Willamette Week, October 14, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 51 - "Can Someone Please Clean Up This Mess?"

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WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/51 10.14.2020

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CLEAN UP THIS MESS?

OUR E NDORS EMENT S

PORTLAND IS IN TURMOIL.

YOUR VOTE CAN FIX IT. PAGE 8

SCARY PLACES:

Drive-Thru Haunted Houses Reviewed. P. 28

SCARY MOVIES:

Underrated Black Horror Films. P. 40

fall in love

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

CHRIS NESSETH

FINDINGS

BIRRIERIA PDX, PAGE 30

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 51 Kim Thatcher says voting by mail “plagues” Oregon. 10

One of the hottest new dishes in Mexican cuisine is ramen. 30

Susan McLain’s plans to discuss a bi-state bridge were foiled by squirrels. 11

When life gives you tomatoes, make tomato mozzarella Benedict . 31

Tina Kotek’s opponent put the QAnon oath in the Voters’ Pamphlet. 13

Stoners are rolling spliffs with sage and crushed raspberry leaves now. 32

Ricki Ruiz has a corgi-Chihuahua mix named Rocky Ruiz. 14

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated the wedding of a singer who performs with Portland Opera. 39

Metro’s $4 billion transportation tax may never end. 21 Patriot Prayer stole the antifa “nightmare elk” statue from downtown. 26 The drive-thru haunted house at Oaks Park costs $79.99. 28 A nature park in Hillsboro features sculptures made out of sticks that look like giant screaming heads. 29

ON THE COVER:

Local filmmaker Jeff Oliver says he’s never been so frightened by texture alone as when he watched the Shudder movie Kuso. 40 Miranda July’s latest film features Evan Rachel Wood dressed in Biff Tannen tracksuits while talking like Napoleon Dynamite. 41

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Portland behind plywood, image by Chris Nesseth.

Oregon saw a recordbreaking day of COVID infections as school districts predicted distance learning for another four months.

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DIALOGUE Since June, Portland police officers have been allowed to cover their name badges with tape, revealing only their personnel numbers. The Portland Police Bureau says the tape is for the safety of the officers, who fear getting doxxed by demonstrators protesting police brutality. Critics say taping over names is proof of the lack of accountability that many protesters are railing against. As WW has reported, the city has refused to hand over the names of officers that correspond with personnel numbers that have received complaints. In an interview last week, Mayor Ted Wheeler, who’s also police commissioner, told WW he’s directed the Police Bureau’s legal counsel and human resources department to find an alternative to officers covering their badges.

Here’s what our readers had to say: @nerdyatty via Twitter: “An alternative like… not covering their name badges during protests?” @jimbaldwin123 via Twitter: “Make them wear football jerseys with their names and numbers prominently displayed. Problem solved.”

Brian Taylor via Facebook: “Is there another alternative besides ‘Don’t cover your name badges’?” @typo_factory via Twitter: “The concerns expressed by the PPB are not valid and do not need to be ‘appreciated.’ Police officers are public servants. If they don’t want to be accountable to the public, they should quit their jobs.”

Dr. Know

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

Jennifer Sordyl Don Berg via Facebook: “Covering their badge should never happen, and should be grounds for immediate dismissal.” @getoffmylawwn via Twitter: “If you give out a cop’s name, you’re giving out his/her address, phone, and relatives’ names. Due to today’s technology, it’s easy to get this info for free. Wheeler has a security staff and cops don’t. This isn’t right.”

HotelPortlandSurfRoom via wweek.com: “More mealy-mouthed equivocation from Mr. Wheeler. Simple solution: badge number and name plate, in full view. Wheeler is the police commissioner. He can order the chief to have it done.

Period.”

Sarah Vhay via Facebook: “Would that alternative be police accountability? That would be nice.”

Doug Browning, via Facebook: “Wheeler is going to lose [reelection] and the citizens of Portland are going to lose. Watch the mass exodus out of Portland of anyone who supports the city with their tax dollars.”

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BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

Why can’t/won’t the city provide portable toilets and garbage cans for areas where homeless people set up their tents? —Holly L. For most of human history, the crap you crapped was the crap you (and your village) wore, indefinitely. Some memorable dumps probably even became local landmarks—“Take a left where Theodoric tarried after the chili feed; you can’t miss it.”

Nowadays, we have the privilege of making this unpleasant fact of life go away like it never happened—except when we don’t. Dignity is a slippery concept, but I think we can all agree you’ve got more of it when you’re not pooping in a bush, which is why Holly’s idea is such a good one.

In fact, it’s so good we’re already doing it! I know this for a fact because, in a coincidence that may yet come in handy, one of Portland’s larger homeless camps is just a few blocks from my house.

Thus, I’ve seen with my own eyes the portable toilet that’s been there for months, along with a portable hand-washing station (hello, COVID) and a trash drop. It’s not the Benson, but it’s at least as sanitary as Coachella—maybe more so, depending on which day of Coachella we’re talking about.

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Youser Friendly, via wweek.com: “You know who I want held accountable? All the idiots who riot, loot and destroy public property night after night after night.”

And just last month, the city embarked on a plan to put 100 more such toilets in strategic locations around the city, starting with usual-suspect neighborhoods like Old Town and inner Southeast.

This initiative comes to us from HUCIRP, the city’s Homelessness and Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program. (Some agencies pay ad shops to come up with snappy acronyms, but not HUCIRP—it puts everything into core services.)

You can even help with this plan! Regular readers know one of the longest-running story arcs of Dr. Know is the fact that there is often a government agency tasked with solving the exact problem you’re bitching about, and in many cases it will fix it for you, for free, if you would just pick up the goddamn phone.

HUCIRP relies in part on tips from the public to determine where to deploy sanitary and other resources. So, if you’ve been complaining to indifferent friends about the encampment near your house (you know who you are), call the city at 503-823-4000. It should be able to put you in contact with someone who, um, gives a shit.

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com 9/30/20 2:01 PM5

CONSIDER THIS

MURMURS WW ARCHIVES

OCTOBER 27

Jamelle Bouie New York Times columnist and CBS news analyst Jamelle Bouie joins Oregon Humanities for a virtual conversation on voting and democratic transitions.

This program will be streamed live at oregonhumanities.org.

Tuesday, October 27 5:00 p.m.

MATTHEW GARRETT

BUSINESS TAXES WAY UP: On the eve of ballots dropping for the Nov. 3 election, Oregon Business & Industry published a new study of tax increases since 2019. The study, done by the accounting firm Ernst and Young for the State Tax Research Institute, found that if the measures on the November ballot pass, Oregon will move from 40th in business tax burden to 19th highest, as business taxes increase by 40%. “In our 18 years of producing an annual analysis of state and local business tax burdens across the country, we’ve never seen a state jump so far and so fast in our rankings,” says Doug Lindholm of the research institute. “This increase in business tax burden is significant,” says OBI CEO Sandra McDonough, “and has the potential of making it harder for our state to grow new jobs.” The study also found that if Multnomah County’s Preschool for All measure passes, high-income county residents will have to pay the highest personal income tax rate in the country—14.6%. OBI opposes the $4 billion Metro transportation measure but has not taken a position on any other November tax proposals.

JUDGE RAISES ENDORSEMENT FLAP: U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken slammed Multnomah County Circuit Court candidate Adrian Brown for a photo of Aiken included without her permission in a political email sent by one of Brown’s supporters, former Gov. Barbara Roberts. “I was blindsided by this email, as neither you or anyone from your campaign asked my permission or even gave me notice before using this image in political mail,” Aiken wrote to Brown on Sept. 29.

“If anyone had bothered to ask, the answer would have been an immediate no.” As a federal judge, Aiken, whose office is in Eugene, is prohibited from publicly endorsing or opposing candidates for office. The photo includes Brown, Aiken and Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. The email did not say Aiken endorsed Brown, though Aiken argued the photo implied an endorsement. Brown disagrees. “There was certainly nothing to be gained to infer that a judge out of Eugene would be endorsing me,” Brown tells WW. “The only mention of Judge Aiken was just identifying her. There’s absolutely no endorsement that was implied or stated.”

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

GOVERNOR RECYCLES TOP BUREAUCRAT: On Oct. 12, Gov. Kate Brown appointed former longtime Oregon Department of Transportation director Matthew Garrett to head wildfire recovery, for which he’ll be paid $84.69 an hour on

top of his retirement benefits. Garrett resigned from ODOT last year after two decades at the agency. Transportation advocates cheered his departure. “His performance at ODOT was rife with incompetent project management, fiscal waste, cronyism and fraudulent forecasts,” says former Metro President David Bragdon. “He’s just a PR hack with a pattern of saying things that turn out to be inaccurate.” The governor’s office pointed to Brown’s statement about Garrett’s tenure when he retired in 2019. “He has led ODOT with distinction, guiding the agency through the implementation of a historic transportation package,” Brown said at the time, “and we will reap the benefits for decades to come.”

TRIAL LAWYERS UNDER FIRE IN KEY HOUSE RACE: State Rep. Cheri Helt (R-Bend), fighting a tough reelection battle against Democratic challenger Jason Kropf, has made a campaign issue of a former prosecutor’s allegations of racial and sexual harassment at the Deschutes County District Attorney’s Office, where Kropf is a longtime deputy. On Oct. 13, Kropf said he would return $20,700 in contributions from the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association after an OTLA representative contacted the complainant’s attorney and suggested the complainant remain silent. “Every survivor has the right to speak their truth and demand justice,” Kropf said in a statement. Kropf also defends his own silence on his former colleague’s allegations. “Ethically, it is not appropriate for me to weigh in on an open case in my office,” he added. “I want my former colleague to know that I respect her and I in no way dismiss her truth.” Helt’s campaign manager accused Kropf of being two-faced. “Today Jason Kropf got caught—forced to admit his guilt,” said Helt’s campaign manager, Jennifer Stephens.

“When he got caught, Jason Kropf suddenly speaks. But when it was about believing and supporting his female co-worker, he remained silent. That’s called desperate hypocrisy, not leadership or courage.” The complainant did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

House Democrats hold a 38-22 advantage over Republicans and want to stretch that to 40-20, which would immunize them against future GOP walkouts. Dems hold a 16% voter registration advantage in Helt’s district, so she’s vulnerable, but this scandal could help her. OTLA executive director Beth Bernard denies her association asked the victim to be silent: “Our members represent people who are sexually assaulted and sexually harassed; we stand with victims.”

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Forging a Path to Racial Justice

The Bahá’í House of Wor Wilmette, Illinois

THE BAHÁ’ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES join our fellow-citizens in heartfelt grief at the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others whose lives were suddenly A message from the Bahá’ís of the United States taken by appalling acts of violence. These heartbreaking violations against fellow human beings, due only to the color of their skin, have deepened the dismay caused by a pandemic whose consequences to the health and livelihoods of people of color have been disproportionately severe. This has come to pass against a backdrop of longstanding racial injustice in virtually every aspect of American life. It is clear that racial prejudice is the most vital and challenging issue we face as a country.

Yet, amidst these tragedies, there are also signs of hope.

Countless citizens have arisen to proclaim the truth that we are one nation, and to demand specific actions to address the pervasive inequities that for too long have shaped our society.

We have remembered who we aspire to be as a people, and are determined to make a change for the better. This moment beckons us to a renewed commitment to realize the ideal of E Pluribus Unum—out of many, one—the very ideal upon which America was founded.

THE BAHÁ’ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES join our fellow-citizens in heartfelt grief at the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others whose lives were suddenly taken by appalling acts of violence. These heartbreaking violations against fellow human beings, due only to the color of their skin, have deepened the dismay caused by a pandemic whose consequences to the health and livelihoods of people of color have been disproportionately severe. This has come to pass against a backdrop of longstanding racial injustice in virtually every aspect of American life. It is clear that racial prejudice is the most vital and challenging issue we face as a country.

Yet, amidst these tragedies, there are also signs of hope. Countless citizens have arisen to proclaim the truth that we are one nation, and to demand specific actions to address the pervasive inequities that for too long have shaped our society. We have remembered who we aspire to be as a people, and are determined to make a change for the better.

This moment beckons us to a renewed commitment to realize the ideal of E Pluribus Unum—out of many, one—the very ideal upon which America was founded.

To create a just society begins with recognition of the fundamental truth that humanity is one.

But it is not enough simply to believe this in our hearts. It creates the moral imperative to act, and to view all aspects of our personal, social, and institutional lives through the lens of justice. It implies a reordering of our society more profound than anything we have yet achieved. And it requires the participation of Americans of every race and background, for it is only through such inclusive participation that new moral and social directions can emerge.

Whatever immediate results might come from the current demonstrations, the elimination of racism will require a sustained and concerted effort. It is one thing to protest against

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Religion, an enduring source of insight concerning huma purpose and action, has a key role to play in this process. communities recognize that we are essentially spiritual b All proclaim some version of the “Golden Rule”—to love o we do ourselves. Take, for example, the following passage the Bahá’í Scriptures in which God addresses humankind

Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at al in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have creat you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from y inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of on and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.

To understand and firmly believe that we are all children provides us with access to vast spiritual resources, motiva us to see beyond ourselves and to work steadily and sacr in the face of all obstacles. It helps to ensure that the pro consistent with the goal to create communities character justice. It gives us the faith, strength, and creativity to tra our own hearts, as we also work for the transformation of

To create a just society begins with recognition of the fundamental truth that humanity is one. But it is not enough We believe that the tribulations now encompassing muc simply to believe this in our hearts. It creates the moral the world are the symptoms of humanity’s failure to unde imperative to act, and to view all aspects of our personal, social, The Bahá’í House ofThe Worship and embrace our essential oneness. interrelated thre and institutional lives through the lens of justice. It implies a Wilmette, Illinois of climate change, gender discrimination, extreme wealt reordering of our society more profound than anything we have poverty, unfair distribution of resources, and the like, all s yet achieved. And it requires the participation of Americans of from this deficiency and can never be resolved if we do n particular every forms of injustice.It is a far more midst of a mass transition toward racial justice.

We should also never forget that the richness race and background, for it is only through such inclusive awaken to our dependence upon each other.

The world h profound participation challenge to create a new framework Religion, an enduring source of insight of our diversity, and our founding ideals of that new moral and social directions can emerge. for justice. Our efforts can only succeed when concerning human purpose and action, has a liberty justice, attract theand eyesitof world contracted toand a neighborhood, is the important to app we learn to build relationships with results each other role to playthe in this process. All faith that what to us. willAmerica be influenced by what Whatever immediate mightkey come from current weThey do in impacts notwe only our own co based on sincere friendship, regard, and trust, ofcommunities we are essentially or fail to achieve, in this regard. It is demonstrations, the elimination racism willrecognize require that a sustained but the achieve, entire planet. which, in turn, become pillars for the activities spiritual beings. All proclaim some version of not an exaggeration to say that the cause of and concerted effort. It is one thing to protest against particular of our institutions and communities. the “Golden Rule”—to love others as we do world peace is linked to our in We should also never forget thatsuccess the richness of our dive forms of injustice. It is a far more profound challenge to create ourselves. Take, for example, the followingand ourresolving theideals issue ofofracial injustice. founding liberty and justice, attract the a new framework forin justice. only when in which It is essential for us to join hands a processOur efforts passagecan from the succeed Bahá’í Scriptures the world to us.

They will be influenced by what we achie learn to build relationships each other humankind: based on sincere of learningwe how to create models of what we with God addresses The oneness of humanity is the foundation of fail to achieve, in this regard.

It is not an exaggeration to friendship, regard,of and trust, which, in turn, become pillars for want to see in every dimension American our future. Its realization is the inevitable next the of world peace is planet. linkedWe to will ourreplace success in resolv life, as we the learnactivities to apply the of ye not why We created you all from thecause stage in our life on this of principle our institutions andKnow communities. issue of aracial oneness through practical engagement and same dust? That no one should exalt himself worldinjustice. society based upon competition and It To is essential foroffer us to hands inover a process of Ponder learning how experience. this end, we thejoin following the other. at all times in your conflict, and driven by rampant materialism, The oneness of humanity is the foundation of our future. thoughts. to create models of what we want to hearts ye were created. Since We have with one founded upon our higher potential for see how in every dimension realization is the inevitable next stage in our life on this pl created you all from one same substance it is collaboration and reciprocity.

