What we covered:

• The job you didn’t know he has. The Secretary of State is also Oregon’s auditor, and his office built a statewide risk map to decide where to look first.

• Playing defense against D.C. Federal election-security staff vanished days into his term. Since then Oregon has faced an executive order trying to rewrite election law, the SAVE Act, and a push to use a flawed federal database to check voters’ citizenship.

• “No, thanks.” The DOJ sued Oregon for its voter data. The judge tossed the case from the bench, and the feds are now 0-for-25 nationally.

• Why late ballots are piling up. All of Oregon’s mail now gets postmarked at one facility in Portland, which is why 7,314 primary ballots were rejected for late postmarks in this years primary.

  

• More drop boxes. About 20 new ones are coming, and BallotTrax text alerts are going statewide - sign up for BallotTrax when it becomes available in your jurisdiction.

• The fraud myth. Over 19 years and 60.9 million ballots examined in Oregon, ONLY 38 cases of improper voting during that entire period.

• Lightning round. What to do about ICE at drop boxes, the National Guard, hacking, a canceled election, or a refusal to certify. On that last one, Read’s answer: Oregon certifies its own results.

Key dates 📆

• Oct 13: Register or update your address

• Oct 14: Ballots mailed

• Oct 21: No ballot yet? Call your county clerk.

• Oct 27: Last day to mail safely

• Nov 3: Election Day. Ballots are due by 8 p.m.

The short version: Use a drop box. Any drop box in Oregon works. If you’re mailing, send it a week early or ask the post office for a hand postmark. Check your voter registration status at OregonVotes.gov.

Your homework: Check your registration, talk to a neighbor, and don’t let fear keep you home. VOTE!

Thanks to our sponsor, Corbett Hill Wellness. If you’d like to sponsor the show, reach out. And if you liked this one, leave a review, tell a friend, or share it. See you next week!

For years this was an issue only emergency managers and neighborhood activists lost sleep over. Not anymore. City Council has deadlocked 6–6 on it more than once, Mayor Wilson had to break a tie to approve the sale of Zenith Energy’s terminal to Miami based I Squared Capital, and on Thursday, October 1, council takes up the rules that will govern how much fuel sits on that riverbank for the next decade.

My guest this week has been in the middle of that fight. Marnie Glickman is an attorney, a fellow Lewis & Clark Law alum, a former Ralph Nader staffer, and the executive director of Braided River Campaign, a group founded by Portland teachers that has become one of the loudest voices on the CEI Hub.

Here’s what we got into:

What the hub actually is. Eleven tank farms owned by some of the biggest names in fossil fuels (Chevron, BP, Shell, Zenith), holding up to 350 million gallons on liquefiable soil inside the Portland Harbor Superfund site. The worst case is a Cascadia rupture bigger than Deepwater Horizon. The more likely case might be a fire at the foot of Forest Park.

Why not just move it? Because nobody wants it in their backyard, and it’s tethered to the Olympic Pipeline. Marnie’s answer: reduce demand, don’t relocate the danger.

The Zenith / I Squared fight. Braided River wasn’t trying to block the sale. They wanted council to use the ownership change to give Portlanders third-party enforcement rights under the franchise agreement. The six councilors and the mayor who voted no were persuaded by the city attorney that council lacked authority to add that term, which raises a bigger structural question: should Portland’s legislative branch have its own lawyer?

Capacity vs. volume. The staff proposal from the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability would cut storage capacity 20% by 2036. The catch is that tanks aren’t filled to the top, so shrinking the cup doesn’t necessarily reduce the coffee. An amendment package from Councilors Mitch Green, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Sameer Kanal, Tiffany Koyama Lane, and Olivia Clark would add annual volume reduction benchmarks and close a loophole that could actually let aviation fuel storage grow.

What would really make us safer. Start with emergency planning. There’s a preschool in Linnton, inside the hub area, with no CEI Hub emergency plan. Then there’s demand reduction through building electrification, protected bike lanes, and protecting PCEF dollars.

Dream big. Portland stopped the Mount Hood Freeway and turned Harbor Drive into Tom McCall Waterfront Park. Marnie’s vision for the “North Reach” of the Willamette includes a Superfund cleanup starting in 2028, public river access, housing, schools, shade, and a real neighborhood where the city’s biggest heat island now sits.

Plus: Trash news correspondent Elinor Jones on celebrity baby announcements, Celine Dion’s comeback residency, and why her will is going to require her presence in the background of every future cultural moment.

Take action before Thursday, October 1. Council will discuss the amendments that day. Submit written testimony, email your councilors, or better yet, call and leave a voicemail. Braided River Campaign has testimony instructions and talking points on its homepage.

Links

• Braided River Campaign

• Braided River Gallery: now at SW 5th & Harvey Milk

• Elinor Jones: “The Trash Report” in the Portland Mercury

Thanks to our sponsor, Corbett Hill Wellness. If you want to support independent civic media in Portland, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a neighbor who drives Highway 30.

To help make sense of it, I sat down with someone who knows the job better than just about anyone. Deborah Kafoury spent 14 years on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners, eight of them as chair. She guided the county through the COVID-19 pandemic, heat domes, wildfires, and more than 200 nights of protest. Before that, she served in the Oregon House, including as Democratic leader. She’s now chief of staff at Portland Public Schools.

Deborah and I worked side by side through some of the hardest stretches in this community’s recent history. We had a candid, funny, and useful conversation about what the chair actually does and what voters should be asking the people who want the job.

In this episode:

• What the county chair actually does. Deborah’s shorthand for the difference between the two governments: the city builds physical infrastructure, and the county builds human infrastructure. She also explains why the chair acts as both a governor and a legislator.

• Why management experience matters. Every county employee, all 7,000 of them, ultimately works for the chair. Deborah explains why voters should ask whether candidates have run a team before, and whether they did it well.

• Her father’s rule for surviving public life: hire people smarter than you.

• What’s waiting on the next chair’s desk: homelessness, affordability, and projected budget cuts. She also explains why she sees the budget as a moral document.

