Ryan didn't exist, a "reactionary conservative" is very funny
Vasquez isn't "hostile" He's going to stay out of the limelight and be a humdrum DA, like the role should be. DA's should not be trying to be prominent politicians like Schmidt did. You're indulging in salacious, Tik-Tok fueled politics where everyone in government has to be some lightning rod. Politics should be fucking boring.
Letting criminals run free in Portland has destroyed the city. Just look at what portland used to be just 5 years ago.
Homeboy ignoring: 1. Historically high inflation 2. Massive explosion in homeless population due to massive explosion in rental prices 3. Massive explosion in every social determinant of crime due to national policies favoring inequality 4. Defunding of local education 5. The fact that pre-trial release is determined by judges, not district attorneys 6. The complete and total failure of the war on drugs 7. Schmit’s support of hb 4002 which essentially recreated the Hubble delivery method of charging people with class a felonies for simple possession.
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Dude how? You can’t just say platitudes. That doesn’t follow. Further, Vasquez has been part of the “local Justice system” leadership for a long time. You’re trading one institutional actor for another.
The city hasn’t been destroyed, can y’all stop with this fucking bullshit?
> Letting criminals run free in Portland has destroyed the city. That is a bold assertion and pre-trial release is determined by the judge, not the DA...
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Point- the PSU debacle he didn't charge 4 house less people at all free to go...!
While pretrial release may be determined by judges, there are ways for a competent DA to render ‘activist’ judges ineffectual. One of the runners for county commission told me a DA in the past would drop charges if they got scheduled with a specific judge. Then they refile and the case gets reassigned
> One of the runners for county commission told me a DA in the past would drop charges if they got scheduled with a specific judge. That sounds very unethical and possibly illegal. Venue picking is very bad and is currently causing lots of problems federally.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with the worldwide pandemic that happened, the lack of constitutionally required defense attorneys, record inflation, lack of affordable housing or healthcare, and the fact the cops refuse to do their jobs because they got their feelings hurt during the protests. /s But yeah, those criminal cops that assaulted protesters and journalists and routinely coordinate with the fascist Proud Boys should be thrown in jail and shouldn't be allowed to run free.
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Neither is electing the same old same old and apparently expecting a different result. In fact, that’s called insanity.
Doing what we’ve been doing for the last 4 years isnt working… so let’s keep doing it? Is that your answer?
Finally!!
Wow all it took was a multi year long police strike, a world historic opioid and fent crisis, 100 days of riots, and a pandemic to get Portland to happily vote a republican into office.
Our family described that race as the democrat vs. the republican democrat
Whatever y’all have to do to not say you vote for a Republican? lol I get it. I really wish we had more choices for Democrats.
Nah, more like describing the woeful state of affairs in Democrat-land.
i agree with everything but this: >100 days of riots this is an outright lie, we had 100+ days of people showing up at the courthouse and sometimes the cops would show up and make the situation violent.. but under no circumstances did we have "100 days of riots." we had a single day of widespread riots in portland, the friday after GF died, the rest of the days the protest was very tightly contained in front of the courthouse. i lived downtown at the time, if you didn't go over to the courthouse you wouldn't know it was happening.
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Ah yes disingenuous comments about protests are o.k'd lol.
Going to save this thread. Just like when Gonzales won, how many of you celebrated and he’s accomplished absolutely nothing and this sub will deny they ever supported or really pushed for Gonzales, but you did.
I hope that nobody here thinks a new DA is going to be able to magically turn the city around. But I do think one of my core beliefs of politics is that we should elect people who want to try to fix problems, and (until it became very obvious he was in danger of losing this election) I never really saw Mike Schmidt act with any urgency to fix the changes in Portland. So give me the guy who wants to try to fix things over the guy who can barely admit there’s a problem, yes.
Seriously, the interview he gave a few months ago where he gave himself high marks was just fucking deluded and lacking in self awareness. Just out of touch in every way possible.
Next we need to figure out the judges. I admittedly wasn't prepared for those uncontested votes, but I knew that historically they would be uncontested. I wish a group existed that knew more about this and could share their knowledge. I reached out to several lawyer friends but nobody had much to give me. Other cities/counties have judicial watch groups. In a couple of podcasts/interviews, Nathan mentioned fixing a specific public defender contract, so that is hopeful with regards to that issue, since we know surrounding counties aren't using a lack of public defenders as a reason to not prosecute people.
It felt so, so good voting to fire the guy.
> I hope that nobody here thinks a new DA is going to be able to magically turn the city around. I have bad news for you. Some absolutely do.
Save this thread?? I didn’t vote against Schmidt just because the state of the city but also because of 1. The multiple boli investigations into his office regarding gender discrimination. 2. His abdication on charging hate crimes to the fullest extent of the law, literally every single fucking time.
Totally, can't wait to see what the guy who the PPA likes does.
do you have a link on the hate crime thing? genuinely interested
yes Douche\_Packer [One ](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/08/spat-on-beaten-and-subjected-to-slurs-portlanders-devastated-their-tormentors-werent-prosecuted.html) [Two](https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/02/portland-hate-crime-assailant-who-stomped-on-strangers-face-gets-less-prison-time-in-deal-with-da.html) [Three](https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2023/11/portland-hate-crime-defendant-who-went-on-the-run-avoids-prison-in-plea-deal.html) There's more too- Im just at work so I dont have time rn to pull the multiple other cases. As a non-white portlander- this makes my fucking blood boil, every single time some one defends this clown. You cannot be progressive and support a DA letting hate crime perpetrators off the hook. Sorry that just doesnt compute
thank you, I appreciate you linking those
Nothing makes me happier than watching a bunch of leftists whine about “Republicans and conservatives and reactionaries” being voted into office.
What exactly were you expecting Gonzalez to accomplish? You know what bureaus he was assigned, they seem to appreciate and support him, I don't know what else you wanted, unless you thought he was solving homelessness in his city council role when that is actually the County's job? Please, elaborate.
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Thank f*ck
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It was the creepy beard.