This achievement of American life, as we learn to apply the principle of oneness We will replace a world society based upon competition a An essential element of the process will be incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to will mark the universal coming of age of the through practical engagement and experience. To this end, we conflict,human and driven by rampant materialism, honest and truthful about current walk with the same feet, eat with the same race. How soon we achieve this, andwith one fou offer thediscourse following thoughts. conditions and their causes, and understandmouth and dwell in the same land, that from how easily,potential will dependfor upon the commitment upon our higher collaboration and reciprocit ing, in particular, the deeply entrenched being,and by your deeds and actions, we demonstrate thisuniversal cardinal principle.

An essential element of the processyour willinmost be honest truthful achievement will marktothe coming of age of the notions ofdiscourse anti-Blackness thatcurrent pervade conditions our the signs of oneness about and their causes, and andthe essence of race. How soon we achieve this, and how easily, will depe society. We must build the capacity to truly detachment may be made manifest.

We have come to a moment of great public understanding, in particular, the deeply entrenched notions the commitment we demonstrate to this cardinal principl hear and acknowledge the voices of those who awareness and rejection of injustice. Let us not of anti-Blackness that pervade our society.

We must build the have directly suffered from the effects of To understand and firmly believe that we We are all this opportunity.

Willof wegreat commit to theawareness an havelose come to a moment public capacity trulymanifest hear and acknowledge voices of those who racism. This capacityto should itself in childrenthe of God provides us with access to vast process of forming “a more perfect union”? rejection of injustice.

Let us not lose this opportunity. Wil have suffered from the effects of racism.

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our own country, but the entire planet.

www.bahai.us/path-to-racial-justice Paid for by the Bahá’ís of the United States

Paid for by the Bahá’ís of the United States Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

7

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CLEAN UP THIS MESS? PORTLAND IS IN TURMOIL. YOUR VOTE CAN FIX IT. In case you haven’t gone outside recently: Our city is in trouble.

Portland’s first nine months of 2020 will be remembered for images like the opening credits of a zombie movie. It’s the kind of year where you can say, “Remember when people thanked the plague doctors? I guess that stopped when the riots started,” and everyone here knows what you’re talking about.

Now, as we sit here less than three weeks before Election Day, a reckoning with racial injustice and militarized police has descended into recurring street warfare. Our beloved Oregon woods were consumed by fire, the air unbreathable. Downtown storefronts are boarded up—the customers sent home by disease, the buildings preyed upon by vandals who hide among peaceful protesters. And the places where we once gathered to raise a pint are closing at a frightening clip.

Our city, once a darling of the national media, has been rebranded Chaos Central. Forget Portlandia.

Our mascot now is a cop in riot gear manhandling a protester, our civic symbol a piece of plywood scribbled with graffiti. Put a board on it.

A terrible year was made more challenging by Gov. Kate Brown’s halting response to COVID-19, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s inability to rein in his police force or corral the energy of protesters, and the obscene behavior of President Donald Trump.

Trump’s toxic tweeting and racist opportunism has emboldened the disaffected of all stripes. Radicals have exploited the moment. On the far right, useful idiots festooned with guns and Trump regalia rolled their diesel pickups into a city where few of them live to seek attention and act out costume dramas. Too many on the left have stooped to their level, setting fires and smashing any object that they decide doesn’t meet their standards.

This week, we asked Oregon Historical Society executive director Kerry Tymchuk—whose own museum saw its windows shattered last weekend—if he could think of another moment of such turmoil in Portland. He couldn’t.

“When you look back at recent history, the closest thing you could compare it to is the Vietnam period—the sit-ins and the protests,” Tymchuk said.

“But I don’t recall this kind of vandalism.”

What does this have to do with the ballot that 8

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will arrive in your mailbox this week? Everything.

That envelope contains your ticket out of this mess.

Maybe more precisely, it gives you the chance to offer instructions on how to begin cleaning up, beyond repudiating the president by sending him out of office. Closer to home, the 2020 election features drug decriminalization, police reform, free pre-kindergarten, magic mushrooms, and more chances to raise your taxes than any ballot in recent memory.

It features the most competitive mayoral runoff Portland has seen in more than a decade, a turning point so momentous that it’s turned the two self-proclaimed nerds seeking the job into bitter enemies.

That’s the context in which we invited candidates and the opposing sides of ballot measures to share with us their visions of how we dig out of disaster.

We interviewed them on Zoom, asking them to question each other—and us.

We endorsed in every race on the ballot that was meaningfully contested, which we defined as two candidates submitting statements to the Voter’s Pamphlet. (As in previous years, we did not endorse in the contest for Oregon attorney general, because the incumbent, Ellen Rosenblum, is married to the co-owner of WW’s parent company.) We also tried to lighten the grim mood with this question: “What’s

most awkward moment you’ve had on a Zoom call?”

In this cycle, we looked for leaders who acknowledge the new normal rather than ignoring it. And in many, but not all, cases, we found candidates who gave us faith that Portland can still be a city of creativity and inclusion, not destruction and hatred.

Three decades ago, a tavern owner named Bud Clark upended Portland politics by defeating an incumbent mayor and refashioning this city in his image: a little eccentric, a lot argumentative, and always talking.

At his pub, the Goose Hollow Inn, Clark placed a mission statement on the menus. “We are dedicated to Quality Draft, Fine Food, Pleasant Music, and Stimulating Company,” he wrote. “We are also dedicated to extremes of opinion, hoping that a livable marriage will result. If physical violence is your nature, either develop your verbal ability or leave.”

If this city is to survive, it must follow Bud’s rules. In the following pages, you’ll find many opinions. We hope you’ll argue with us; we’ve certainly debated fiercely among ourselves. But this city can no longer endure physical violence as a substitute for the exchange of ideas. Debate is the solution this city has, until we can all enjoy quality draft and stimulating company again.

Portland is broken. Let’s fight to fix it.

FEDERAL U.S. President Joe Biden (D) Duh.

U.S. Senate Jeff Merkley (D)

U. S . S e n . J e f f Merkley went to Washington, D.C., in 2009 from East Multnomah County. But in s o m e w a y s, h e never really left.

The son of a mill worker, Merkley graduated from Stanford and Princeton, yes, but he’s a startlingly regular guy—jogs to keep the weight off, can’t keep his hair combed, and says what he thinks instead of what he’s supposed to say.

Few people expected him to unseat incumbent GOP Sen. Gordon Smith in 2008, and Merkley’s been surprising people, pleasantly, ever since. GovTrack.com, which keeps tabs on Congress, rates Merkley, 63, the fourthmost liberal senator in the Capitol and one of the hardest working—he introduced the third-most bills last year.

Not many passed (thanks, Mitch), but Merkley made an indelible contribution to Americans’ understanding of Donald Trump’s administration when he journeyed to the Mexican border in Texas and exposed the shameful policy of splitting up the families of undocumented immigrants.

Merkley is a truth-teller, an honest man in a crowd of equivocators. He’s Bernie Sanders without the distinctive accent or marketing ability. His state and the country need more of him.

Merkley’s Republican challenger is Jo Rae Perkins, a 64-year-old real estate agent from Albany, Ore., who has made three prior bids for federal office since 2014, all unsuccessful. This time around, she’s received some national attention by swearing allegiance to the QAnon conspiracy theory which, at its core, posits that Trump is going to take down a cabal of corrupted liberal elites who sell children into sexual exploitation. WW could not schedule an interview with Perkins but did attend two of her campaign speeches, where she falsely claimed Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler plotted to start Oregon’s wildfires. Her fringe views are disqualifying.

Two third-party candidates also seek this seat. Ibrahim A. Tahir, the nominee of the Green and Progressive parties, is a philosophy teacher who isn’t much of an improvement on Perkins—he believes, for example, that face masks do nothing to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Gary Dye, the Libertarian candidate, is a former NW Natural engineer who, when asked what track record qualified him for the seat, turned his video screen to display the resplendent view from his hilltop home. It’s probably best he remains there.

Merkley’s most awkward moments on Zoom: He’s had trouble logging on. “My technological incompetence has been an embarrassment.”

U.S. House of Representatives, District 1 Suzanne Bonamici (D)

Bonamici, 66, hasn’t made many waves in the eight years she’s been in Congress representing a district that covers much of the Coastal Range and Washington County. (If you start in Yamhill Valley wine country and road trip to Astoria, you’ve seen a lot of her turf.) Still, we’ve come to appreciate the subtle, steady virtues of Bonamici in a time of upheaval. She can be counted on to underreact—which means if she’s outraged, you’d better be paying attention.

Throughout the pandemic, Bonamici has been busy.

In July, she introduced the Pandemic Child Hunger Prevention Act, which would allow students to access school meals even when classrooms were closed due to COVID-19. That’s a lifeline for America’s poorest children.

In August, she led 44 members of Congress demanding increased renter protections from federal landlords (think HUD). Aside from pandemic-related legislation, Bonamici led the passage of a bill to protect pregnant women from workplace discrimination and retaliation.

Bonamici’s opponent, Christopher Christensen, doesn’t appear to be running a serious campaign. He hasn’t raised a dollar.

Bonamici’s funniest moment on Zoom: During a Zoom call with her daughter, Bonamici’s “grandcat” was in the background pawing at the television screen as Trump’s doctors spoke outside Walter Reed Hospital. “He didn’t trust those doctors,” Bonamici says.

U.S. House of Representatives, District 3 Earl Blumenauer (D)

For 25 years, the bowtied and bespectacled Congressman Earl Blumenauer has represented Portland and Gresham in a district that extends east to Mount Hood.

In the U.S. Capitol, where seniority means everything, Blumenauer’s tenure has earned him a spot on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which writes the nation’s budget. As the holder of one of the safest Democratic seats in Congress—Dems outnumber Republicans 3 to 1 in the 3rd District—Blumenauer, 72, has long devoted considerable time and money to evangelizing nationally for issues popular in Portland: bicycle infrastructure and cannabis, to name a couple. (One sign of how secure his seat is: Blumenauer’s Republican opponent, Joanna Harbour, a caregiver and entrepreneur from Estacada making her first run for office, did not attend our endorsement interview.)

As Congress’ leading advocate for the federal legalization of cannabis (he says he doesn’t use the stuff ), Blumenauer can claim credit for progress: The House will hold take its first-ever vote on legalization next month and Blumenauer says the more conservative Senate is moving in the right direction also. More critically amid economic havoc, Blumenauer sponsored legislation that would direct $120 billion in grants to independent restaurants.

That measure just passed the House and is part of the $1.5 trillion COVID-19 relief package being negotiated between the White House and Congress. Blumenauer’s fondness for Portland’s bespoke culture isn’t just some-

thing he wears on his lapel. His advocacy may be the only thing standing between Portland and an Applebee’s on every corner.

Blumenauer’s most awkward moments on Zoom: Neglecting to mute himself when he rejoins a call. “I’ve got some heated texts saying, ‘Do you know that you are live?’”

U.S. House of Representatives, District 5 Kurt Schrader (D)

After more than a decade in Congress, Rep. Kurt Schrader, a 68-year-old veterinarian, is now vying for his seventh term. WW believes he’s still the right person for the job.

As a co-chair of the Affordable and Accessible Health Care Task Force, Schrader helped pass two bills that would reduce the cost of prescription drugs. He wants to follow up on that in the next session and pass a bigger drug price package that would negotiate lower prices for senior citizens. He’s also working on a bipartisan climate change bill with his colleague Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) to drive power plant emissions to near zero over the next three decades.

He’s easily the most conservative Democrat in Oregon’s congressional delegation—a title he wears with some pride in a district that stretches from the Warm Springs Reservation east of Mount Hood to Waldport on the coast, and doesn’t feel much kinship with Portland’s politics.

That’s reflected in his voting record. Just this month, he was one of 18 Democrats who voted no on the latest COVID-19 relief package.

In May, we made the case that Schrader matched his district better than his challenger from the left, Milwaukie Mayor Mark Gamba. This fall, he faces Amy Ryan Courser of Keizer, a Republican businesswoman who owns a carpet cleaning company and served on the Keizer City Council.

Courser did not show up at WW’s endorsement interview, but we watched her speak in September at a campaign event for U.S. Senate candidate Jo Rae Perkins—which doubled as a recruiting drive for the conspiracy theory QAnon. At the Keizer event, Courser said “law and order is No. 1” and that she identifies more as a businesswoman than a politician. She didn’t offer any explicit endorsement of QAnon. However, she repeated the falsehood that antifa might be responsible for setting the state’s wildfires. That makes it hard to see how she’s fit for Congress.

Schrader’s most awkward moment on Zoom: Talking trash about how onerous one Zoom call was, Schrader realized he was still on the call and others could hear him (Schrader declined to disclose whom the call was with).

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9

STATEWIDE Oregon Secretary of State Shemia Fagan (D)

We’re uncomfortable with where the GOP nominee, state Sen. Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer), stands on a variety of issues. Thatcher, 55, announced her candidacy at a Timber Unity rally against climate change legislation, said she was uncertain whether antifa started recent wildfires; and joined her GOP colleagues repeatedly in walking out of the Capitol to shut down the Legislature.

Our objection to Thatcher, who has served in Salem since 2005, is not that she’s a Republican.

Oregon has benefited from two successive Republican secretaries of state—the late Dennis Richardson (whom WW endorsed), who died in office last year, and his appointed replacement, Bev Clarno. Both conducted constructive audits of the Democratic establishment, safeguarded the state’s vote-by-mail system, and vouched for its reliability.

As President Donald Trump attacked voting by mail, Oregon secretaries of state prominently presented the counterpoint: Republicans with integrity who believe in the system that enfranchises more Oregonians.

But Thatcher would not assume that mantle. In our endorsement interview, Thatcher appeared disingenuous in her reservations about the system as it stands now. She pointed to fewer than a hundred examples of voter fraud identified in the 2016 election as cause for alarm (rather than a sign of the minute problems and aggressive safeguarding of mail-in voting).

And most notably, during the primary, she told the Bend Bulletin: “The entire nation should not be pushed to adopt Oregon’s plagued vote-by-mail system, when clearly this should be a decision made by individual states.”

The secretary of state’s most important job is overseeing the state’s elections. Now is not the time to turn that important work over to anybody who is less than a full-throated defender of Oregon’s vote-by-mail system.

State Sen. Shemia Fagan (D-East Portland) is just as partisan as Thatcher but has proved smart and principled in the causes she has championed.

And most importantly for the office, Fagan, 39, has proven a vocal advocate for expanding access to voting, including prepaid postage for voter registration of anyone who uses the DMV. Giving every eligible voter easier access to the ballot box should not be a partisan issue, and Fagan has picked expanding voting rights over increasing party advantage.

Fagan has been an effective force in the state Legislature, bringing long-overdue sidewalk enhancements to East Portland while in the House and unseating a conservative Democrat in the primary to win her Senate seat in a quest to pass statewide tenant protections in the midst of a housing crisis. (She successfully passed modest reforms, including a cap on rent increases.)

The test of her mettle will be whether Fagan, like Richardson and Clarno, can rise above partisan considerations and prove independent from the public employee unions who drafted her as a late replacement for former state Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) in this race and furnished the majority of her funding. Fagan also received a sizable donation ($50,000) from Gov. Kate Brown. That may be cause for concern, in that the job of secretary of state includes auditing state agencies run by the governor.

We expect Fagan’s political ambitions won’t end with this office, but her integrity will be measured by how well 10

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she performs that aspect of the job.

In this contest, we endorse her wholeheartedly— because she does the same for vote by mail.

Fagan’s most awkward moment on Zoom: Her puppy chewed on a pair of her underpants in the laundry basket behind her.

Oregon Treasurer Tobias Read (D)

The state treasurer is Oregon’s lowest-key statewide office, but the job is more than bean counting. Instead, the office is tasked with ensuring Oregon stays solvent.

The treasurer oversees the state’s cash management, including debt issuance and borrowing, and serves as one of five members of the Oregon Investment Council and one of three members of the State Land Board.