• Working across the aisle. She tells how Republican partners made the Sellwood Bridge and the new county courthouse possible, and why the Republican House speaker threw her a baby shower.

• The questions to ask at a house party. Deborah’s advice: ask about trade-offs, and ask candidates who they’ll spend their time listening to.

• The red flags to watch for. Be wary of promises to end homelessness on a deadline, guilt-by-association attacks, and the idea that asking hard questions counts as getting things done.

• Her new role at Portland Public Schools, and some good news: test scores are up.

Plus, In the News: Our trash news correspondent Elinor Jones turns her attention to a group that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: men. She covers robots that can’t walk downstairs, Mitch McConnell’s return to the Senate, and Pete Hegseth’s testosterone plan for the military. Find more from Elinor in the Portland Mercury’s Trash Report.

Your homework: Attend a house party, knock some doors, talk to your neighbors, make sure you’re registered, and get your ballot in.

Season 3 of SchmidtShow PDX runs through Election Day. If you like what we’re doing, subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave us a review.

This episode is brought to you by Corbett Hill Wellness Center, offering chiropractic, massage, acupuncture, naturopathic medicine, and more. Interested in sponsoring the show? Reach out. We’d love to have you.

Before she was a city councilor, she was Teacher Tiffany — sixteen years in Portland Public Schools, a union leader, a fourth-generation Japanese American, and the first Asian American woman ever elected to Portland city government. This week, Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane (District 3) joins the show to talk about her path from the classroom to City Hall, why she refused to sign an NDA on the Moda Center deal, what it actually means to be a Portland DSA member, and how she’s quietly built a string of unanimous council votes — including this month’s 12–0 vote renaming Cesar Chavez Boulevard to Campesinos Boulevard.

We also discuss the new survey that found that only 31% of Portlanders feel represented by their council, down 10 points in a year. Only a year and a half into Portland’s new form of government - is that skepticism fair?

But before we get into the meat of the episode, I’m joined once again by our trash news correspondent Eleanor Jones joins for “In the News”. With the NFL back - so are some of the ghouls of the league, like Aaron Rodgers and his mysteriously unseen girlfriend. We then pivot to the four-hour AI-narrated Elon Musk documentary, and whether AI executives warning us about AI is the most on-brand thing in the world.

In This Episode

From the Classroom to City Hall

• Why Koyama Lane said no to running for office “probably close to a hundred times” before saying yes

• What carries over from teaching to legislating — and what surprised her most

The Moda Center Deal

• Why she refused to sign the council’s NDA on the $600M arena renovation, and what it cost her

• Her no vote on the 8–4 term sheet, and what a deal that earned her yes would have looked like

On Being a Democratic Socialist

• What DSA membership actually means to her, and where the “boogie monster” framing comes from

• Her “three C’s” for tough votes: constituents, conscience, and council — a rule she credits to Secretary of State Tobias Read

• Small-donor fundraising and why she says no single group controls her vote

Building Unanimous Votes on a Divided Council

• The behind-the-scenes organizing that got Cesar Chavez Boulevard renamed to Campesinos Boulevard 12–0

• Power-mapping her colleagues, debunking myths one-on-one, and bringing in validators like Kathleen Sadat

• A second example: getting the whole council to unanimously recommit to Vision Zero, plus a 25% carve-out of the new transportation utility fee for traffic safety

• What that survey — 31% feeling represented, 39% trust, 22% effectiveness — actually tells her, and what it leaves out

Looking Ahead

• Her proudest accomplishment so far: opening an in-district office and a Friday newsletter that reaches 10,000+ people

• What a second term would focus on, including a domestic workers’ bill of rights

• Where to find her and how to support her campaign

Notable Quote

“Public money deserves public accountability.” — Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane, on refusing to sign an NDA over the Moda Center deal

Links & Resources

• Follow Councilor Koyama Lane’s campaign on her website

• More trash news from Eleanor Jones: The Trash Report, Portland Mercury

Thanks to our sponsor Corbett Hill Wellness for making this episode possible. Interested in sponsoring SchmidtShow PDX? Reach out — we’d love to have you. And if you’re a listener, please consider supporting the sponsors who help bring these conversations to you.

Like the show? Subscribe, leave a rating, and tell a friend — word of mouth is how this show grows.

To talk about it, Mike welcomes a guest who’s impossible to ignore — quite literally dressed as a two-foot pencil. J. Schuberth is the creator behind “Pencil for Governor,” a write-in campaign designed to force Oregon’s literacy crisis into the spotlight. Jay walks through how a joke among friends turned into a real campaign, what it’s actually like knocking on doors in a pencil costume, and why it took a mascot to get people talking about something this serious

Together, they dig into what states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee did differently to turn their reading rankings around — and lay out a five-step pledge for what Oregon could actually do about it. It’s part satire, part policy deep-dive, and a reminder that sometimes it takes something absurd to make people pay attention to something urgent.

Plus: Elinor Jones returns for a back-to-school edition of “In the News,” covering celebrity balloon arches, Meghan Markle’s UK school controversy, and JD Vance’s stay-at-home parent stipend proposal.

In this episode:

• Oregon’s 50th-in-the-nation ranking in 4th grade reading proficiency

• The origin story behind the “Pencil for Governor” campaign

• What Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee did to improve reading outcomes

• The five-step pledge for fixing literacy in Oregon

• Pencil’s picks for governor-for-a-day: policy, press conferences, and photo ops

• In the News: back-to-school culture wars, royal school drama, and the politics of parenting

Thanks to our sponsor, Corbett Hill Wellness, for supporting this episode. If you or your business would like to sponsor SchmidtShow PDX, reach out — your support keeps this project going.

Links:

• You can read Elinor Jones at the Mercury Trash Report

• You can learn more about Pencil’s run for Governor

• Sign the Petition to build support for fixing Oregon’s reading outcomes!

In the News with Elinor Jones
A look back at three cultural giants lost this week — Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime) — including the surprisingly dark origin story of Dollywood, a brief history of celebrity theme parks, and a case for reviving the Rocky Horror midnight-screening tradition as an afternoon one.

Senator Jeff Merkley

• His old nickname, “Smash,” and how he unwinds back home in Oregon

• Favorite hidden-gem spots in Oregon, including the Oregon Treasure Quest

• The Senate then and now: from a 30% approval rating in 2009 to a historic 10% low today

• Ringing the alarm bells to recognize and fight the rise of fascism

• Growing inequality, being locked out of power across all three branches, and the case for “fighting fire with fire”

• The real mechanics of restoring trust: insider stock trading on Capitol Hill, Supreme Court ethics, and the influence of Citizens United

• ICE and the record-setting 50,000+ arrests in July

• Advice for the next generation of leaders following in the footsteps of Edith Green, Mark Hatfield, and Jeff Merkley himself

Lightning Round
Favorite Dolly Parton song, whether there’s a blue wave coming in November, election security, Mitch McConnell’s status, gardening, Reagan-era tax rates, and more — straight from listener-submitted questions.

Links mentioned

• Ring the Alarm Bells: The Ten Rules of Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook

• Oregon Treasure Quest

• Crystal Crane Hot Springs (Burns, OR)

• Carnivorous bog boardwalk (Florence, OR)

• Elinor Jones’ “Trash Report” at the Portland Mercury

Topics Covered

• Comic-book tattoos and an actual ongoing Oregon Supreme Court Dungeons & Dragons campaign

• His path to the bench: Reed College, the dot-com boom, PhD guilt, and why he ended up in law school “not for any particular reason”

• What surprised him at each level of the job — trial court, Court of Appeals, and now the Supreme Court

• A plain-language tour of Oregon’s court system for non-lawyers

• What privacy actually means today, and why the law struggles to keep pace with technology

• Oregon’s constitution vs. the federal constitution — how Article I, Section 9 differs from the Fourth Amendment, and Hans Linde’s legacy building Oregon’s independent constitutional tradition

• Contested judicial elections in Multnomah County this November, and the real mechanics of how judicial campaigns work

• The information gap between lawyers (who can read a judicial candidate’s philosophy easily) and voters (who mostly can’t)

• Why “just calling balls and strikes” is a myth, and what actually reveals a judge’s character

• Judicial courage, Brown v. Board of Education, and MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

• Closing advice: why headlines rarely tell the full story, and how listeners can become better-informed voters on judicial races

About Our Guest

Justice Bronson James sits on the Oregon Supreme Court, appointed by Governor Kate Brown in 2022 and elected to the seat in his own right in 2024. He previously served on the Multnomah County Circuit Court and the Oregon Court of Appeals, and worked as a public defender and in private practice before that. He teaches Oregon constitutional law at Lewis & Clark Law School.

Episode Summary

44% of registered Oregon voters — 1.4 million people — aren’t registered with either major party. This spring, the Working Families Party (WFP) went on a run in Democratic primaries, unseating a sitting state senator for the first time since 2018 and winning 37 of its 49 endorsed races. Mike sits down with Oregon WFP State Director Annie Naranjo Rivera to unpack what the party actually stands for, how fusion voting works in Oregon, and whether a party built to primary Democrats can also speak to the huge bloc of voters who’ve walked away from both parties entirely.

The WFP has five planks —

1. a home you can afford,

2. healthcare you can rely on,

3. a good job to support your family,

4. childcare when and where you need it, and

5. time to spend with your family.

Sound good? This might be the political party for you.

In This Episode

• The state of the electorate in Oregon — only 26% think the state is headed in the right direction; 85% say cost of living is worsening; 77% say housing is worsening

• Annie’s origin story — daughter of a Cuban refugee, grew up in poverty, why lived experience belongs in decision-making spaces

• What WFP actually is — not a Green Party-style third party; a “non-delusional third party” built on fusion voting

• Fusion voting, explained — how Oregon’s version differs from New York’s (Zohran Mamdani’s WFP ballot line), and how candidates like Labor Commissioner Christina Stevenson appear cross-nominated as Democrat/WFP/Independent

• The Governor’s Prosperity Council — why WFP opposes its recommendations, and a pointer back to the S3 episode with Juan Carlos Ordoñez (Oregon Center for Public Policy) for the counter-perspective

• Myrna Munoz vs. Janeen Sollman — the primary upset Annie calls the most significant Oregon race in two decades, and the coalition (including first-time primary voters) that powered it

• Why WFP didn’t endorse Gov. Kotek in the primary — first of all - she didn’t apply, however there are legitimate concerns coming out of her handling of preschool-for-all and the Prosperity Council. Ultimately its up to the members - what the Governor’s appearance at WFP’s August convention signals

• Data centers — WFP’s position (not opposed outright, opposed to subsidies without community process, and to costs landing on ratepayers, farmland, and water)

• Immigration enforcement and ICE activity — the economic and community impact in Washington County and Hillsboro

• Healthcare — Medicaid/OHP access gaps in Tillamook County, hospital closures (Seaside Providence’s maternity ward), and the case for universal healthcare

Get Involved

• WFP Nominating Convention - Sign UP!

  • Saturday 8/15 | 8am-3pm - Workshops and panels

  • Saturday 8/15 | 6pm-8pm - Convention Weekend Dinner & Celebration

  • Sunday 8/16 | 9am-12pm - Nominating Convention

• Join WFP — text MEMBER to 30403

• Learn more at their website: Oregon WFP

Related Episodes

• S03 E01 — Curtis Robinhold on the Oregon Prosperity Council

• S03 E04 — Juan Carlos Ordoñez (Oregon Center for Public Policy) on the Prosperity Council, from the other side

Two guests, two readings of the same 400-page report. That’s the point of the show.

Guest

Juan Carlos Ordoñez — Communications Director, Oregon Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan research organization (celebrating its 25th anniversary) focused on tax, budget, and economic policy through the lens of low- and moderate-income Oregonians. OCPP’s core issue areas: tax policy, worker power/collective bargaining, and economic security — including a guaranteed income floor for Oregon.