Incumbent Tobias Read, 45, served five terms in the Oregon House, representing Beaverton before winning this office in 2016. Read is not particularly partisan, appropriate for the most technocratic of statewide elected positions. (Ted Wheeler seemed far more comfortable in this role than he has as Portland mayor.) On Read’s watch, the Oregon Investment Council has continued to excel at investing the state’s more than $100 billion in pension and other funds. Read helped solve a messy disposition of the Elliott State Forest. After he joined, the Land Board voided an ill-considered sale and began transferring the property to Oregon State University’s School of Forestry instead. Read has also implemented two ideas begun by his predecessor, Wheeler: bringing some investment functions in-house that the state previously paid big money to let Wall Street handle (saving more than $100 million a year) and implementing the nation’s first state-sponsored retirement savings programs for workers who previously had no access to such programs (those workers have saved $70 million so far).

Republican Jeff Gudman, 66, an investor who served two terms on the Lake Oswego City Council, is challenging Read, as he did in 2016, losing then by just a couple of percentage points.

Gudman has highlighted earlier reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting that showed Read and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum have taken big contributions from class action law firms seeking to represent the state in securities litigation. Out-of-state law firms who want to represent Oregon contribute to elected officials here. It’s unseemly but not disqualifying—and Gudman presents no evidence Read is corrupt. For his part, Read says he is walled off from the process of choosing who represents the state.

Gudman also knocks Read for not doing more to cut the state’s unfunded pension liability, now about $25 billion. That’s a stretch. Read is doing what the treasurer is supposed to do: earn strong returns on pension investments. If there are benefit cuts or other decisions to be made about the liability, that’s the role of the governor and the Legislature.

Gudman is a solid candidate, but there’s no reason to believe he’d be better than Read, particularly given the treasurer’s strong relationships in Salem. As Wheeler learned when lawmakers consistently frustrated his agenda, those relationships are crucial. Also running: Michael

Marsh, a retired maintenance worker who has the Constitution Party nomination but didn’t attend our interview, and Chris Henry, 56, an Oregon City truck driver who earned the nomination of the Independent, Green and Progressive parties. He’d like to establish a state bank to keep Oregonians money in Oregon hands, but Henry’s out of his league in this race.

Read’s most awkward moments on Zoom: His children, 11 and 7, are such regular Zoom bombers he’s ceased noticing their intrusions into his calls.

OREGON SENATE Oregon Senate District 14 (Beaverton, Aloha) Kate Lieber (D)

Democratic Sen. Mark Hass held this seat f o r 1 2 y e a r s, until he ran for Oregon secretary of state in the 2020 primary, narrowly losing the party nomination to his colleague, Sen. Shemia Fagan. We’re sorry to lose Hass, a sensible and erudite lawmaker, but we’re enthusiastic about the candidate Democrats found to replace him in a district that spans Washington County from Beaverton to Aloha, including the economic engine that is Nike.

Kate Lieber, 54, is a former Multnomah County prosecutor who now teaches criminal justice at Portland Community College and chairs the board of Transition Projects, a nonprofit that helps houseless people find and keep apartments. She also chaired the state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board. That’s quite the résumé for a firsttime candidate—and Lieber is one of the more impressive entrants we’ve met this year.

Lieber’s enthusiasm (she calls herself a “teacher at heart”) and legal expertise are much-needed qualities in the dreary state Senate, a place where liberal dreams go to die. Having grown up gay in Indiana in the 1980s, Lieber learned how to confront people who had different opinions. Lieber says the GOP walkout during cap-and-trade negotiations inspired her to run for this seat. If elected, she plans to introduce legislation that will help people with a criminal history get access to housing. As a former prosecutor, she’ll have the moral authority to make that case.

Lieber’s BS detector was pinging throughout her endorsement interview alongside Republican challenger Harmony Mulkey, a 40-year-old mom with a background as a mental health therapist and case manager. Mulkey emerged from Oregon’s “medical freedom” movement, a euphemism for vaccine skeptics. Mulkey doesn’t believe in requiring childhood vaccinations. In fact, she thinks the way out of the COVID-19 pandemic is through developing “herd immunity”—that is, getting so many people infected that the disease fades away. In our interview, Lieber called this a reckless approach to public health that would lead to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

This race offers an unusually stark choice: an enormously qualified candidate against one who’s actively dangerous. Go with Lieber.

Lieber’s most awkward moment on Zoom: Not realizing she was unmuted, she yelled at her new puppy for peeing on the carpet. Other people on the call didn’t know she had a puppy and assumed Lieber was yelling at her teenage son. Lieber assures us her teenage son does not pee on the carpet.

Oregon Senate District 25 (Gresham, Troutdale, Fairview) Chris Gorsek (D)

State Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson (D-Gresham) is retiring from this seat after 20 years in the Capitol. Her district has significantly greater needs—in terms of economic assistance and basic infrastructure such as sidewalks— than the parts of Multnomah County west of Interstate 205.

State Rep. Chris Gorsek (D-Troutdale), who has represented half of District 25 in the Oregon House for the past four sessions, is more likely to win attention and resources for the district than his GOP opponent, restaurant owner Justin Hwang.

Gorsek, 62, a former Portland cop who teaches geography and criminal justice at Mount Hood Community College and Portland State University, wants to focus on reducing poverty in the district. Another of his priorities: providing better transit options.

He’s passed some useful legislation in the House: a bill requiring that police record all interviews with minors to protect their rights and another preventing landlords from raising rent in the first year of a month-to-month tenancy. He’s been willing to buck his caucus, railing against a Democratic bill that would allow new development in tsunami zones, for instance, and being one of only seven Democrats to vote against a leadership-sponsored bill that cut retirement benefits in 2019.

Hwang, 35, who emigrated from Korea, had built an impressive empire of nearly 30 restaurants prior to COVID -19 devastating his industry. He’s independent enough to distance himself from President Donald Trump—a risk for GOP candidates—but short on specifics about what he would do for his constituents and how, as a member of a party deep in the minority, he would deliver.

We hope he’ll stay involved in civic life and continue building the relationships that will help him become a stronger candidate.

Gorsek’s most awkward moments on Zoom: Often when he’s in the middle of a call, his German Shepherd will bark at squirrels he sees out the window.

OREGON HOUSE Oregon House District 26 (Wilsonville) Courtney Neron (D)

Courtney Neron, 41, a former public schoolteacher, was elected two years ago in a surprise upset of Republican incumbent Rich Vial. There was no clearer beneficiary of the 2018 blue wave that swept the Portland suburbs, including this district of tall fir trees and car dealerships.

Neron is an unexpected legislator and a novice at politics. Her early efforts in the Legislature were uncontroversial stuff: In 2020, she passed a bipartisan bill to help kids who’ve suffered concussions transition back to school.

(The bill passed before Republicans walked out to halt the session.) In conversation with WW, Neron emphasized her willingness to increase taxes to fund schools, something the Democrats already did last year.

Neron doesn’t dazzle anyone with her independent thinking, and her scores in our biennial ranking of legislators placed her at the bottom, but she’s well-intentioned and eager to find solutions. Her opponent, like so many Republicans these days, was AWOL when it came time for an endorsement decision. Peggy Stevens, a retired property manager, is running chiefly on a platform of lower taxes, but doesn’t offer any new ideas in her Voter’s Pamphlet statements.

Neron’s most awkward moment on Zoom: When she had just been introduced to speak at a Zoom meeting, she hit the leave button instead of the button to unmute. (In her defense, both buttons were red.)

Oregon House District 27 (Beaverton) Sheri Schouten (D)

People tend to overlook Sheri Schouten. A retired public health nurse representing points south of Tualatin Valley Highway, Schouten, 67, keeps a low profile in the Capitol and can’t boast passing many prominent bills. (Salem insiders rated her as “bad” in our biennial rankings, but mostly damned her with faint praise.) She did successfully beef up the state’s drug take-back programs, and her values match those of her constituents.

The same cannot be said for her challenger, Sandra Nelson, who is running on both the Republican and Libertarian tickets. Nelson, a reading consultant and teacher, also professes to be a member of Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, one of the most conservative women’s groups in the country. She opposes same-sex marriage and abortions in all circumstances. She is, in short, a cheerful person who would suitably represent the Beaverton of 1955.

Stick with Schouten.

Schouten’s most awkward moment on Zoom: She tried to sneak a bite of a plum during a meeting—and it burst.

Oregon House District 28 (Aloha) WLnsvey Campos (D)

Rep. Jeff Barker, a former Portland cop and police union leader, has been one of the most conservative Democrats in the House for the past decade.

He’s served as an independent voice of reason—and a check on the utopian impulses of more progressive colleagues. If Dems wanted to pass criminal justice reforms, they had to persuade Barker the plans would work. More districts should have the good fortune of this one in suburban Washington County, represented by someone this honest and honorable.

He is retiring this year, and WW recommends voters replace the 77-year-old white guy with a 24-year-old woman of color—a state representative who would be one of the most left-leaning in the House.

WLnsvey Campos, 24, was poor enough as a kid that her family lived in a hotel for a time, and she works for a social service agency aiding homeless people. Both her life and work experience drive her to change the state for those who most need an advocate in Salem.

She says she’ll work to eliminate the ways landlords can evict tenants without cause and champion climate solutions to transportation, including not expanding single-occupancy car lanes. She’ll have a lot to learn in Salem if she is to succeed at either of those aims, but we recommend voters send her on that mission. (Daniel Martin, her Republican opponent, did not join WW for an interview.)

Campos’ most awkward moment on Zoom: She forgot to turn off her camera when she got up to get a snack—and showed off the bright yellow shorts she wore with her blazer.

Oregon House District 29 (Hillsboro) Susan McLain (D)

McLain, 71, serves a district covering the farther western stretch of the Portland metro region. So it’s apt that she breaks from her party orthodoxy by advocating for farmers who live within sight of the Coastal Range. She crafted a 2019 bill that allowed more ditch-digging on farmland; as drab as that sounds, it was something Gov. Kate Brown nearly vetoed until McLain hashed out a compromise. McLain has worked in school classrooms and at Metro—little wonder she’s good at explaining abstract concepts—and has developed a specialty in transportation technology, including ride-hailing apps. If Oregon gets self-driving cars after the pandemic, expect McLain to be making the rules.

We don’t always agree with McLain—on highway projects, she’s far more enthusiastic than we are—but we find her a good foil. No such luck with Republican nominee Dale Fishback, who didn’t join us for an interview. A 22-year employee of the Tualatin Valley Water District, Fishback doesn’t make much of a case in his platform that he’d constitute a practical change from McLain.

McLain’s most awkward moment on Zoom: She rose at 6 am to chair a bi-state bridge committee meeting and lost internet access. “I had squirrels out there, basically chewing my cables.”

Oregon House District 33 (Northwest Portland) Maxine Dexter (D)

Everyone has had a difficult 2020, but few juggled as many new tasks as Dr. Maxine Dexter.

In May, as Dexter was running for the Democratic Party nomination for the s e a t R e p. M i t c h Greenlick held for 17 years, Greenlick died. Dexter was appointed to the seat—which meant she spent the summer considering statewide police reforms while also treating COVID patients in the intensive care units at two Portland-area hospitals.

As the nation gets closer to implementing a COVID-19 vaccine, and as we approach what epidemiologists expect will be a “second wave” of the virus in late fall and winter, the Legislature could use someone with Dexter’s skill set.

As a pulmonary and critical-care physician, her expertise could help craft legislation surrounding vaccinations, mask mandates and how to reopen the state—or close it down again should cases spike. Having treated COVID-19 patients—and watched some of them die, frightened and alone—Dexter brings a perspective few of her colleagues in Salem have.

No shock that Dexter’s first priority next session is health care reform: She wants to get rid of the fee-for-service system, ensure a Medicaid option for people on public health insurance, and integrate public health into the state’s care-delivery system.

Dexter’s opponent, Dick Courter, is a professional forest consultant who’s lived in this district since 1978.

Courter was a pleasant surprise: a moderate, reasonable Republican who wants to focus on the economic recovery of the region, particularly places devastated by the September wildfires. He’s a refreshing throwback to an Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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era when Republicans just wanted fewer tax hikes, not a police state. (We also loved his Zoom background: a photo of Courter standing with arms spread wide in front of a massive redwood.) We hope he finds a spot in Oregon politics, but it’s hard to compare to a candidate of Dexter’s caliber.

Dexter’s most awkward moment on Zoom: During her first Health Care Committee meeting, her computer’s battery was dying and she didn’t want to go fetch a charger.

Her husband brought the cable over, but he was wearing sweat-soaked clothes from a workout—in front of Dexter’s legislative colleagues. “That was horrifying,” she says.

secure Shemia Fagan the Democratic nomination for secretary of state “disturbing.” In a caucus that needs an injection of brains, gravitas and independence, Reynolds will be a welcome addition. She’s worked on gun control as a volunteer and called out Gov. Kate Brown’s timidity on COVID-19 as a candidate. In a state where health care spending consumes 27% of the budget, Oregonians desperately need more medical industry expertise in the Capitol.

Reynolds’ most awkward moment on Zoom: She failed to mute herself during choir practice. “I was kind of rocking out to a gospel song. I was particularly exuberant,” Reynolds says. “I don’t have a great voice.”

Oregon House District 35 (Tigard) Dacia Grayber (D)

Oregon House District 37 (West Linn) Rachel Prusak (D)

This seat is currently held by Rep. Margaret Doherty, who is retiring this year after a decade of service. The race to replace her has been surprisingly placid—perhaps because the Democratic nominee is so well suited to the job and to this era.

A firefighter and paramedic who has been on the front lines of both pandemic and forest fires, Dacia Grayber, 45, has faced head on the crises of this year.

She’ll be a voice for preparing for the next calamities— including the Big One, the looming Cascadian Subduction Zone earthquake that will make 2020 look like a Disney cartoon. She demands an overhaul of the statewide emergency alert system as well as funding the early warning system for earthquakes (she says it should be a priority even in the midst of an economic recession). She also has a vision for addressing the economic disparities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

Grayber faces nominal opposition from a perennial candidate, Bob Niemeyer, 66 an inventor and engineer who describes himself as “definitely an outsider” in the Voters’ Pamphlet.

Grayber’s most awkward moment on Zoom: She offered three, but our favorite was her border collie throwing a bone on the concrete floor of her porch—very loudly.

Oregon House District 36 (Northwest Portland) Lisa Reynolds (D)

L e t ’s s t a r t b y applauding James Ball, the Republican nominee in this district, for running.

Ball, 35, is an Army veteran and former financial analyst at Intel, and now owns a garage door company. He’s moderate, calm, rational and willing to acknowledge his party is to blame for the dismal place it finds itself in Oregon: in a deep minority that threatens to grow even deeper. “I’m frustrated and angry that we picked a demagogue to lead our party,” Ball says of President Donald Trump. In a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1, being pro-choice and generally sensible isn’t enough to win—but we hope Ball will find a voice in his party.

He’s also, it must be said, facing an unusually strong Democratic opponent, Dr. Lisa Reynolds, a pediatrician.

Reynolds is smart and plain-spoken—honest enough to say that she found the tactics public employees used to 12

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Rachel Prusak wasn’t supposed to beat Julie Parrish. For eight years, Parrish, an iconoclastic and ebullient Republican entrepreneur, was the GOP leader of Portland’s southeast suburbs. Then came the blue wave of 2018—and Prusak unseated Parrish in a surprise that now looks like a herald of Democratic reign across the metro area.

Prusak, 44, a hospital nurse, was an unknown quantity when she arrived in Salem. She quickly impressed people as she championed vaccines and gun safety. In WW’s biannual rating of legislators, one lobbyist described her as the “best first-termer.”

During the pandemic, Prusak demonstrated her independence: With the help of a few colleagues, she slowed a drive for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to sanction the sale of mixed drinks to go. That’s something many Portland bar owners desperately wanted amid COVID-19 shutdowns, but Prusak warned that a state with record rates of addiction shouldn’t rush approval for booze to go.

It didn’t suit the interests of many in Portland delegation, but the battle shows her independent spirit and the reason Oregon needs health professionals in office.

Two years ago, when Prusak defeated Parrish, we didn’t endorse her because she didn’t make a strong enough case for a change. And now her challenger, Kelly Sloop, 57, must clear the same high bar. Sloop didn’t. The pharmacist from West Linn couldn’t point to specific failings by Prusak, instead arguing that the state needed a check on Democratic control. That’s accurate, but insufficient.