Find OCPP’s research at OCPP.org, and their podcast, Policy for the People, wherever you get your shows.

What we cover

• Is Oregon’s income inequality actually low? Juan Carlos on why that stat, even if accurate, is cold comfort — “less bad than everywhere else” isn’t the same as good.

• Why unions and the minimum wage matter to the inequality story — and why Oregon’s tax system, while mildly progressive, still isn’t progressive enough.

• “Business climate” as a concept — its origins as a 1950s PR term coined by GE to describe low-tax, non-union states, and why Juan Carlos argues it’s an incoherent yardstick with no agreed definition.

• The composition problem: the Prosperity Council was dominated by corporate and business interests, with only two labor representatives — who dissented from the tax recommendations.

• Are People making $40,000 a year paying more taxes in Oregon?: Juan Carlos cites the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s full effective-rate analysis (income, property, and excise taxes combined) to argue the opposite is true — and that Washington’s sales-tax-heavy system is one of the most regressive in the country.

• The “bait and switch” itself: the report cites real hardship data (including the United Way’s ALICE Index) but its near-term recommendations don’t target the middle class at all — they reinstate the QSBS venture capital tax break (94% of benefits go to people making over $1 million/year), weaken the estate tax (paid by only 5% of estates), and adjust the corporate activities tax and R&D credit.

• Does taxing wealth drive people out of Oregon? The research on wealthy-household migration, and why “they’ll just leave” is weaker than it sounds.

• Nike, Intel, and the single-sales-factor tax structure — how two companies effectively wrote their own tax deal in 2012, and why that complicates the “Oregon is bad for business” narrative.

• A progressive alternative: what Juan Carlos would put in a prosperity plan if OCPP had written it — investment in early childhood and higher education, a stronger safety net, collective bargaining, and a more progressive tax system funded by asking more of corporations and high earners.

• Corporate transparency: OCPP’s proposal to require large corporations to publicly disclose what they actually pay in Oregon taxes, to settle the “we’re overtaxed” debate with real numbers.

• Healthcare and entrepreneurship — closing thoughts on how employer-tied health coverage shapes (and limits) who takes the risk of starting a business.

Further reading

• Juan Carlos Ordoñez’s op-ed on the Prosperity Council report in the Oregon Capital Chronicle

• OCPP’s published research on Oregon’s tax and economic performance — OCPP.org

• Joe Cortright’s writing on Oregon’s business climate and startup activity at City Observatory

• The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s state-by-state effective tax rate analysis

• The United Way’s ALICE Index on Oregon households falling short of a livable income

Where do you land — Curtis’s competitiveness case or Juan Carlos’s fairness case? Leave a comment and tell us who you think has it right, and who else we should have on the show.

One guest, one through-line, a lot of ground to cover. Mike sits down with Pastor Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran Church — a Portland native who’s spent his lifetime as an activist and more recently at the center of the city’s fights over gun safety, police accountability, and immigrant sanctuary. They trace Knutson’s path from a Franklin High School track rival of Steve Prefontaine to a hospital chaplain on the AIDS ward in the early 1980s, and connect that history to Augustana’s role today: from the Peace Bell with a melted down 60 lb clapper made from surrendered firearms, to the church’s decade-plus sanctuary relationship with Francisco Aguirre, to the slow rollout of Portland’s police oversight board six years after voters approved it. The conversation closes with a lightning round: Hymnal Ranking, Augustana-style.

In This Episode

Mike and Pastor Knutson start with the man himself: Portland roots, Franklin High School (where he ran track against Steve Prefontaine, captained the football team, and served as student body president), a stint teaching for Job Corps in Astoria, a 1980 run for state representative that he lost at 28, seminary, and a hospital chaplaincy internship on the AIDS ward in the early 1980s — the experience he credits with shaping how he thinks about ministry.

From there they turn to Augustana itself, which has grown from roughly 200 members to nearly 900 representing 23 countries of birth, and to Portland’s famously “strained relationship with formal religion.” For Knutson, that tension dissolves once faith is reframed as practice rather than doctrine:

“Faith is the values from my faith that drive me to work for the common good, to measure our society by how the most vulnerable are doing.”

That framing carries into a conversation about the church as a living building — modeled in part on Bethel Lutheran/Bethel New Life in Chicago — that houses community organizations alongside the state’s longest-running jazz gig, and about the “energy points across the city” Knutson sees in Portland’s current wave of nonviolent organizing.

The conversation then moves into policy, starting with Measure 114. Four years after voters passed it, the law is still awaiting a ruling from the Oregon Supreme Court — expected any day — and Augustana is planning a press conference the moment the decision drops. Knutson walks through the coalition that got it passed, from rural Oregon counties to Portland high schoolers.

From guns to policing: Portland’s Police Accountability Board passed with 82% voter approval in 2020 and, six years later, is only now hiring its first executive director. Knutson and Mike dig into the Albina Ministerial Alliance’s long involvement in the fight and push back on proposals to redirect Portland Street Response or Portland Clean Energy Fund dollars toward sworn-officer benchmarks. Mike puts it plainly:

“A number of police officers is not an outcome. That’s an input. Safety is the outcome.”

Knutson also recounts a real-time encounter he came across — a Black retired parole officer surrounded by police with guns drawn — as an illustration of what accountability work is actually responding to.

The back half of the interview centers on Francisco Aguirre and Augustana’s sanctuary story: the 81 days Aguirre spent living under the church altar in 2014, the extortion and death of his son Moses in El Salvador, a recent action by the Governor that Knutson credits to grassroots pressure, and the community turnout Knutson says kept Aguirre out of ICE custody just this past week. Throughout, Knutson returns to a theme:

“We’re not Jesus. You can’t fix everything. You can’t heal everything, but you can do something.”

He closes out the substantive conversation with a list of ways to plug in — Sanctuary Sunday, Lift Every Voice Oregon, the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice, the Albina Ministerial Alliance — before Mike brings out the game segment: “Hang the Hymnal,” where Pastor Knutson ranks ten hymns blind, one at a time, with no do-overs.

Organizations Mentioned

• Augustana Lutheran Church

• Albina Ministerial Alliance

• Lift Every Voice Oregon

• Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice

• Portland Street Response

• Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon

• Catholic Charities

• Latino Network

• PCUN

Where to Find Augustana Lutheran Church

Sunday services: 2710 NE 14th Ave, Portland — jazz preludes included.

This week I sat down with Portland City Council President Jamie Dunphy — the “compromise president” who emerged after 13 deadlocked votes — to talk about running a fractured council, the real math behind the Moda Center deal, and what Portland might learn from New York.

In this episode

The reluctant presidency — What it means to hold “all the responsibility, none of the power,” after 13 deadlocked rounds of voting and a brand-new form of government with no precedent to lean on.

The serial communications law — Why Jamie calls it “crippling”: councilors can’t work out policy one-on-one before a public vote, manufacturing gridlock rather than preventing corruption — while the legislature exempted itself from the same rules.

The budget, in plain numbers — The city’s budget has grown from $5.8B to $8.6B since 2020, but the real battleground is the $1B general fund, which just absorbed a $170M gap — the largest structural shortfall since the 1960s.

Police staffing and the Clean Energy Fund — Jamie pushes back on the proposed staffing-ratio ballot measure and the narrative that PCF has “excess funds,” pointing to a five-year, publicly accountable spending plan already tied to East Portland priorities.

Small business, from experience — Lessons from opening Love Cup in the middle of the 2008 crash, and Jamie’s pitch for a real how-to-manual and single point of contact for new business owners.

Music as infrastructure — Why Jamie ran on treating music as economic development and public safety strategy, not an arts “nice to have.”

The Moda Center, in detail — The heart of the episode: the city’s original $1 acquisition, the 3-to-1 state/county match, the remaining $75M gap, opening the operator contract to competitive bid, a public split at 49/46, and the August 12th term sheet vote.

What Portland could learn from New York — A candid take on the Mamdani moment and what’s actually transferable to Portland’s council-manager system.

Music trivia lightning round — The FBI’s real obscenity investigation into “Louie Louie,” presidential campaign anthems, and a closing pitch to make it Portland’s official city anthem.

Mike sits down with Curtis Robinhold to unpack the Oregon Prosperity Council’s just-released report: 66 listening sessions, 25 communities, 400+ pages, and a mandate to figure out why Oregon’s business climate isn’t competitive — and what to do about it.

About Curtis Robinhold

Curtis Robinhold is the Executive Director of the Port of Portland, where he’s overseen major projects including the newly completed PDX airport terminal. Earlier in his career, he worked in BP’s renewable energy business in Europe and served as chief of staff to Governor John Kitzhaber. This spring, Governor Kotek tapped him to co-chair the Oregon Prosperity Council alongside former Intel president Renee James, leading a six-month, statewide effort to diagnose what’s holding back Oregon’s economic competitiveness and chart a path forward. He’s also an award-winning environmentalist, a longtime soccer fan who’s lived in Germany and London, and the youngest of three brothers.

In this episode

• Curtis’s path from Eugene to BP’s renewable energy business overseas, to John Kitzhaber’s chief of staff, to nearly a decade running the Port of Portland (and overseeing the newly finished airport terminal)

• How the Prosperity Council came together with co-chair Renee James (former Intel president) and why they deliberately stayed narrow in scope

• The bad news: Oregon ranks 49th in job growth, has a tax burden that surprises people once you look at the data, and a permitting/regulatory environment that businesses say is harder to navigate than neighboring blue states

• The “spaghetti” of Oregon’s workforce development system — and why community college credits don’t even transfer between community colleges

• Real stories from the road: Hill Meats in Pendleton, Salt & Straw’s Kim Malik on why she’s not expanding in Oregon, and Fort George Brewing’s infrastructure struggles in Astoria

• The land use debate — Senate Bill 100 at 55+ years old, and whether it’s time for a “grown-up conversation” about adjustments

• A Hamiltonian-vs-Jeffersonian detour on centralized power, abundance politics, and why big public projects (like the airport) get done when insulated from election cycles

• Cap-and-invest, statutory vs. rules-based climate policy, and why Curtis thinks it’s time for the legislature to act instead of the executive branch

• Oregon’s real strengths: food and beverage, athletic apparel, mass timber, semiconductors — and the “second paycheck” of quality of life

• Rapid-fire World Cup predictions: France over Argentina in the final, Mexico over England in the quarters (whoops!), and strong opinions on Pilsners

Where to find the full report: Oregon Prosperity Council recommendations, released end of June 2026.

Mayor Wilson sent out a letter doubling down on the city’s $120 million pledge and going after the councilors and critics who’ve raised concerns about the deal. Less than two hours later, Multnomah County held its first public hearing on its own $100 million-plus ask — and commissioners spent most of it asking a questions to nobody because Representatives from Dundon and the Blazers couldn’t be bothered to show up. It’s NBA lottery night after all!

Preamble before my reaction: I want the Blazers to stay. I’m willing to support spending public money to make that happen. But the price tag is closing in on a billion dollars, for a team a ne’er-do-well billionaire just bought for $4.25 billion, and three things from Tuesday tell me the people pushing this deal don’t think it can survive public scrutiny.

1. Dundon is treating elected officials as an obstacle to manage, not a partner to convince. He's headlining the Chamber event the day after skipping the county meeting where actual accountability questions were on the table. That's not a scheduling accident — it's a strategy of applying donor-class pressure on commissioners rather than answering Singleton's, Moyer’s and Brim-Edwards' direct questions. You don't avoid the room with the hard questions if you think your case can survive them.

2. The information asymmetry is the real scandal, not Krolewicz’s presence. The only published numbers on this nearly billion-dollar deal come from a volunteer with no government access, while the city, county, state and team — the parties with the actual financial models — have offered nothing comparable. Wilson’s energy should go into rebutting Krolewicz’s analysis if it’s wrong, not attacking him for filling a vacuum nobody else would fill.