Sloop also advocated for reopening businesses more rapidly amid a pandemic. We are reluctant to endorse anyone who is not fully respectful of the dangers of COVID-19.

Vote Prusak. She’s fast proven herself an independent and effective leader.

Prusak’s most awkward moments on Zoom: “One of my many dogs is aging and aging fast and has lost control of her bowels and bladder and loves to sit next to me. So there have been moments when I am vice chairing the Health Care Committee or chairing the universal access to primary care work group, and let’s just say I have to push through.”

Oregon House District 38 (Lake Oswego) Andrea Salinas (D)

Salinas, 50, had a remarkable first three years in the Legislature. After being appointed in 2017 to fill a seat vacated

by Rep. Ann Lininger (D -Lake Oswego), the onetime congressional staffer and contract lobbyist found herself promoted in her first year to chair the House Health Care Committee. But the neophyte lawmaker learned that House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) didn’t just offer gifts—she made demands. Salinas was one of the

swing votes pulled into a back room by Kotek last year and ordered to support highly contentious public pension cuts as part of a deal to pass new taxes to fund schools. “I wish I had said no,” she says now.

But that’s life in the big leagues—and even unions smarting from those cuts are backing her now. Rightly so: Salinas is among the smartest lawmakers on the House floor and refreshingly candid about what is and isn’t working in a state government controlled by her party.

She describes police treatment of minority communities as “an abysmal failure”—strong language in a city with the reactionary tendencies of Lake Oswego—and says both corporate and union dollars carry too much sway with the Democratic Party. If Ballot Measure 107 passes, allowing lawmakers to set statewide campaign spending limits, her leadership will be needed to force Democrats into action.

Her Republican opponent is Patrick Castles, an author who wants more police officers at schools, fewer environmental restrictions on trucking, and a rule that state employees can’t donate to campaigns. He would not be an improvement over one of the most promising lawmakers in the state.

Salinas’ most awkward moment on Zoom: Zoom bombers. “A bunch of kids figured out how to sign up for my town hall and just started using profanity. Thankfully, no pictures showed up.”

Oregon House District 39 (Canby, Beavercreek) Christine Drazan (R)

House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R-Canby) is an endangered species in this state—a Republican who hails from the Portland metro area.

Drazan ran a nonprofit called the Cultural Advocacy Coalition before winning this seat in 2018. She brought with her experience as a high-level House staffer in the 1990s, when the GOP controlled the lower chamber. That and a strong fundraising ability rocketed her to the top of her caucus in her first term. She’s brought more energy to the position than her predecessor, then-state Rep. Carl Wilson (R- Grants Pass), although we’re not sure that using some of that energy in a walkout in the short session earlier this year over a climate bill was the right thing to do.

Oregon needs more than one party. Drazan, who declined to speak with WW, is a savvy leader and the best chance her caucus has to regain relevance. She’s raised almost 50 times more money than her Democratic opponent, newcomer Tessah Danel, a Clackamas County water commissioner, so Drazan will get another chance to lead.

Oregon House District 40 (Oregon City, Gladstone) Mark Meek (D)

The first time Mark Meek ran for this seat in 2016, we beat him up pretty hard for evasive answers about a union-backed initiative. We feared that Meek, an Air Force veteran who makes his living as a real estate agent and property manager, lacked independence. He’s proven us wrong. In his first session, Meek, 56, voted against the real estate interests who funded his campaign. In 2019, he voted against his caucus leadership’s push to gut Oregon’s death penalty. Meek says there were two reasons: One of the men murdered by Jeremy Christian in the infamous 2017 MAX train stabbings was a fellow parishioner at Meek’s church, and the Democrats’ sneaky, retroactive nullification of potential death penalty charges didn’t sit well with Meek.

We’ll take his long record of civic involvement in his community—he’s served on several committees, coached sports and volunteered in numerous roles—over his opponent, Republican Josh Howard, a 33-year-old management consultant. Howard, who ran for another House seat four years ago, is also a veteran: He parlayed four years in the Navy into a degree at Oregon State University and an MBA from Arizona State. The father of two young children, Howard doesn’t yet have Meek’s level of civic involvement, but we hope he’ll stay involved in a party that needs more people of his caliber. He’s unafraid to criticize President Donald Trump’s debt-fueled economic policies and is rational in his outlook.

Meek’s most awkward moments on Zoom: Meek says it’s impossible to know when his face will appear on camera during legislative meetings, so he’s gotten caught eating and drinking coffee on calls.

Oregon House District 41 (Milwaukie, Oak Grove, parts of Southeast Portland) Karin Power (D)

Power, a 37-yearold lawyer for the environmental nonprofit Freshwater Trust, is seeking her third term in the House. Since her election in 2017, Power has consistently advocated for working parents. In 2019, she led the passage of a bill that prevents an employer from denying job opportunities because of a worker’s pregnancy status, childbirth or related medical conditions. Power also updated breastfeeding laws so that employees are guaranteed rest periods to

pump during a child’s first 18 months.

That’s a personal issue for her, since she has two small children. She plans to keep championing it: If reelected, Power wants to fix what she calls “child care deserts” in the state, meaning places where there aren’t enough day care slots for children who need them. She’s working across the aisle on that issue with her colleague Rep. Jack Zika (R-Redmond).

Power also wants to strengthen the series of police reform bills that passed in the Legislature in June; she described the bills as “low-hanging fruit.” Power says there needs to be more transparency around officer misconduct records, and that many of her constituents have told her tear gas should be banned completely (currently, police can use tear gas if they declare a riot prior to deploying the chemical agent and warn the crowd they are about to disperse it). In our biennial survey of metro-area lawmakers, Power was rated “excellent”—colleagues and lobbyists described her a “no bullshit” legislator who demonstrated a knack for bipartisanship.

Power’s opponent, Michael Newgard, is an Army veteran and rescue helicopter pilot with the Oregon National Guard. Newgard doesn’t appear to be making a serious challenge to Power.

Power’s most memorable moments on Zoom: Normalizing breastfeeding while on back-to-back calls all day.

(Power has an 8-week-old son.)

Oregon House District 44 (North Portland) Tina Kotek (D)

Nobody in Oregon history has served as long as House speaker as Tina Kotek.

Since she was elected in 2006—the election in which Democrats took control of the House—Kotek, 54, has grown in stature and accomplishment each session. She became speaker in 2013, the first openly lesbian speaker in the country. Known for her focus and efficiency, she has shepherded major progressive legislation, including a large minimum wage increase, family medical leave, a massive transportation funding package in 2017, and last year, the Student Success Act, which will add a billion dollars of new funding for schools. She personally championed unprecedented zoning reforms in the 2019 session, which will spur the construction of more housing in neighborhoods that have long shunned new neighbors.

Kotek says she never expected to stick around this long.

“I’m not a lifer, I’m a policy person,” she says. “There’s still more good policy to do.” We sometimes worry that she and her caucus are to beholden to the public employee unions who fund their campaigns and benefit from their legislation, and also fret that like Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem), who has held power even longer, Kotek may be constricting the growth of her colleagues by staying in place. But she’s very good at her job, and it’s not clear whether she’s burning to replace Gov. Kate Brown in 2022 or wait for either U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer or U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden to retire.

Kotek’s Republican opponent, Margo Logan, a child care consultant, did not attend our endorsement interview but distinguished herself by including in her Voters’ Pamphlet statement the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” No go.

Kotek’s most awkward moment on Zoom: She says colleagues are growing weary of her home décor, which includes a Wonder Woman poster. “People now realize how geeky I am.”

Oregon House District 47 (East Portland) Ashton Simpson (Working Families Party)

It’s extraordinarily rare for a third-party candidate to have a shot at unseating an incumbent.

And yet East Portland needs to help Ashton Simpson do just that.

Rep. Diego Hernandez (D -East Portland) has been an effective voice for immigrants and his district in the House. But earlier this year, his former romantic partner filed and then withdrew a request for a restraining order.

Then, several other women at the Capitol filed harassment complaints against Hernandez, 32, with the Legislature’s HR office. (The accusations surfaced after the Democratic primary was underway, so he faced no competition in May.) House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) urged Hernandez to resign. He declined and denies all the allegations.

While some of his colleagues remain at his side, a group of politically active women have formed a committee to oppose him. Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, who held this seat before Hernandez, is endorsing Simpson, as are two veteran House Dems, Reps.

Carla Piluso (Gresham) and Rob Nosse (Portland). That is as good an indication as any that he should relinquish the seat.

So Simpson stepped in with a bid to remove him. (The two also face the Republican nominee, Ryan Gardner, a small business owner who did not join our endorsement interview.) Simpson, 35, who has never run for office before, has nonetheless demonstrated a commitment to his community. The retired Air Force veteran went to Portland State, now works at the Rockwood Initiative, a neighborhood renewal nonprofit, as community asset director, and has served on transportation advisory groups for the city and Metro.

Simpson’s top priority? Helping tenants who don’t have a way to make up the rent they missed while COVID19 ate their paychecks. He would extend the eviction moratorium and provide further rent subsidies to the newly unemployed.

Simpson isn’t a dramatic shift from the principles Hernandez has championed. He just argues the district needs a leader above reproach. We agree.

Simpson’s most awkward moments on Zoom: His son, age 8, “popping in.”

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Oregon House District 49 Zach Hudson (D)

Rep. Chris Gorsek (D-Troutdale) is vacating his seat at the gateway to the Columbia River Gorge to run for state S e n a t e . Fo r the first time in seven years, t h i s d i st r i c t gets an open race.

The Democratic nominee is Zach Hudson, 41, who teaches special ed math at Reynolds High School and has been a member of the Troutdale City Council since 2017. Hudson is mellow and wonky—and we liked his approach to pandemic recovery, which balances a need for renewed economic activity with an acknowledgment that the virus is still virulent.

Little of his platform is a marked departure from Democratic orthodoxy (he wants someone other than police to respond to mental health crises, but who doesn’t?), yet we found him thoughtful and careful in describing how he would weigh decisions.

The Republican candidate is 69-year-old Greg Johnson, a retired tool designer for Boeing and a volunteer member of the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office Citizen Patrol.

Johnson, a Troutdale resident since 1997, told WW he felt compelled to run because he recognized a need to support his community after the district’s Republican nominee, Joe Demers, dropped out after winning the primary. We found Johnson charming, but he had few specific policy ideas.

Hudson’s most awkward moment on Zoom: “We have two cats. One of these cats is offended by the idea that any door in the house should be closed, because she needs to go where she needs to go.” During an introduce-yourself-type of event with the Oregon Capitol Club, when it was Hudson’s turn to speak for three minutes, the cat urgently needed to leave. “So I had a background chorus of meows letting the Capitol Club know how I wasn’t paying attention to my cat.”

Oregon House District 50 (Gresham) Ricki Ruiz (D)

Rep. Carla Piluso (D- Gresham), the onetime Gresham police chief, is leaving the Legislature after three terms.

She’s endorsed Ricki Ruiz to replace her, and she’s right.

Ruiz, 26, does unglamorous civic work that places him in daily contact with the people suffering most in a pandemic. He’s the city of Gresham’s community services coordinator, which entails such tasks as finding aid for people who can’t pay their electric bills. He also serves on the Reynolds School Board and co-founded the Rockwood Initiative, a free sports league for kids in the diverse, low-income neighborhoods where Portland meets Gresham. With Rep. Diego Hernandez (D-East Portland) embroiled in scandal, Ruiz will provide energetic Latinx leadership in East County—he’s already thinking about how to help people who have no way to pay rent when the state’s eviction moratorium expires.

His GOP opponent is Amelia Salvador, a first-generation Filipino American commercial real estate broker.

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Like many of the Republicans we spoke to this cycle, she’s understandably frustrated by high taxes and pandemic shutdowns. Salvador says she jumped into politics because she was outraged by a state ban on plastic straws in restaurants. This is, we think, not the most pressing concern faced by her district. Ruiz gets the nod.

Ruiz’s most awkward moments on Zoom: His corgi-chihuahua mix, Rocky Ruiz, has a habit of leaping onto his face.

Oregon House District 51 (Clackamas, Happy Valley) Janelle Bynum (D)

After two sessions in Salem, R e p. Ja n e l l e Bynum appears more comfortable expressing her opinions on controversial matters.

A small business owner—she and her husband own a handful of McDonald’s franchises—Bynum, 45, is deeply engaged in the social and criminal justice issues the Legislature’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color Caucus is tackling, and is a moderate voice on pocketbook issues.

She played a big part in the slate of criminal justice reforms lawmakers passed earlier this year: restrictions on tear gas and chokeholds, and a fresh look at the arbitration process that has made it very difficult to fire police officers. She wants to do more with a database of cops found to have used excessive force or violated other rules, and to continue to chip away at arbitration.

Bynum is also willing to buck her caucus leadership.

She and others in the BIPOC Caucus opposed prison closure, saying Portland lawmakers were insufficiently concerned about the financial impacts on rural Oregon.

In an endorsement interview that her opponents, Republican Jane Hays, a school administrator, and Libertarian Donald Crawford, a self-employed educational publisher, did not attend, the sometimes cautious Bynum staked out clear positions on two hot-button issues: the Metro transportation measure and the Portland mayor’s race.

Although Metro has gone to great lengths to emphasize equity in its spending plan, Bynum is a solid no, observing that traffic may not return to pre-COVID -19 patterns and a payroll tax could slow economic recovery. As for the mayor’s race, Bynum rejected challenger Sarah Iannarone, who, like Bynum, has been highly critical of Portland police.

Bynum’s most memorable moment on Zoom: Bynum’s been on a ton of legislative and campaign calls, but a family gathering sticks most in her mind: A relative’s wig wasn’t quite in position when the call started.

Oregon House District 52 (Hood River, Cascade Locks) Anna Williams (D)

This vast district contains the most majestic scenery in Oregon: all of Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge.

Yet for the past two cycles, it has been a contest between candidates who live five blocks from each other in Hood River: Rep. Anna Williams and Jeff Helfrich.

It’s their new neighbors that have determined their political fortunes. District 52 was once a safely Republican spot, where Rep. Mark Johnson (R-Hood River) faced little threat for three terms. Helfrich, 52, a retired Portland police sergeant, was appointed to the seat after Johnson left for a lobbying gig in 2017—and was promptly defeated in 2018 by Williams, 40, who rode the demographic shift of urban liberals moving to Hood River.

Helfrich would like the seat back, and made about as good a case as we heard from a Republican this cycle: He’s moderate, wants to bring more green energy jobs to the Gorge and is rightly outraged by the bumbling within the Oregon Employment Department. Helfrich raises a useful voice in state politics. If the incumbent were shaky, we’d endorse him.

She isn’t. Williams, a college adviser with a background as a social worker, has proven a sharp and caring lawmaker. She landed in the middle of the pack in our ranking of metro-area legislators last year but can already boast passing a signature bill: a 2019 expansion of the Long-Term Care Ombudman’s Office. That looks awfully prescient in the pandemic: It means Oregon’s most medically vulnerable get more advocacy from the state. She also tempered Democrats’ most ambitious bills, including zoning reforms and a carbon cap, so rural towns get more leeway and resources to comply. With Republicans preferring walkouts to compromise, Williams is providing a necessary check on her own party. She deserves to win this rematch.

Williams’ most memorable moment on Zoom: She used the House Party app to attend a four-hour birthday party and says it was one of her favorite nights this year.

PORTLAND CITY HALL Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler

No endorsement decision for the November ballot generated more debate here at WW than the choice between the incumbent mayor, Ted Wheeler, and challenger Sarah Iannarone.

Wheeler came in first in the May primary, but because he did not win more than half the votes, he was forced into a runoff this November with Iannarone. In the past five months, his political fortunes have resembled a blob of Silly Putty sliding down a wall, at an accelerating pace.

Most of his problem: a wildly inconsistent response to the nightly protests touched off by the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd on May 25.

Wheeler, 58, who is also the police commissioner, has been reactive, isolated and indecisive. As a consequence, he has been closely linked to the Portland Police Bureau’s riot cops, who have been caught on video ambushing and battering protesters (and the press). Meanwhile, he’s incurred the wrath of downtown business owners who think he’s acted too timidly—both in finding a way to end the protests and stemming the expansion of homeless camps.

That’s why, having beaten Iannarone by 25 points in the primary, Wheeler now faces the very real prospect of losing to her.

Iannarone, 47, an urban policy wonk and former small business owner who ran against Wheeler in 2016 and finished third, has made the most of Wheeler’s struggles, pummeling him on social media and running a vigorous campaign that has tapped into the discontent many Portlanders feel.

Their respective résumés could hardly be more different. Wheeler, a graduate of Stanford, Columbia and Harvard, is the heir to a multigenerational timber fortune who served as Multnomah County chair for four years, followed by six years as state treasurer. Iannarone, who has a bachelor’s degree from Portland State University, served on the Mt. Scott-Arleta Neighborhood Association, led an effort to fix up a surplus city property there, and for a decade worked at First Stop Portland, a nonprofit that marketed the region’s planning and transportation achievements. She’s never held office or led an organization of any size, let alone one comparable to the city of Portland, which has a $5.6 billion all-funds budget and 7,500 employees. Earlier in this decade, she and her then-restaurateur husband didn’t pay state income taxes for four years.

But campaigns are not run on paper. Iannarone is razor sharp, a good communicator, and adept at contrasting her scrappy, community-oriented style to Wheeler’s awkward demeanor.

Iannarone has sketched out a sweeping vision of City Hall in which every citizen gets a say—in budgeting, policy and process—and she’d immediately hand over responsibility for the city’s largest general fund bureau, the police, to Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.

Teressa Raiford, the founder of Don’t Shoot Portland and a longtime Black Lives Matter activist, finished third in May. But some activists are running a write-in campaign for Raiford, 50, arguing she best represents the energy of the protest movement and can directly advocate for people of color. Raiford’s critique of the Police Bureau

is necessary, but she has not demonstrated the expertise required for this job.

Wheeler has the technocratic soul of a city manager rather than the empathic knack of a skilled retail politician and has at times engaged in self-pity.

At the same time, Wheeler has also demonstrated a deep understanding of the ways in which this complicated city functions, and his term in office has generated real progress. He fixed structural problems with the Portland Clean Energy Fund and ushered across the finish line the residential infill project, an ambitious and controversial plan to place fourplexes amid single-family homes and, in so doing, increase housing density and affordability. He’s also hired two Black police chiefs and built a mostly solid alliance with Hardesty, at least until he refused to cede oversight of the Police Bureau to her. He’s bird-dogged the city’s spending on affordable housing and structured a complex, innovative deal to redevelop a large swath of downtown surrounding the former post office.

Wheeler’s shortcoming—and it’s a big one—has been his inability to find the right response to the protests. Some of us on WW’s editorial board believe Wheeler abandoned ship in a fog of tear gas—a failing that’s more severe because he pledged four years ago to make police reform a top priority. Like many politicians in 2020, he was presented with the crisis he was least personally equipped to handle, with predictably dire results.

While we understand the desire to toss out the incumbent, we’re not ready to do that. For one thing, Iannarone leaves us with serious doubts. She has repeatedly inflated her academic credentials in the Voters’ Pamphlet. And her combative social media presence displays both hostility and a lack of discipline.

Leaders govern in the same way they campaign. And for much of four years, Iannarone has pilloried anyone who disagrees with her. She has too often sought the applause of her fans by excoriating and embarrassing potential allies.

That matters because if Iannarone wins, she would have to negotiate with people she has dismissed: business owners frustrated by looting and homeless camps; police officers who want more job security, not less; and the vast majority of Portlanders, who aren’t on Twitter and don’t go to protests.

In addition, it’s worth considering the coming makeup of the Portland City Council. It will consist of Hardesty, elected in 2018; Commissioner Dan Ryan, elected in August; Carmen Rubio, who takes office in January; and, very likely, according to polls, newcomer Mingus Mapps.

It could be one of the most inexperienced council lineups in Portland history, at a time when the city will face extraordinary management challenges. Placing an untested council in the hands of a mayor with Iannarone’s limited track record is an enormous risk.

Wheeler has relationships with business and labor— pillars of this city that will need all the help they can get digging out of Great Depression-sized job losses. A mayor needs such relationships. Iannarone hasn’t shown much ability—or inclination—to build them.

The next mayor faces a daunting challenge. Not since 1957, when Robert F. Kennedy grilled Portland mobsters about corruption, has this city suffered such damaging blows to its reputation as it has in 2020. Its downtown storefronts are shuttered. Its police force has disgraced itself. The president and his fascist fanboys have picked our streets for showdowns. Citizens who are not furious

are weary and despondent.

The candidate whom voters choose as mayor in three weeks must summon Portland’s historic virtues—creativity, pluck and cooperation—to rebuild the city. We think Wheeler is more likely to do that.

Wheeler’s most awkward moment on Zoom: He got caught playing the ukulele—badly—on a staff call. “I thought I was muted,” he says.

Portland City Council, Position 4 Chloe Eudaly

When Chloe Eudaly defeated incumbent Commissioner Steve Novick in 2016, it was an extraordinary upset.

She ushered out a longtime political insider on a platform that promised to shift power from landlords to tenants in the middle of a rash of rent hikes and residential evictions.

Stylistically, Eudaly, 50, has mirrored her predecessor.

Like Novick, she can be insular, thin-skinned and uninterested in sitting down with those who disagree with her.

But Eudaly, a former independent bookstore owner, has earned our endorsement because she has accomplished quite a bit in four years, most of which we agree with, by focusing city policies on aiding those who can’t afford to buy a home and who are more likely to clean offices in the city than sit in their boardrooms.

She forced landlords to pay tenants they evict without cause, ended discriminatory renter screening practices, and pushed through street improvements that will speed up buses.

For a novice with little management experience, Eudaly proved adept at surrounding herself with capable staff.

She successfully oversaw two of the city’s key bureaus, the Portland Bureau of Transportation and the Bureau of Development Services, finding new leadership for each.

She had less success with a smaller bureau, the Office of Community & Civic Life. Mayor Ted Wheeler had asked her to fix the broken bureau and the city’s relationship with its 95 neighborhood associations.

But her efforts resulted in an avalanche of complaints from current and former bureau employees and a revolt by the neighborhood associations, which felt Eudaly wanted to get rid of them. The reaction was so strong it both stopped her reforms cold and ushered an opponent into the race: Mingus Mapps, a former employee of the bureau.

Mapps, 52, earned a Ph.D. in political science from Cornell and taught at the university level for a decade before going to work for the city. He is making his first run for office. His campaign is short on specifics: Until a week before ballots were mailed out, much of his platform still hadn’t made it onto his website. His views are clearest on the current form of city government: He thinks it should be scrapped and replaced by a larger City Council, elected by district, that would delegate bureau management to a professional city manager.

Mapps’ position on policing is less clear: He took the endorsement and $15,000 from the Portland Police Association in the May primary, yet says he doesn’t agree with Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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the police union on much of anything. His basic position is to increase civil discourse, even with his opponents.

Mapps is a good talker and, unlike Eudaly, an extrovert eager to meet with people, whatever their outlook. That’s a plus—and unlike some of the Police Bureau’s critics, we don’t think his willingness to talk to the cops union is disqualifying, Where Mapps comes up short is his lack of a burning desire to make specific changes. That’s where Eudaly has shined.

When she ran in 2016, Eudaly made it very clear if elected she’d push hard for changes that would ease renters’ pain. She has. Her relocation ordinance compensates tenants when evicted; another ordinance she passed makes it more difficult for landlords to exclude prospective tenants based on their prior history; and she worked at the state level to make rent control a reality. Eudaly delivered on her promises, held true to her principles and, as transportation commissioner, advanced her agenda to create better transit for Portlanders who take the bus—pushing through the Rose Lane Project to dedicate bus-only lanes across the city to lower commute times.

Eudaly is often her own worst enemy (that’s why she is seriously behind in this race), but we’ve never had any question about where she stands. She’s often right, never in doubt, and gets stuff done. Vote for Chloe.

Eudaly’s most awkward moments on Zoom: Trying to tend to her son and hold meetings simultaneously.

METRO AND MULTNOMAH COUNTY Metro Council, District 3 (Beaverton, Tigard, Sherwood) Gerritt Rosenthal

This year, Metro Council elections feature an exciting, momentous race that could shape transportation policy in the region for decades. But that’s in District 5 (see below).

Over in District 3, things are as sleepy as they used to be at the regional government, which runs regional parks and the zoo, collects trash and determines the boundaries of where developers can build. More recently, Metro has upped its horsepower and begun raising big money for affordable housing and homeless services.

The low-key nature of this contest is a little surprising, given that this district would be the destination for a new light rail line proposed in Metro’s $4 billion transportation measure. The district, which covers the length of the Southwest Hills from Beaverton to Sherwood, is choosing between Tom Anderson and Gerritt Rosenthal.

Anderson, 58, a real estate broker and Tigard city councilor, is the more polished candidate. He shares WW’s alarm at the never-ending blank check that would be created by Metro’s transportation tax, and we appreciated his candor in opposing the cash grab by a government he may soon join. But we remain troubled by the financial boost he’s receiving from real estate interests’ and homebuilders’ political action committees. These interests clearly want their own man in the seat, and that matters because Metro has to decide whether to let developers press farther into farmland and woods, or hold the urban growth boundary tight and require building up rather than out.

This is the issue where Rosenthal, 75, has the edge.

He’s an environmental consultant who used to handle city planning in Eugene, and he lives on the rural edge of Tualatin. Rosenthal—a progressive who tried to unseat Rep. Julie Parrish (R-West Linn) from the Legislature before it was cool—lives in a place that would be affected by changing the boundaries of development, and his experience gives him a useful perspective from which to weigh 16

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those choices. Land use is Metro’s core work, and housing density is one of Portland’s most important principles. For that reason, we pick Rosenthal.

Rosenthal’s most awkward moment on Zoom: He, too, has been Zoom bombed while chairing a meeting.

Metro Council, District 5 (Northwest, North and Northeast Portland) Chris Smith

Voters are fortunate to have two strong candidates vying to replace Councilor Sam Chase, who is stepping down after two terms.

Mary Nolan, 65, brings a diverse and impressive résumé to the race. She’s led the city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, capped a distinguished career in the Oregon House by serving as majority leader and, most recently, served as executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon. She’s smart and well-connected and brings the kind of practical toughness sometimes in short supply at Metro.

So why are we picking Chris Smith, a retired tech-industry engineer whose only previous run for office ended in a sixthplace finish for City Council in 2008?

Because he offers a clearer vision of what he wants to do on the job.

Smith, 60, has put in time in the trenches of public process: He served on key Metro transportation committees and the board of the Portland Streetcar and sits on the city of Portland’s Planning and Sustainability Commission. In the latter role, he’s been a staunch advocate for bicyclists and pedestrians and an opponent of projects that could frustrate the region’s climate goals, such as fossil fuel terminals. Smith opposed the Columbia River Crossing project a decade ago and, as a founder of No More Freeways, is battling the state’s ill-conceived plan to expand Interstate 5 through the Rose Quarter.

It’s that last role that’s especially important. Smith has been among the most consistent and outspoken critics of widening the highway in the middle of a historically African American neighborhood. His advocacy makes him both an heir to Portland’s proud tradition of opposing highway projects—dating back to the blocking of the Mount Hood Freeway, a civic victory that practically wrote modern Portland’s creation story—and someone who is seeking to rectify a more shameful history of displacing Black Portlanders in the name of progress.

For years, Smith’s dedicated opposition to the Rose Quarter project looked quixotic. But in June, the Black neighborhood nonprofit Albina Vision withdrew its support for the highway expansion. Now every elected official and office-seeker in Portland wants out—including Nolan.

But Smith was on the right side of this fight from the start.

He lacks Nolan’s political experience, but Smith is a data-driven policy expert—unafraid, and in fact eager, to challenge conventional thinking. He’s the kind of tireless citizen volunteer who adds richness and depth to our civic debate.

If Metro is to accomplish its goal of leading the region

on transportation and the environment, the agency needs somebody with Smith’s focus on these issues. He’s the better choice in this race.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge, Position 12 Adrian Brown

It’s unusual to see a November runoff for a contested j u d g e ’s s e a t .

Just as rare is a race with two candidates as promising as Adrian Brown and Rima Ghandour.

Brown spent the past 13 years working working as the civil rights coordinator of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Oregon. She was the lead attorney on a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the practices of the Portland Police Bureau. In 2014, that probe revealed an unconstitutional pattern of use of force against people with mental illness—and forced the police into a settlement that constrains their actions to this day.

Brown has received endorsements from a striking array of civil rights leaders. Most striking: Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, as well as his challenger in the primary, Ethan Knight, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Two men who agree on almost nothing around criminal justice agree on Brown’s ability to make fair decisions.

Ghandour is a founding member of the Arab American Cultural Center and former president of the Multnomah County Bar Association, where she is currently a board member. Ghandour now owns her own law firm, and she has spent the past 17 years in private practice, including as a senior counsel for Safeco Insurance and partner at a local firm, Wiles Law Group. Ghandour last worked in criminal law back in the early 2000s in Orange County, Calif., where she tried public safety cases. Ghandour, too, has received a tidal wave of endorsements, most of them a little to the left of Brown’s. (They include House Speaker Tina Kotek, Sen. James Manning (D-North Eugene), and Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center.)

Both candidates would make great judges. They have a strong sense of justice and have spent decades practicing law. But Brown has significantly more experience in state court than Ghandour. That doesn’t mean Ghandour isn’t qualified for the position—she is—but Brown’s work parsing complex investigations gives her an edge. She’s also the candidate with the most relevant experience with Portland police—which matters when so many of criminal cases currently before the Multnomah County Circuit spring directly from police clashes with demonstrators.

We believe she is better prepared to be a circuit judge in the county. Vote Brown.

Brown’s most awkward moments on Zoom: Having children and pets run around in the background during calls.

STATE MEASURES Measure 107 Allows campaign finance limits Yes

Four years ago, Portland-area campaign finance reformers passed the first limits on political contributions Oregon had seen in a decade. By a 2-to-1 margin, Multnomah County voters limited contributions to $500 for politicians seeking election to the county commission.

That vote resulted in a court battle over a 1997 Oregon Supreme Court decision that decreed free speech provisions in the Oregon Constitution also protected limitless contributions. Earlier this year, the reformers won a partial victory: The Oregon Court of Appeals said that limits were allowed in Oregon but kicked it back to the lower court to decide how the rules interplayed with federal constitutional protections.

In the meantime, advocates decided the simplest way to allow cities and counties to cap campaign spending was to enshrine that right in the state’s constitution.

Oregon is one of just five U.S. states that have no statewide limits on campaign contributions. This measure won’t change that, but it would let localities make their own rules.

WW endorsed the Multnomah County measure four years ago. And we again support the effort to limit contributions.

Money can translate into power. Perhaps no better example exists this year than in the Portland mayor’s race: In May, Mayor Ted Wheeler wasn’t bound by a cap on individual contributions, and he collected huge checks from downtown power brokers. But the general election falls after the court ruling—and Wheeler’s fundraising has floundered. Whether you think Wheeler deserves another term or not, his reversal of fortune demonstrates how limits on campaign contributions level the playing field for

new voices.

Indeed, the effort to limit the influence of monied interests is broadly popular—heck, it’s downright democratic. We expect this measure to pass handily.

The hard work is the next step: figuring out the specific caps will apply, shutting off loopholes, and figuring out the balancing act between campaign finance limits and the fact there is no constitutional way to limit independent expenditures without federal legislation or a reversal of the Citizens United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Left to politicians, nothing has happened on campaign finance reform. All the change has come at the ballot.

Hopefully, they’ll hear from voters that deciding on statewide limits in the next legislative session is the right way to go. In the meantime, vote yes.

Measure 108 Increases taxes on tobacco and vaping Yes

Oregon’s current tax on a pack of cigarettes is $1.33. This measure, a referral from the Legislature, would increase that tax by $2, bringing the state tax to $3.33 a pack, moving Oregon from way behind to slightly ahead of Washington ($3.025 per pack) and California ($2.87). The measure also taxes vaping products for the first time, tacking on 65% of the wholesale price at the retail level. And it increases the maximum tax on individual cigars from 50 cents to a dollar.

Oregon hasn’t raised cigarette taxes by a meaningful amount since 2002. In 2007, the last time lawmakers asked voters for a big increase, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris crushed the measure with their massive wallets.