3. Personal attacks on a critic are a tell, not a rebuttal. When an elected official with a strong factual position gets challenged, the move is to show the math. Wilson reaching for “Brooklyn-based tech bro” instead of “here’s why his numbers are wrong” suggests he doesn’t have a confident answer to the substance — and it’s beneath the office regardless.

Here’s where I land: if the case for this deal is good, somebody please make it, with numbers, in public, to the people asking. Sell it. Show us what we’re missing. Lead - don’t lash out at people who are honestly skeptical or who are asking the same questions we would expect of them for any deal of this magnitude.

(Source: Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, The Oregonian, “Portland mayor lambasts critics of Moda Center deal as county questions investment.”)

One thing I’ve noticed happening on social media is the proliferation of people essentially regurgitating other outlets’ reporting and giving you their take on it. And honestly, I kind of like it — it’s a quick way for me to consume a news story, and someone else giving me their immediate reaction helps me reflect quickly on how it might impact me or things I’m interested in. We all have those friends or trusted interlocutors whose opinions and takes help us make sense of something more quickly, and who sometimes bring out aspects of a story that we ourselves might gloss over. I see this happening nationally all the time, but not locally. So here’s my attempt at being that person for you: I’ll read a story and give you my immediate reaction. They might not always be well thought out reactions, and I reserve the right to change my opinion or understanding as I go throughout my day and interact with other people who may see it differently. But what I hope to accomplish is spending a little more time on a local story you might have otherwise breezed past, or thinking a bit harder about how it might impact you or your community. So, let’s see!

This week’s pick: a KGW/KPTV report on the Clackamas County DA’s Office clearing sheriff’s deputies of criminal negligence in the in-custody death of 47-year-old Gerlinde Spring Lynch, who died in February shortly after being booked into the Clackamas County Jail.

The story: Lynch was arrested twice in one day — first for trespassing and uprooting plants, then hours later for a disturbance at a fast-food drive-thru where she was incoherent, covered in soil and leaves, and resisting officers. After a struggle to remove her from the patrol car and place her in a restraint chair, she became unresponsive during booking and was pronounced dead about an hour after arriving at the jail. The DA’s office concluded her death resulted from a “perfect storm” of methamphetamine toxicity, physical restraint, obesity, and cardiovascular disease — insufficient to meet the bar for criminal negligence. Notably, Lynch had been released from prison just days earlier after serving a two-year sentence for first-degree criminal mischief.

My reactions: I won’t second-guess the DA’s call without seeing the evidence myself, but three bigger-picture issues jumped out at me:

1. How often people in mental health crisis die after contact with the justice system,

2. The double standard where prison’s high recidivism rate never gets called a “failure” the way treatment court setbacks do, and

3. The conflict of interest in having the sheriff’s office investigate its own deputies — which is why I think independent review agencies, like Washington state’s, are worth pursuing.

Here’s the article I read, so you can read for yourself if you’d like. If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments.

Source: KGW.com – DA: No criminal negligence in death of woman at Clackamas County Jail

I’ll be honest though — that’s a pretty easy sacrifice. I eat octopus maybe twice a year. The harder test is pork. My octopus rationale clearly applies to bacon too. I’m not ready to go there yet. I’m still evolving at 45. Check back when I’m 50.

So here’s where I land on foie gras: I’m done. Force-feeding ducks and geese through metal tubes to produce a fatty liver delicacy is indefensible. I didn’t need city council to tell me that. I’m convinced on the merits.

But really? Really? This is what our city council is working on?

According to Willamette Week, seven votes are lined up to pass a foie gras ban. The ordinance would affect seven restaurants and one retailer in the entire city. Was there a popular mandate for this that I missed? Did residents of Lents and Centennial and St. Johns flood their councilors’ inboxes demanding action on foie gras?

I know the counterargument — trust me, I’ve made it myself. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. Passing this ordinance doesn’t prevent the council from working on housing, food access, or any of the plethora of things that actually got them elected. Fine. Governing isn’t always zero-sum.

But political capital is. And so is messaging.

Look at what Zohran Mamdani is doing in New York City. Transit. Potholes. Pre-K. A proposed balanced budget without gutting core services. He negotiated 1,000 World Cup tickets at $50 each so that kids who can’t afford soccer cleats have a shot at experiencing something extraordinary in their own city. Every single thing he picks up sends the same message to New Yorkers: I see you. I’m here for you. That’s not an accident. That’s discipline. That’s a politician who understands that the issues you choose to fight for tell people who you’re fighting for.

I learned in writing this that NYC banned foie gras years ago, so you might be thinking to yourself that Mamdani isn’t working on it because it’s already banned. Fair enough. But there are plenty of foie-gras-adjacent issues he could be chasing — good causes, defensible on the merits — and he’s not running at those either. Haven’t we learned our lesson from the paper straw movement? Mamdani seems like he has. He’s decided what his platform is for, and he deploys it that way every single day.

Our city council doesn’t have Mamdani’s popularity or his political capital. And they’re spending what they have on a ban affecting seven restaurants. At best, this invites comparisons to the television parody of our city. At worst, it sends the message that the people and businesses who most need their government to fight for them are not the top priority.

The ban will probably pass Thursday. Seven restaurants will have 180 days to update their menus. The ducks and geese in upstate New York will be marginally better off for the slightly decreased demand. And precious political capital will have been spent by a council that — with a 24% approval rating — cannot afford to spend it this way.

This is the rebuttal.

City Councilor Angelita Morillo — First term District 3 representative and proud DSA member, comes into studio to respond. She doesn’t just push back on the argument. She makes her case, point by point, with data, personal experience, and insight into the day to day of actually doing the work.

This is our Season 2 finale. And if you’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you. More on that below.

About Councilor Morillo

Angelita Morillo represents District 3 on the Portland City Council. Born in Paraguay, she came to the U.S. at age four, moved to Portland in seventh grade after her mom Googled “what’s the rainiest state,” graduated from Lincoln High School, and earned her degree from PSU. Before running for office, she worked in Commissioner Hardesty’s office doing constituent services and tribal liaison work — which is where she first saw how disconnected people were from the systems meant to serve them. She built the PNW Policy Angel platform on TikTok and Instagram to close that gap. She joined the DSA after taking office. On purpose. In public.

In her first term, she passed Portland’s first ban on rent-setting algorithms, expanded Portland Street Response as a co-equal first responder, passed the city’s first-of-its-kind fee on ICE detention facilities, is a fierce proponent of social housing, and co-authored the city’s data and privacy ordinance. She’s running for re-election in November.

What We Cover

• How Portland’s affordability crisis tracks directly with the homelessness crisis — and why the “back to basics” conversation has to start there

• The origin of the PNW Policy Angel account and why she built it

• Democratic socialism: movement, moment, or both?

• NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, “sewer socialism,” and why Jon Isaacs calling him “just a good politician” doesn’t hold up

• The tax flight myth — and why the data from Multnomah County, and 45 million national tax records tells a different story

• Mike’s parallel story: Jordan Schnitzer at the Arlington Club, a bowl of soup, and the demand that he hire auditors off a handpicked list

• Why the Metro Chamber isn’t actually pro-free-market

• The social housing fund fight during the budget cycle — an attempted Albina district compromise that could have made everyone a winner, and why it failed

• Charter reform, the “mod squad,” and the case that what looks like dysfunction is actually democracy working more transparently than it ever has

• What it means to carry your passport as a naturalized citizen right now — and why she’s not going anywhere

• Her re-election campaign and how Portland’s small donor match system works

Season 2 Milestones

One year. Two seasons. 25 episodes. Over 100 Substack subscribers in the last five months. Our first episode to crack 1,000 downloads. None of that happens without you. Thank you for making this show worth making.

Season 3 is coming. We’ll be up on video! Guests and topics are already being lined up. Stay subscribed — announcements are on the way.

If you have ideas for guests or shows in season 3 - send them our way. Some of our best shows have come from your ideas!

Support Councilor Morillo’s Re-Election

Morillo is running for re-election in District 3 this November. Portland’s small donor elections program matches the first $25 of any donation 10-to-1. Regular people, competing with big money. That’s the point.

👉 Angelita For PDX Campaign Link

Follow Councilor Morillo on Instagram and Tik Tok

📱 @PNWPolicyAngel / @CouncilorAngelitaMorillo

Ryan Haas spent more than 20 years in journalism, including 12 years at Oregon Public Broadcasting, where he served as Managing Editor of News. Last year, he left OPB after watching what he describes as a broader pullback from ambitious, investigative reporting — a pattern he sees playing out across institutional media. He and his co-founder Leah Sottile launched The Western Edge, a reader-supported investigative outlet focused on the communities — rural, small, and underserved — that legacy media has all but abandoned.

In just a few months, they’ve already broken news no one else was touching, including a deeply reported story on worker deaths at Amazon’s Troutdale fulfillment facility.

Mike and Ryan get into all of it:

• Why Ryan left OPB — and what the slow retreat from investigative journalism looks like from the inside

• The Western Edge’s mission — bringing long-form, narrative investigative journalism to communities outside Portland that have been left in a media desert

• The Amazon story — what it took to report it, why long form investigative journalism is not at risk of being replaced by AI - and the depth of nuance that actually communicates more than “just the facts”

• What Mike saw as DA — salacious headlines with the more mundane story hidden behind the paywall, editors promising cover stories for take down quotes from sources, and the real-world policy consequences of gotcha journalism on our public institutions

• The “right to clean information” framework — why Mike argues that the same logic behind clean air and clean water standards should apply to the information ecosystem

• Solutions worth taking seriously — an organic certification model for trusted journalism outlets, a bar-like licensing framework for journalists, media vouchers, and Ryan’s proposal for an AmeriCorps for journalism

• AI and the threat to accountability reporting — including the Peter Thiel-funded “Objection AI” tool being used to discredit independent journalists

• What media literacy actually requires — and why the collapse of local news isn’t a left or right problem - it impacts us all

Ryan’s closing line says it all: Scroll less, savor more.

Subscribe to The Western Edge at thewesternedge.media. Reader support is how investigative journalism survives.

And if you enjoyed this show, subscribe and follow for more, tell a friend, share it on social media. Help us get the word out so more people can consider and engage with the issues that Portland is talking about.

A year ago this week — May 14th — the first episode of The Schmidt Show dropped.

The premise was simple, maybe even a little defiant: take a political campaign designed to stoke fear in voters and fear in politicians, while denigrating the city we love and flip it. Build something that celebrated the good people and the real stories that make Portland a place worth being proud of. Worth fighting for.

Tomorrow, our 26th episode drops. And we have one more big one after that before we close out Season 2 and take a short break to retool and recharge.

I’ve been sitting with a lot of gratitude lately, and I wanted to share some of it with you.

Over this past year, we’ve covered sidewalks and taxes and city budgets. We’ve sat with a hairstylist cutting hair for humanity. We’ve talked religion and politics — sometimes in the same breath. We’ve gone deep on housing, on food, on workers in the fields. We’ve asked hard questions, and we’ve been met with honest answers.

Along the way, I’ve tried to introduce you to some of the best people I know — the unsung heroes, the glue people. The ones who show up every single day to make this city a place for everyone, not just some people. The ones who rarely get the spotlight but are quietly holding everything together.

One of the core beliefs that has guided this show from the beginning is this: when things feel out of control nationally, we turn to our community locally. We get involved. We find each other. We support each other. We take control of the things that are actually within our control.

That idea has only gotten more resonant as the months have passed.

We recently crossed 100 subscribers on Substack. About 20% of you have pitched in something to help me and my co-producer keep the lights on — and a few of you have been extraordinarily generous. Every subscription, whether it’s free or $5, genuinely means the world to us. This show runs on love and shoestrings, and your support makes it possible.

And the show is finding its audience. Our first episode to crack 1,000 downloads was a milestone I’m proud of. Even more exciting? Our listeners are now coming to us with ideas. The “For the Campesinos” episode — which may be my favorite interview to date — came straight from the community. That’s exactly what this was supposed to be.