It’s a sign of how much science and public opinion have changed since then that Big Tobacco didn’t even file Voters’ Pamphlet statements in opposition to this measure,

let alone try to counter the more than $13 million proponents have raised to win by virtual default. (The vaping industry hates the measure, but 93% of the $165 million the measure would raise annually would come from cigarettes, so it’s tobacco’s opposition—or lack thereof—that matters.)

Here are the basic reasons this is such a one-sided contest: Although tobacco use remains in a long-term downtrend, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable deaths in Oregon, according to state figures—more than 8,000 a year. It also saddles the state with $1.5 billion a year in costs for tobacco users. And 1 in 4 high school students vapes, putting them on their way, critics say, to a different form of nicotine addiction.

If this measure passes, 90% of the money would go to the Oregon Health Authority, which administers the Oregon Health Plan that pays medical expenses for low-income Oregonians, and 10% would go to tobacco-use cessation programs. As with any new tax, we worry lawmakers might take away funding for OHA commensurate with the new revenue. Advocates say they won’t let that happen.

Look at this as a user fee on tobacco, like a gasoline tax or even a fishing license. For far too long, the state—that means all of us—has borne the enormous costs of health care for Oregonians addicted to tobacco. This measure is a win-win: The higher prices would dampen consumption and bring the OHA badly needed revenue. Vote yes.

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Measure 109 Legalizes and regulates psilocybin therapy Yes

For nearly four years, married Beaverton therapists Sheri and Tom Eckert have sought to legalize the use of psilocybin in therapy sessions. Yes, that’s the hallucinogen derived from psychedelic mushrooms.

Some 164,000 Oregonians found the Eckerts’ idea legitimate enough to sign petitions to place it on the November ballot. That the founders of the Oregon Psilocybin Society managed this in the midst of a pandemic is a testament to how keen they are for the trip to begin.

Oregon has long been at the vanguard of sanctioning drugs. But backers are quick to note that this isn’t a legalization of shrooms. Instead, people 21 and older would be allowed to take doses of psilocybin only within licensed facilities and under the supervision of professional providers. The psilocybin program would be managed by the Oregon Health Authority, which would have the power to grant, renew and revoke licenses.

Retail sales of psilocybin ( just the product, not the treatment) would be taxed at 15%. The measure anticipates spending $5.4 million of the state’s general fund to implement the program between 2021 and 2023, and another $3.1 million in ongoing annual costs—an amount that would, in theory, be offset by the tax on psilocybin.

If the measure passes, there would be a two-year implementation period before clinics can open and licenses would be granted, meaning January 2023 is the soonest you can hallucinate on the state’s dime.

Users of psilocybin describe the drug as psychologically healing. Therapists who’ve supervised trips say that just one to three sessions, which last roughly four to eight hours each, can help people resolve grief and trauma by escaping in an altered state, and break out of various patterns of thought that have kept them stuck. In other words, patients get outside of their mental habits and find relief from them. Clinical studies conducted at institutions like Johns Hopkins, Harvard and New York University determined that psilocybin helped patients cope with addiction, anxiety, depression and impending death from a terminal illness. In 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted psilocybin a “breakthrough therapy designation” for treating major depressive disorder.

Skeptics persist—most prominently the Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association and the American Psychiatric Association, with a combined 38,000 member physicians. (It bears mentioning, however, that the APA has opposed legalization of cannabis as well.)

In some ways, the initiative is premature. Psilocybin still hasn’t undergone stage 3 clinical trials. Psilocybin remains a Schedule I drug, meaning it is illegal federally.

That said, the risks associated with psilocybin are 18

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minimal. It’s not addictive and while it can cause anxiety, spikes in blood pressure and, for some people, paranoia or feelings of terror, physicians would screen users to determine if they are at risk for unwanted side effects.

We acknowledge those risks—and still think this plan is worth trying. Part of our reasoning is the dire state of Oregon’s mental health care. The current system has failed thousands of Oregonians in anguish. The rolling disasters of 2020 have worsened the crisis. It is impossible to look at the condition of this state and ignore how many people are crying out for relief from mental distress. The safeguards around this initiative give us assurance it isn’t some Timothy Leary-style bliss-out; it’s a salve that can comfort wounded people.

Psilocybin won’t cure all that ails Oregon, but it might help a few Oregonians. That’s sufficient grounds to vote yes.

Measure 110 Decriminalizes drug possession Yes

This initiative makes us nervous. It’s an audacious policy shift that boldly flips the narrative about drug use.

For decades, Oregon and every other state have treated users who snort, inject or smoke hard drugs—such as heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and various opioids—as criminals. Measure 110 decriminalizes possession of those drugs for personal use. No other state or even U.S. city has gone this far: The model is Portugal, which decriminalized drugs in 2001.

So that’s a major shift. It’s also a long-overdue acknowledgment that the war on drugs is a failure. But like any concession that long-held norms and beliefs are simply wrong, shifting policy in this fashion requires a leap of faith.

Let’s get the irrelevancies out of the way first. It’s true that this measure will be funded up to the tune of about $5 million by the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. It’s also true they hired some of Oregon’s most successful political consultants, who happen to be white, to pass a measure that, as a corollary benefit, aims to undo decades of racist drug policies. (Crack cocaine, a drug favored by Black users, for instance, has carried vastly heavier penalties than powdered cocaine, a version favored by white users.)

The deep pockets and tactics of the proponents are less important than the underlying principles. What matters is that Oregon is chronically at the bottom of the 50 states in spending on addiction treatment of any kind. Democratic dominance at all levels of government has done nothing to change the fact that a state where drug and alcohol use are among the nation’s highest offers little more than jail

and court-ordered treatment for people with addictions.

Proponents make a compelling case that the outcome of criminalizing such mental illness is that tens of thousands of Oregonians end up with criminal records that derail careers, foreclose housing options, and needlessly stigmatize them rather than offering peer support or ways to compensate for what ails them.

Opponents, who include the group Oregon Recovers, an emerging political force, argue that the measure doesn’t provide any new treatment beds and takes money away from existing programs, including K-12 education and county mental health and addiction services, rather than creating a new source of revenue. That’s true but somewhat beside the point: Lawmakers have repeatedly refused to shift money to addiction services. That’s why Oregon always ranks at the bottom of the heap.

Critics are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

This measure is an important first step in fixing and funding a broken system. It doesn’t preclude the tax on alcohol that Oregon Recovers seeks nor does it make sense to send cannabis tax money to K-12 education anyway.

Measure 110 would establish a commission under the auspices of the Oregon Health Authority to redirect about $100 million a year in cannabis taxes to treatment services in all regions of the state. (The state would continue distributing the first $45 million of cannabis tax money to current uses.) Those services would spend the money to provide assessment and treatment options for substance abusers who need help. Selling hard drugs would remain a crime—this measure is about decriminalization for users, not dealers.

A broad coalition of Oregon medical, psychological and treatment professionals say it’s a risk worth taking. We hear the objections of cops and prosecutors who oppose the measure, but their way of dealing with substance abuse is a revolving door that brands sufferers for life.

Let’s try something new.

LOCAL MEASURES Measure 26-211 Multnomah County Library bond Yes

For years, the Multnomah County Library has been among the jewels of local public services. Circulation is the fourth-highest of any library system in the country and patrons are regularly turned away from children’s story hour and other popular amenities because the library’s buildings are mostly small and outdated, lacking meeting room and quiet spaces. On a square-footage basis, the system is 102nd in the nation.

The current system is also inequitable and shortchanges those who need library services the most. About 40% of the county’s population lives east of Portland’s 82nd Avenue, but only about 20 percent of the library’s capacity is there. In addition to books, movies and reference materials, libraries provide community gathering spaces, a partial bridge over the digital divide, and numerous skill-building opportunities, such as résumé workshops.

This measure would allow the county to issue $387 million in general obligation bonds to build a new flagship library in Gresham, renovate seven other library branches, add gigabit-speed internet to all libraries, and add mechanical sorting equipment for books and other library materials. The added cost for the owner of a home assessed at the median value in the county ($201,000) would be about $123 a year.

The county is asking for a lot of money, but like our schools and roads, libraries are essential infrastructure that require regular investment to keep up with population growth and changing demands.

After the Wapato Jail debacle, in which the county spent heavily on capital improvements but made no provision for operating costs, the library staff and planning committee have taken into account the annual cost of staffing and maintaining the new and renovated space this measure would buy. They have made a case that operating costs would add 5% or less to the current operating budget, a figure library management says is well within the system’s capacity to absorb. We urge a “yes” vote.

Measure 26-213 Portland parks levy Yes

The condition of Portland’s beloved parks system is such an obvious cautionary tale, it feels like one of Aesop’s fables. Say, the one about the grasshopper who didn’t prepare for winter.

For a decade, city officials ignored chronic financial problems and expanded the parks system eastward, giving Portlanders more places to romp in the sunshine. Put simply, the expenses of Portland Parks & Recreation, mostly personnel, have regularly exceeded its revenues, which are a mixture of general fund dollars and user fees.

Then winter hit—and hard.

Before his untimely death in January, City Commissioner Nick Fish was intent on addressing the parks bureau’s chronic shortfalls. But then COVID-19 arrived, shutting down the programs that generate those user fees.

Fish forced City Hall to make painful, unpopular cuts to beloved community centers—and then unforeseen disaster meant the fees that account for 27% of parks revenues evaporated, because all the programs closed.

The past seven months of enforced separation have highlighted more than any politician’s words ever could the vital importance of having public space for city residents to exercise, recreate or just chill during the pandemic. Portland’s parks, which cover more than 11,000 acres and include more than 470 facilities, are essential for a town that is increasingly taking on the trappings of a real city.

Portland Parks & Rec is responsible for 1.2 million trees and a growing system of green spaces that reflects a long-overdue expansion of parks in East Portland. Yes, there are undoubtedly efficiencies the bureau might realize, and yes, there are big ideas to reimagine the city’s third-largest general fund bureau (after police and fire).

But the reality is this: Portlanders need our parks today more than ever. With no certainty about when a COVID19 vaccine will allow the resumption of programs that drive fee income, the bureau faces draconian cuts if this

measure fails. We’re talking about emptying trash cans and cleaning restrooms once a week rather than daily.

We’re talking the closure of pools and facilities that help keep us healthy and calm. If the measure passes, it would add 80 cents per $1,000 of assessed value per year to property taxes, adding $161 a year in taxes to a home with the median assessed value in Multnomah County of $201,000.

That’s less than a cup of 7-Eleven coffee a day—a small price to pay for sanity. Vote yes.

Measure 26-214 Tax to fund tuition-free preschool Yes

First and foremost: Preschool for All is a feminist measure. That was one of the final arguments offered to WW

by Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Peterson, the idea’s leading elected champion. It was also the most persuasive.

Studies show that COVID -19 layoffs and job losses are disproportionately affecting women. In part, that’s because many blue-collar mothers are having to choose between income and child care. Or, more bleakly, they must pick among rent, groceries and child care.

So the county proposes to pay for preschool for all 3and 4-year-olds. That’s something several places, including New York City, already do.

This measure took an unusual path to the ballot. For the better part of a year, the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America competed with Vega Pederson and county leaders; both had proposals for tuition-free preschool they hoped to send to voters this November.

Ultimately, Vega Pederson forged an unprecedented solution: County commissioners passed, then suspended, the DSA measure and sent to voters a compromise measure that combined the DSA’s and county’s wishes. (The DSA measure would go to voters next year if this measure fails.)

And the tax they picked? It makes the plan all the more

populist.

The measure would tax 1.5% of taxable income over $200,000 for joint filers ($125,000 for single filers) with another 1.5% on income over $400,000 for joint filers ($250,000 for single filers). The county says 92% of residents would not be taxed at all.

That, of course, is the best kind of tax for most voters— one that somebody else pays. The policy includes concepts too numerous to be unpacked here: progressivity and the redistribution of wealth, to begin with. But we don’t buy the objections of tax foes that this burden would cause wealthy residents to flee to Clark County.

It’s worth noting that proponents expect this measure to raise a significant sum—$133 million next year and more than $200 million by 2026, when the program expects to have added 7,000 children to the program.

While preschool programs will be reimbursed between $14,000 and $20,000 a child, the measure has set aside a sizable sum for set-up, administration, quality controls and reserve funds among other costs, which backers will need to justify as they move forward.

Multnomah County would distribute the money to existing preschool programs. The first recipients of tuition aid would be families with the least means for securing a private spot now. The county’s record on contracting for social services is spotty, to put it kindly, but we’re comforted to see that it plans to phase in the program—the “universal” part of universal preschool won’t happen for a few years, as the county scales up its contracts.

As advertising floods the airwaves to boost this measure in coming weeks, mostly you’ll hear about the kids.

(Who can vote against the kids?) But caring for children is a struggle for entire families and, given gender roles in 2020, that means mostly a struggle for mothers.

That struggle has long compromised women’s ability to advance in the workplace. And right now we’re seeing how it cripples women’s ability to hold down a job.

Vote yes for women (and also for kids).

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Measure 26-215 Portland Public Schools bond Yes

This is the one tax on the ballot this November that won’t increase anyone’s tax bill. (Instead, it would just renew the $2.50 per $1,000 of assessed value homeowners are already paying. That’s $503 a year on a home with the median value in Multnomah County of $201,000.) And the $1.2 billion it would raise over the next eight years is badly needed.

The big-ticket items are completing the overhaul of Benson Polytechnic High School and revamping Jefferson High School, both of which are unreinforced masonry buildings, the type of construction most at risk of collapse in an earthquake.

No one doubts that Portland Public Schools’ aging structures continue to need work as part of a cycle of upgrading buildings, many of which were built in the middle of the past century or earlier.

And the $1.2 billion is only a down payment: PPS is asking for just a fraction of what’s needed to make classrooms safe. The measure includes $17 million to upgrade buildings to be seismically sound when more than $1 billion is needed; $34 million of the more than $100 million needed to upgrade schools to a basic level of accessibility for disabled people; and $66 million for the more than $300 million the district needs for roofs.

To be sure, the district has failed to do the politically difficult work of redrawing boundary lines for the Jefferson building that currently serves fewer than 700 students. (Both Cleveland and Wilson high schools currently serve more than twice as many students and have not been renovated.)

The last bond issue in 2017 saw major cost overruns.

The district and board president Amy Kohnstamm, who led that effort, were held to account after an inaccurate assessment of how much the projects would actually cost.

(The rest of the School Board is new since then.)

But the students who will return to these buildings after the pandemic deserve better, safer spaces in which to learn. The bond campaign says the district learned from mistakes made last time and will have multiple layers of cost estimation in place this time.

The fundamental request is sound: Old buildings wear out and we as taxpayers should replace them. Vote yes.

Measure 26-217 Establishes police oversight board Yes

Are you a Portland police officer who just hit somebody with a baton? If so, you probably love the city’s current police oversight system, which has resulted in just four cops going to arbitration after losing their jobs for misconduct in the past decade. (All four got their jobs back.)

Nearly everyone else in the city is frustrated by the status quo. That even includes people who have worked for the city’s Independent Police Review, a division of the City Auditor’s Office that doesn’t actually have the power to discipline or fire officers. Instead, whenever it receives a complaint, IPR judges the officer’s conduct based on the Portland Police Bureau’s existing policies—which allow the use of force in many situations—and passes along its conclusion: The complaint is either sustained or it’s not.

If sustained, the findings are forwarded to the police chief, who decides what punishment—if any—should be leveled.

Meanwhile, the investigative documents—including the officer’s name—are almost never released to the public.

It is an understatement to say the city’s current system is designed to protect police, not the public.

Measure 26-217 reads like, if you’ll pardon the metaphor, a silver bullet. It seeks to dissolve IPR and replace it with a new police oversight board staffed by diverse community members, none of whom may be employed 20

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by law enforcement or have immediate family members employed by law enforcement. It would be funded by 5% of the Police Bureau’s current $230 million budget—a percentage enshrined in the city charter, meaning the charter would need to be amended to change the board’s budget.

Measure 26-217, referred to voters by a unanimous vote of the Portland City Council, would give the new oversight board real power: the authority to subpoena documents, compel officers under investigation to testify, and share investigative findings—including the names of officers found culpable—with the public. Most importantly, it would have the power to discipline and even termi-

nate officers. IPR can do none of those things.