So: thank you.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for showing love. Thank you for sharing it, recommending it, and helping us grow word by word and conversation by conversation.

We’re building community here. And if I’ve learned anything in my 45 years on this earth, it’s that community is the answer. People showing up for each other. Getting informed together. Looking out for neighbors. Sharing what they know. Volunteering. Caring.

That’s what makes Portland resilient, and the world a better place.

With gratitude, Mike The Schmidt Show PDX

Let’s start there

Bill Oram — one of the authors attached to this editorial enterprise — has been anything but measured on social media toward anyone who dares question handing hundreds of millions of public dollars to the new Blazers ownership group. We’re talking expletive-laden posts aimed at skeptics. So when the editorial board lectures Portland’s elected officials about professionalism and hot takes, the self-awareness gap is… significant. This is a publication that has a long and well-documented habit of tone-policing the left while extending generous interpretive charity to the pro-corporate, pro-development lane. Today’s piece is that pattern on full display.

That said — and this is important — the O isn’t entirely wrong.

The public information rollout on this deal has been a mess. The ownership group’s posture has essentially been “take it or leave it,” and elected officials stumping for a deal have too often substituted enthusiasm for explanation. That combination has created a vacuum, and reasonable Oregonians — people who love this team, who want the Blazers to stay, who understand what the franchise means to this city — have been left without credible answers to basic questions. What exactly does the public get in return for its investment? What are the trade-offs? Why now, when public services are being cut at the state level and homelessness continues to rise?

Those aren’t radical questions. They aren’t anti-Blazers questions.

The O also sets up a straw man when it implies that critics don’t want a deal. From what I’ve actually seen and heard, the elected officials being criticized largely do support a deal. They support the team. They understand the economic and cultural value of the franchise to Portland. What they’re saying — and what’s being mischaracterized as absolutism — is that they won’t sign off on a bad deal. And by most honest comparisons, what’s being contemplated here would be an extraordinarily unfavorable deal relative to what other cities have negotiated in similar situations. Don’t take my word for it — take Chris Dudley’s. A former Blazer, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, and a man who helped launch the Rip City Forever campaign to keep the team in Portland. He’s as pro-Blazers as it gets. And even he has been publicly asking the basic questions: Is ownership contributing anything? What does the public-private partnership actually look like? Is there an ironclad commitment that the team stays for the length of the deal? When someone who literally wore a Blazers uniform is raising those questions, calling skeptics out for supposedly extreme positions isn’t analysis. It’s spin.

The O is right that Moda is the city’s liability — we took ownership in exchange for a dollar, and at some point we’ll have to reckon with that. But “we’ll have to deal with it eventually” is not the same as “we must deal with it right now, on this timeline, on these terms.” Context matters. We are in a moment of real fiscal strain. Opportunity costs are real. The fact that the building is our problem doesn’t mean we have no leverage — it means we need to use that leverage wisely.

I’ll also say what the O conspicuously avoids: the identity of the ownership group is not an irrelevant detail. We’re being asked to subsidize a deal led by a man who has faced penalties for predatory lending that harmed Oregonians, and a partner with documented ICE detention arrangements in other states. I understand that once someone is wealthy enough, we’re apparently supposed to set that aside and focus on the business at hand. I don’t accept that premise. Who we do business with as a city matters. It’s a legitimate question — not a smear, not a distraction.

Here’s the bottom line: everybody should want a good deal. The Blazers matter to Portland. Keeping the team here matters. But ownership and the officials advocating for this deal have to go out and earn public support. They have to answer the hard questions credibly. They have to make the affirmative case that the benefits outweigh the costs and explain what those trade-offs actually are. They are losing people every day they don’t do that — not because Portlanders are unreasonable, but because they’re not being treated as adults who deserve a real answer.

Portland should not be the poster child for the race-to-the-bottom strategy that NBA ownership groups and the league have perfected — threatening to leave, manufacturing urgency, and waiting for desperate cities to outbid each other into bad deals. We are better than that. And if this ownership group wants Portland to be their home, they should start acting like it.

Marisa Lysinger is the host of Vendor Besties — a show for event industry professionals that is equal parts business school and chaos therapy. Four event vendors, zero filters, and enough horror stories to keep you from ever ghosting your caterer again.

Michael Jonas is the host of All American Why — a show about why things in America don’t work, tackled one episode at a time. Think civic deep dive meets Seinfeld dinner table. Michael is also a business and nonprofit attorney over at Narwhal Law.

We talked about how each of us got into podcasting, what it actually takes to make a show, and why the progressive side of the media landscape keeps leaving points on the board. Plus — legal tip (not actual legal advice) of the episode — stop using the word “deposit” in your vendor contracts. Marisa said it, Michael confirmed it. Use “non-refundable retainer.” You’re welcome.

Local Podcast Shoutouts:

• 🎙️ The Apprenticeship Way with Mark Schelsky — Gen X energy, great for people who haven’t written off God but aren’t thrilled with how he’s being represented lately

• 🎙️ News With My Fiancée — DJ Ambush and Morgan Jones doing news, pop culture, and hot takes. Somewhere in their archives are the lost Schmidt-Krasner tapes. Release them.

• 🎙️ Progress Portland — Kip Silverman and Kat Mahoney doing the long-form local politics work that voter guides can’t

• 🎙️ Portland for All — Not a podcast - but honorable mention for organizing people who thought Portland’s progressive values were self-sustaining. They’re not. Go find them.

Dream guests: Marisa wants Danielle Rothweiler (East Coast wedding planner, threads legend). Michael wants Zoran Mandami. I want Ron Funches. If any of you are listening — you know where to find us.

Bonus content: I took my kids to Darlingtonia State Natural Site on the Oregon coast over spring break. It is one of the largest carnivorous bogs in the country. It eats insects. The boardwalk is fine. Do not fall in.

Find our guests:

• Vendor Besties: wherever you listen to podcasts

• All American Why: wherever you listen to podcasts

• Marisa Lysinger / Century Decor Studios

• Michael Jonas / Narwhal Law