Portland City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero, who oversees IPR, is skeptical of the measure. She has said it hasn’t been vetted thoroughly and the same barriers IPR runs into would also hobble the new oversight board.

We aren’t totally convinced, either, that the new board can accomplish its goals. It would surely face legal challenge by the Portland Police Association, whose president, Daryl Turner, has alleged many aspects of the measure are illegal. And for it to be fully successful, the state’s arbitration laws regarding police officer misconduct must be amended at the Legislature—a process guaranteed to be

lengthy and convoluted.

But City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty—a longtime police reformer who is championing the measure—feels confident the goals can be achieved within an 18-month time frame allotted for implementation. Hardesty says policies set forth for the oversight board, unlike IPR’s, would be enshrined in the city charter, granting the board legal authority to enforce its policies.

We want this to work, and we hope it does. If it achieves a quarter of what it sets out to do, the measure can be a major step forward to increase transparency and accountability when investigating police officers accused of wrongdoing. It cannot be worse than the current system, which does nothing.

note the jobs would come over 20 years, not now.

Third, Metro’s vague taxing policy raises issues of fairness. For instance, Providence Health & Services, a nonprofit that employs 18,000 in the region, would pay the tax, while Oregon Health & Science University, a nonprofit public corporation that employs about the same number, apparently would not. The failure of Metro to be careful and transparent about who would pay this tax will only exacerbate existing resentment—not just from business against government, but from anybody unlucky or unlawyered enough not to find a loophole.

Last but not least, we’re deeply troubled by the lack of a sunset provision for this measure.

Typically, money measures—such as those on the November ballot for Portland Parks & Recreation, the Multnomah County Library, and Portland Public Schools—have finite durations. This tax never ends, even after all the projects on Metro’s list are finished. It’s a vote for whatever Metro wants to build next, forever. Vote no.

Measure 26-218 Transportation tax No

The Metro Council referred this measure to voters in July after two years of preparation.

It would impose a new tax on companies that employ more than 25 workers, charging those companies up to 0.75% of payroll. Metro said at the time of referral it expected the measure to raise about $4 billion for transportation projects, including a new MAX line from Portland to Tigard, and bus and sidewalk improvements in 17 high-traffic transportation corridors. The tricounty agency also believes it can leverage nearly $3 billion in matching funds, mostly federal dollars for light rail.

The economics of the measure have been a little hard to pin down, for a couple of reasons.

First, although Metro modeled its tax on TriMet’s payroll tax, which local governments pay along with private employers, the agency decided at the last minute to exempt other local governments, claiming its legal authority to tax them was dubious. Despite requests from news media and opponents, Metro has never provided a legal opinion to justify that claim. Second, although the measure allows Metro to levy a tax of up to 0.75%, the agency has offered to drop that rate to 0.6% to generate support from business interests.

To its credit, Metro has attempted to prioritize transportation spending in underserved areas, such as 82nd Avenue in Portland, Tualatin Valley Highway in Washington County, and along McLoughlin Boulevard in Clackamas County. Projects in those areas would serve more people of color and low-income Oregonians who have historically not benefited from transportation improvements. The measure would also pay to convert a large portion of TriMet’s fleet to electric buses and enhance bus service in major corridors—as well as build 45 miles of new sidewalks, install 140 miles of bike lanes, and give transit passes to all high school students in the Metro region. Those would all be significant improvements.

So what’s not to like?

First, although Metro says, accurately, that climate change is an existential threat, its own figures show that this measure does virtually nothing to reduce carbon emissions. And critics say the highway improvements it includes would in fact encourage people to drive more.

Nobody knows whether the prepandemic commuting and traffic patterns upon which this measure was based will return after COVID-19 is in the rearview mirror. The measure was crafted on the assumption that workers will still head downtown each morning, but that is less than certain. So the measure proposes enormous expenditures for an environmental gain that is at best minimal and at worst illusory.

Second, economic literature is clear: Payroll taxes stifle job creation. That’s exactly the opposite of what Portland needs to rebound from economic catastrophe. Proponents have presented a grossly inflated number of jobs they claim the measure would create—37,500—while failing to

Measure 26-219 Authorizes Water Fund spending Yes

This is a housekeeping measure. Because of the physical infrastructure required to deliver water to more than 650,000 residents, the Portland Water Bureau owns property all over Portland. Some of the parcels the bureau owns include surplus green space that city residents already use as playgrounds and pocket parks. There are currently seven such spaces—“hydro parks,” the city calls them—sprinkled around town, mostly in neighborhoods underserved by Portland Parks & Recreation.

The Water Bureau cannot spend ratepayer dollars to mow the grass or do other maintenance on those spaces because the city charter prohibits spending Water Fund money on anything except the delivery of water to customers. So the city’s general fund pays (currently, $11,500 a year). City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who oversees the Water Bureau, says the general fund is already overburdened and since the Water Bureau owns the properties, it should be allowed to maintain them. (An important note: This measure specifically excludes the city’s Bull Run watershed from recreational use.) The city also intends to spend $1.5 million over several years to bring the water parks into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Kent Craford, a longtime critic of the Water Bureau, argues passage of this measure could allow mission creep and abuse of ratepayer dollars. That has happened before, and the bureau agreed in 2017 to repay $10 million to ratepayers for previous misspending. But Commissioner Fritz makes a compelling argument that expanding spending beyond current parks or maintenance plus ADA costs would require a public process and a majority vote of the City Council. Good enough. Vote yes.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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OFFICIAL BALLOT DROP SITES IN MULTNOMAH COUNTY Voters can use any Official Ballot Drop Site in Oregon to return their voted ballot during the 20-day voting period.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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AAG charges an origination fee, mortgage insurance premium (where required by HUD), closing costs and servicing fees, rolled into the balance of the loan. AAG charges interest on the balance, which grows over time. When the last borrower or eligible non-borrowing spouse dies, sells the home, permanently moves out, or fails to comply with the loan terms, the loan becomes due and payable (and the property may become subject to foreclosure). When this happens, some or all of the equity in the property no longer belongs to the borrowers, who may need to sell the home or otherwise repay the loan balance. V2020.06.30 NMLS# 9392 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org). American Advisors Group (AAG) is headquartered at 3800 W. Chapman Ave., 3rd & 7th Floors, Orange CA, 92868. Licensed in 49 states.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

STREET: LAWN SIGN EDITION

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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STARTERS

T H E MOST I MP ORTANT T H I N G S TH AT H A PPE N E D D. I N P ORT L AND C U LT U R E T H I S WE E K , G R A PH E D.

READ MORE ABOUT THESE STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .

RIDICULOUS

WKRG.COM

Portugal the Man drops a new single… featuring “Weird Al” Yankovic.

AARON WESSLING

TED WHEELER

AWESOME

Oregon breweries release beer in special cans promoting voter participation.

North Portland beer bar Untapped and Hopworks’ pub on North Williams Avenue are the latest casualties of the pandemic barmageddon.

COMMUNITY SAFETY

Timberline and other ski resorts begin to reopen for the season with extra COVID safety precautions in place.

IAN STOUT

RETHINKPORTLAND.COM

A study suggests Oregon’s forests are adapting to wildfires and climate change to become more fire resilient.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

AWFUL

SAM GEHRKE

Brew Dr., formerly Townshend’s Tea, closes all its tea shops.

THOMAS TEAL

IT’S TIME TO RETHINK

The Ted Wheeler campaign’s Twitter account is briefly suspended for unknown reasons—after an independent group releases attack ads criticizing Sarah Iannarone for tweeting too much.

C O U R T E S Y O F M T. H O O D M E A D O W S

THE ANSWER IS TH E PROBLE M

Patriot Prayer goes full college frat and steals the antifa “nightmare elk” statue from downtown.

Comedian Christian Burke, aka Creme Brulee, agrees to abstain from protests as a condition of release after being arrested for allegedly throwing a rock at federal officers— contradicting a previous decision in which federal prosecutors agreed not to prohibit protesters from demonstrating.

SERIOUS

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com 27 9/22/20 10:39 AM

GET...OUTSIDE? SCARE TACTICS

WHAT TO DO—AND WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING—AS PORTLAND REOPENS.

Cost: $79.99. Tickets must be purchased in advance at scaregroundspdx.com.

Biggest scare: The scares are pretty much entirely derived from the performers menacing you from outside the car then suddenly thwacking amputated foam body parts against the windshield. For what it’s worth, the lead baddie really went for it on my poor little Prius.

Lamest moment: The speakers have to get swapped out between scenes, which is a bit awkward when it’s one of the actors trying to stay in character while making the handoff through your driver-side window.

Blood spilled: Most of the splatter is suggested by offstage sound effects, but a fairly gnarly severed head makes an appearance at one point.

SCARE GROUNDS

Cruisin’ for a Spookin’ Two drive-thru haunted houses offer socially distant scares this Halloween. We tried both on opening weekend.

We regret to inform you that Halloween is canceled.

No, the Great Pumpkin didn’t tweet anything problematic—the Oregon Health Authority, following the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has recommended against trick-ortreating in 2020, because global health crisis. Sorry, but you’ll have to dress the little one like Dr. Fauci for your own amusement alone.

That said, some traditions are going forward. Many pumpkin patches are still operating with attendant safety provisions in place. And there are even a few walk-through haunted houses giving it a go.

But for those who consider leaving home to wander through any foreign building with strangers a scare too far this year, there is an alternative.

In the Portland area, two “drive-thru haunted houses” opened this past weekend, looking to frighten visitors without asking them to get out of their cars and confront the actual terror of life in a pandemic. Here are our reviews.

Oaks Park Haunted Drive-Thru 7805 SE Oaks Park Way, 503-233-5777, scaregroundspdx.com. Through Nov. 1.

What’s the story? A series of three-act mini-plays take place inside detached car garages on the grounds of the Sellwood amusement park, with actors mouthing prerecorded dialogue played through a Bluetooth speaker mounted on your dash.

In “The Condemned”—the second-most frightening of the five “theatrical experiences,” according to the skull-based ratings system on the website, and the one that still had a few slots available opening weekend—a group of soft scene kids from the city make the mistake of going outside the Portland bubble and get kidnapped by a family of cannibalistic country folk.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

Worth the drive? The effort and production value are there, but 80 freaking dollars is a steep bar for any haunted house to clear. The first act plays out on a video screen, meaning there are only two segments with live actors, and the whole thing ends abruptly after about 25 minutes. It’s fun, but unless eight of your most stoned friends are willing to cram into mom’s minivan and split the cost, it’s hard to imagine driving off satisfied given the price.

MATTHEW SINGER.

Clackamas County Scare Fair 694 NE 4th Ave., Canby, 503-266-1136, clackamas. us/fair/clackamas-county-scare-fair. Through Nov. 1.

What’s the story? A cooperative effort by a few Portland-area haunting groups, the Scare Fair has four distinct zones snaking through the Clackamas County Fairgrounds. Each area has it own theme: a well-done cemetery full of clever jokes and touching shout-outs; a creepy farm inhabited by an evil redneck cult; a “CarnEvil” run by clowns with a penchant for torture; and a post-apocalyptic wasteland of mutants and malformed creatures.

Cost: $20 Biggest scare: No spoilers here, but let’s just say there’s a wonderfully twisted kumbaya moment around the midpoint and some effective surprises toward the end—keep your windows at least cracked for sound.

Lamest moment: Seems like they’re trying to cram a few too many cars into each viewing window so you end up looking at a line of brake lights ahead, which diminishes the atmosphere somewhat. There’s also a disappointing lack of sonic scares—the “soundtrack” for the attraction (via FM radio) is underwhelming.

Blood spilled: The Scare Fair isn’t gory at all, save for a couple of tableaus in the CarnEvil section that feature some (potentially) disturbing carnage.

Worth the drive? Pointy witch hats off to anyone working to make Halloween a little more fun during a pandemic, so the bar for entertaining scares is a little lower than normal this year. The attraction’s different zones keep things interesting, and most of the scenes are well executed, with a few standout visuals that will stick with you. The Scare Fair won’t give you nightmares but it will provide 20 to 30 minutes of PG-13 spookiness that will definitely scratch a bit of your Halloween itch. GREGG HALE. Gregg Hale is a film director, writer and producer best known for producing The Blair Witch Project.

See a video interview with him at wweek.com/distant-voices.

Q(UARANTINE)&A

Optical Collusions Portland journalist Steve Duin has adapted the Mueller report into a graphic novel for the benefit of future generations.

Hey, remember Russiagate?

It seems like Robert Mueller’s investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged entanglements with the Kremlin happened a century ago at this point.

But even among the myriad other presidential scandals that have happened since, veteran Portland journalist Steve Duin argues its relevance

has not dulled.

A longtime comics fan, Duin has partnered with New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler to turn Mueller’s 486-page report into an easily digestible graphic novel. In a conversation with WW, Duin—an occasional contributor to this newspaper—explains why he took on the project.

MATTHEW SINGER. WW: Why this treatment?

Steve Duin: The graphic novel format leant itself in a number of ways to helping people understand what Mueller was trying to do. Mueller’s report is incredibly dense. It’s 486 pages. We had 400 panels. So we had to dramatically simplify his conclusions, which I thought was essential. Secondly, the conventions of the medium allows us to have fun with a very serious subject.

There’s time for sight gags. Pushing that idea to the limit, what we’re hoping is, when middle school and high school students study this thing, they’ll use our graphic novel and not that 486page report.

In the book, Trump is drawn almost like something out of The Family Circus.

We tried to pull back a little bit on the relentless humiliation of Trump many cartoonists enjoy.

Trump comes off like a child often in the book, and he also comes across somewhat sympathetically on occasion as a guy who never felt he got credit for pulling off an unbelievable political coup. Winning the 2016 election is the greatest scam of Trump’s life. And when he didn’t get credit for it, he overreacted in a number of ways.

Do you feel Russiagate will be the defining scandal of Trump’s presidency when it’s over?

I’d argue the articles of impeachment will define him more. The relevancy of the Mueller report, I would argue, is that every time I turn around, there’s something that brings the Mueller report back into the public arena. [At the vice presidential debate] I’m hearing the vice president lie about what the Mueller report said. You need to keep reminding folks of what Mueller established inarguably, in a political environment where we’re arguing about what facts are, for God’s sake.

See the full video interview with Steve Duin at wweek.com.

GET...OUTSIDE? MICHELLE HARRIS

HIKE OF THE WEEK

BUNDLE UP: Patrick Dougerty’s stickwork sculptures in Orenco Woods Nature Park.

Stick and Move A walk through Orenco Woods Nature Park puts you in touch with wildlife, Oregon history, and some of the strangest outdoor art sculptures you’ll ever see.

If they weren’t located in a park in suburban Hillsboro, you might assume the stickwork sculptures in Orenco Woods Nature Park were the work of a pagan cult.

The project, constructed by artist Patrick Dougherty in 2017, features pieces of willow and red twig dogwood twisted and woven into distorted faces. According to a sign that tells the story behind his Head Over Heels piece, Dougherty explains that while the sculptures were “initially inspired by masks and totems of Northwest Indigenous peoples, they morphed during the building process into caricatures of human surprise.”

Along with his son, Sam, Dougherty has built over 300 stickwork sculptures all over the world, each project taking a unique shape and form.

Other Northwest locations that have featured Dougherty’s work include the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash. In Orenco Park, the sculptures are set among a backdrop of Douglas firs and resemble a cross between massive tumbleweeds and Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Each head fitted with a hat, and there’s even an entryway into each stickwork head so you can get a photo of yourself standing inside the cocoonlike sculptures.

Besides screaming stickwork fixtures, Orenco Woods Nature Park has 2.5 miles of trails, scenic bridges and wetlands. Over 100 years ago, the 42-acre park was part of the Oregon Nursery Company, then the largest nursery on the West Coast. It was best known for introducing the Orenco apple, a “high-quality dessert apple,” according to the website.

MICHELLE HARRIS

BY M IC H E L L E T. H A R R I S

BIG APPLE: The Seeds of Orenco pays homage to the park’s origin.

As you head from the parking lot, bear left on the paved path to take the Rock Creek Trail and you’ll see a historic house to your left. Once home to Malcolm McDonald, co-founder of Oregon Nursery Company, the weather-worn home now stands boarded up and abandoned, but is set to be restored by Hillsboro Parks & Recreation sometime in the future.

A green apple sculpture, titled The Seeds of Orenco, sits along the trail in tribute to the titular fruit and the park’s history. You’ll then pass the stickwork sculptures before crossing one of the park’s three bridges over the wetlands, where you might catch a glimpse of great blue herons and beavers.

Once you cross the bridge, take a left to stay on the Orenco Woods park loop trail, where you’ll cross another small bridge and walk along the graveled habitat trail, which takes you across a boardwalk bridge through the forest and even-

tually back to where you started at the McDonald House. The habitat trail also weaves along the wetlands, meadows and creek area if you’d like to extend the hike. Be aware that dogs and bicycles are not allowed on the habitat trails since they can threaten the plants and wildlife along the trails. If you’d prefer to stick to the paved path, then stay on the Rock Creek Regional Trail, which follows the Rock Creek Greenway for about 2 miles through Orchard Park and then head back the same way.

Due to COVID-19, the playground and covered picnic shelter are closed for now. But if you want to see the stick heads, you shouldn’t wait for a vaccine to visit. Made entirely of natural materials, the sculptures will last only two to four years.

Besides, what better way to mark spooky season than standing inside some nightmarish set piece from the Land of Oz?

Orenco Woods Nature Park Loop Distance: 2.5 miles Difficulty: Easy Drive time from Portland: 25 minutes Directions: From Portland, take US 26 west about 12 miles to exit 62A for Cornelius Pass Road south. Drive south on Cornelius Pass Road for a mile and turn right onto Northeast Cornell Road. Turn left onto Northeast Century Boulevard after about a half-mile.

Drive almost a half-mile and then turn left onto Northeast Birch Street. Drive almost another half-mile and make a right into the parking area for Orenco Woods Nature Park.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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CHRIS NESSETH

FOOD & DRINK

FEATURE

BIRRIA DE RES SPECIALISTS

Red Meat The birria boom has made its way to Portland, and it’s much more than just an Instagram trend.

BY NIC K Z U K I N

@extramsg

It’s the first weekend since the rains cleared Portland’s air of toxic smoke. The skies are a refreshing blue and the sun is yellow again.

At Birrieria La Plaza, though, one thing remains an unnatural red color: the tortillas.

Each one has been dipped in chile-stained fat, before going on the sizzling comal with a generous mound of stewed beef and stringy white cheese to be served up as quesatacos.

The line to order stretches twice the length of the taco truck in deep Southeast Portland, nearly reaching the mariscos cart nearby, as masked customers wait dutifully at a proper social distance. Other cart owners in the Everyday Deals parking lot look on with envy.

Birria is having a moment. But unlike other darlings of Instagram’s fooderati—rainbow bagels, pancake cereal—the birria boom is well deserved, built on centuries of tradition transformed into a trend by social media-savvy Mexican and Chicano millennials looking to satisfy cross-cultural cravings with crunchy tacos and birria ramen.

When most Mexicans and taco aficionados think of birria, they think of birria de chivo, goat marinated in a red chile sauce and slow roasted, traditionally underground or in clay ovens, as is found in Jalisco, Zacatecas, Michoacán and other parts of Western Mexico. The meat is succulent and tender, and creates a hearty broth called consomé that’s served on the side and known for being a hangover cure.

With Oregon’s many immigrants from Western Mexico, this style of birria has been served in Portland for decades. The familiar 30

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

BIG RED: The offerings at Birrieria PDX include regular tacos (inset) and an elongated version called birria machete.

flavor and cheaper price of beef in the U.S., however, makes birria de res a great introduction to the style for unfamiliar Americans.

“I always liked birria since I was a kid, and now people are getting to know the dish,” says Daniel Miranda, who works afternoons at Birrieria PDX after putting in a full day at his painting company. He cooks alongside his wife, Lorena, and sister, Grecya, who run the cart full time. “I think it’s getting popular because it’s beef instead of goat.”

But birria de res, like its sibling, barbacoa de res, has a long tradition in many parts of Mexico. Birria de res is not a dumbed-down dish invented by shrewd bar owners to get gringos to chupa some chile and buy more cervezas, like nachos or queso dip.

“My family has always made beef birria, not chivo,” says Oracio Hernandez, owner of Birrieria La Plaza, whose parents emigrated in the 1980s from a tiny mountain town in Jalisco. Cattle is what the people of his ancestral pueblito raised, so beef is what they used for birria. His recipe for the truck is his mother’s.

But as birria made its way out of kitchens and into the streets of Tijuana and Los Angeles, it transformed. The main innovation was to add cheese—lots of it. Not a sprinkling of yellow American cheese or crumbly white Mexican cotija, but a handful of quesillo, Mexico’s mozzarella, to melt into an oozing, gooey mess, crisping on the edges as it cooks on the comal, forming a taco called quesabirria or quesataco.

The second embellishment was not to just serve the consomé on the side or spoon a little into the tacos but to use it as sazón for the tortillas. L.A.’s most famous birria vendor named itself Teddy’s Red Tacos for a reason: The tortillas soak up the fat and the broth from the birria, coloring them crimson. The tortillas are dipped in the red-stained fat before going on the griddle. Then, a ladle of burgundy broth is poured over the tacos as they cook, boosting the flavor and color of the tortilla and meat.

All the purveyors of quesabirria use this technique, resulting not only in stunning photos but delicious tacos that have customers returning even after they’ve ’grammed their

pizza-sized platters of quesabirria. Taquerias and taco trucks that previously only served the standard asada, carnitas and pastor are adding quesabirria to their menus, attempting to capitalize on the trend.

Some, like Papi Chulo’s in the Pearl, have served quesabirria and consomé since they opened, along with a more typical taqueria menu, making the eatery a popular late-night destination for hungry club and bar patrons before the pandemic.

Beyond quesabirria and quesatacos, birria de res specialists offer a variety of antojitos from the Sinaloa tradition by way of Tijuana, such as vampiros (tostadas with melted cheese and meat) and mulitas (two corn tortillas grilled with cheese and meat between them).

Other inventive options include the keto taco, made with crispy melted cheese instead of a tortilla, and birria ramen, the Japanese noodle soup made with the broth of the birria, resulting in something that tastes more like pho or Thai boat noodles. Both of these dishes are on the menu at Birrieria PDX, but keto tacos are a special at La Plaza, while birria ramen is a special at Tacos El Patron in Aloha.

“My life has been around building the best taco,” says owner Efrain Abarca, who takes the extra step of using corn tortillas made from freshly ground organic nixtamal. El Patron’s birria doraditos, oversized corn tortillas wrapped around shredded beef and fried crisp, may be the best taquitos or flautas in the state (though they are only available on weekends).

Ultimately, however, all three birria de res specialists focus on quality, not gimmicks.

Quesabirria may be trendy enough to attract the typical Taco Bell customer who pines for Doritos Locos, but it’s traditional enough for Mexicans to drive across town for a bowl.

“We try to do everything with care and keep it authentic to the original recipe,” says Hernandez. “We have people that tear up, and the biggest compliment is when people say it reminds them of the food when they were growing up in Mexico.”

Birrieria La Plaza, 600 SE 146th Ave., tacoslaplaza.com.

10:30 am-7 pm Wednesday-Saturday, 10:30 am-5 pm Sunday.

Birrieria PDX, 16544 SE Division St., 971-336-6804.

11 am-9 pm TuesdayThursday, 9:30 am-9 pm Friday-Sunday.

Tacos El Patron, 21070 SW Tualatin Valley Highway, Beaverton, 503-372-6229.

11 am-9 pm Tuesday-Friday, 9:30 am-9 pm Saturday, 9:30 am-5 pm Sunday.

OTHER TAQUERIAS SERVING QUESABIRRIA La Tía Juana Taqueria, 18488 E Burnside St., 503-328-9691.

11 am-8 pm daily.

Papi Chulo’s, 611 NW 13th Ave., 503-206-6085, papichulospdx.com.

Noon-9 pm daily.

Sabor Casero, 5800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-317-9328.

10 am-8 pm MondayThursday, 11 am-8 pm Friday-Saturday.

TRADITIONAL BIRRIA DE CHIVO Birrieria 7 Hermanos, 19131 E Burnside St., 503-916-9582.

10 am-6 pm WednesdayFriday, 8 am-6 pm Saturday-Sunday.

FOOD & DRINK TOP 5

HOT PLATES

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Where to eat this week.

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CHRIS NESSETH

PATIO REVIEW

Sunshine Noodles

3560 N Mississippi Ave., 971220-1997, sunshinenoodles. com. 11 am-3 pm ThursdaySaturday.

Sunshine Noodles is an avowedly irreverent, none too serious take on contemporary Cambodian food by Revelry vet Diane Lam. The corn pudding is a candidate for the city’s best new dessert, but the lime pepper wings are the breakout hit—spicy and complex, they want for nothing except a beer, and perhaps a napkin.

Rock Paper Fish

2605 SE Burnside St., rockpaperfishandchips.com. 11 am-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Rock Paper Fish is yet another fast-casual Micah Camden restaurant, and yet another quick pandemic pivot. Open since mid-August, it’s a pickup- and delivery-only fish-and-chips window, operating out of what used to be Boxer Ramen in the Burnside 26 building.

The seafood may be mostly local or regional, but the style is New England: double-battered, double-fried, with thick fries reminiscent of Belgian frites.

Nacheaux

Crystal Clear

McMenamins’ downtown outdoor plaza isn’t Edgefield, but close enough.

BY AN D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek.com

Peak hours: 1:45-4 pm Monday-Thursday, 11:30 am-3 pm Friday, 8 am-3 pm and 5-10 pm Saturday-Sunday GO: McMenamins Crystal Hotel Zeus Cafe, 303 SW 12th Ave., 503-384-2500, mcmenamins.com. 7 am-10 pm daily.

Stem Wine Bar

3920 N Mississippi Ave., 503-477-7164, stemwinebarpdx.com. 5 pm-close Monday-Friday, noon-close SaturdaySunday.

Businesses that opened just weeks before the mandated coronavirus closures in mid-March have had a tough go—just ask 45 North. Five weeks after opening, the North Portland wine bar shuttered. It’s back open now, but dealing with yet another obstacle: rebranding. Now known as Stem, the bar offers a wide global selection, spanning from the Willamette Valley to South Africa, with private tasting appointments available through its website.

BUZZ LIST

Where to drink outside this week.

Old Town Brewing

5201 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 503-200-5988, otbrewing.com. 4-9 pm Sunday-Thursday, 3-9 pm Friday, noon-9 pm Saturday.

While many makeshift pandemic patios are nothing much to look at, Old Town’s is different: It immerses you in nature. The temporary woodland is laden with trees on loan from the city of Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services. Some are squat and bushy, others taller than the red umbrellas shading the patch with blooming flowers in a complementary shade of crimson.

Baerlic Brewing’s Super Secret Beer Club

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1020 SE Grant St., 503-4779418, baerlicbrewing.com. 2-8 pm daily.

Baerlic Brewing is among that inspired group of entrepreneurs during the pandemic that looked at the cracked, gray parking lot behind its building and somehow saw a socially distanced party. The 6,000-square-foot space has turned into a Bavarian-inspired drinking lawn, complete with a huge faux foliage backdrop affixed with the words “Super Secret Beer Club.”

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Untapped R

4320 N Interstate Ave., 503-2064830, untappedpdx.com. 2-8 pm daily.

The small yet greatly loved beer bar along the MAX Yellow Line has announced it will close its doors at the end of October. The North Interstate business opened six years ago, quickly gaining a devoted customer base thanks to its well-curated rotating tap list and trivia nights. Don’t pour one out—come by and quaff one.

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Additional safety measures: Menus available via QR code or single-use paper handout; tables and chairs are sanitized after every use; only one person at a time is allowed in the restrooms.

TOP 5

701 E Burnside St., 503-327-8968, dimosapizza.com. 4-9 pm WednesdaySunday.

The menu at Dimo’s Apizza is loaded with variations of the New Haven-style pies chef Doug Miriello grew up eating in Connecticut. But his new spot is aiming for a place in Portland’s sandwich pantheon, too. The most recent addition to the menu is maybe the most impressive. It’s called The Beast: whole top sirloin seasoned like brisket, cave-aged Gruyère and slathered-on aioli.

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Distance between tables: At least 6 feet

Dimo’s Apizza

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Number of tables: 14

8145 SE 82nd Ave., 971-319-1134,nacheauxpdx.com. Noon-7 pm Wednesday-Thursday and Saturday, noon-8 pm Friday, 9 am-3 pm Sunday.

At Anthony Brown’s garishly teal-colored food truck, Mexican favorites get hitched to Southern food and CajunCreole flavors. You can find “Mexicajun” food in both Louisiana and Southeast Texas, but it’s a rare concept in Portland, if not entirely unheard of. The “Nacheaux nachos” start with a big pile of fresh-fried chips and also feature carnitas that could just as easily be cochon au lait, while a cheesy “crunchwrap” comes stuffed with red beans, dirty rice and fried chicken.

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PATIO SPECS

3312 SE Belmont St., 503-206-7233, lospunales.com. 11 am-10 pm daily.

This tacho shop only opened this summer, but it feels like it’s been serving the Sunnyside neighborhood for years. Every tortilla is made in-house that day, stuffed with an array of guisados—complex braises of meats and vegetables, including carnitas, barbacoa and chicken tinga.

The classic tinga is a perfect gateway to the guisado style, and chef David Madrigal’s version is subtly excellent.

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When McMenamins announced in mid-March it was laying off 3,000 employees—nearly every single person on staff—the shock rippled like the first thunderclap of an approaching storm. As jarring as that news was, we still had no idea how destructive the pandemic was going to get.

The eclectic hospitality chain began to emerge from lockdown in April. Business is back, though it doesn’t look quite like it used to.

A number of McMenamins are known for their sprawling lawns or gardens, making it easier to spread out seating. But the three bars and restaurants along with the Crystal Hotel that occupy a triangle of land sandwiched between West Burnside and Southwest Harvey Milk streets have only pavement on either side. So that’s exactly where the company decided to expand.

“Definitely, it was a hassle at first,” describes Zeus Cafe chef Alexander Diestra. “But we got the go ahead and started brainstorming a bunch of ideas about how to make it more hospitable for the guests and actually make sure they have enough privacy.”

The first safety measure involved separating customers sipping Rubys and Hammerheads from one-way traffic zipping off Burnside. Through the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Healthy Businesses program, McMenamins was able to close down that entire stretch of Harvey Milk to Southwest 12th Avenue, creating an outdoor plaza it now shares with Jake’s Famous Crawfish. The de facto boundary between the two is marked by the green strip of paint that also denotes a bike lane.

The space was simple at first. Managers set up some additional tables in the street along with a smattering of potted plants. But the Crystal Hotel kept finding different ways to enhance the pavement cafe. Edgefield lent some of its collection of black,

wrought-iron tables and chairs. They also brought over some barrels to use as decorative statement pieces, which then evolved into miniature gardens.

Thanks to the farmers who normally cultivate the dirt at the Troutdale location, the barrels are now bursting with palm fronds and purple flowers as well as a usable pantry of herbs—rosemary, sage and thyme—for the kitchen. During a recent visit, an apron-clad employee wound his way through the cooperage harvesting green tomatoes.

“I think these were planted late in the season,” he said of the mixed-quality crop. Some of the fruit was so invitingly plump you’d be tempted to eat it like an apple. Others were still small and would probably never ripen. “Chef was like, ‘Go out there and see what you can do.’”

It’s a fitting analogy for 2020—we’re all just trying to make the best of the shriveling green tomatoes that have been dealt to us. But as the old saying goes, when life gives you tomatoes, make tomato mozzarella Benedict, which is what ended up on the menu for brunch the next morning.

Taquería los Puñales

Migration Rooftop

817 SW 17th Ave., 9th floor, 971-2910258, migrationbrewing.com. 1-10 pm Thursday-Sunday.

The ascendant brewery has gone and launched a rooftop taproom at downtown’s freshly opened Canvas building. It boasts a panoramic view few others can claim, which includes the Providence Park Jumbotron, and the brewery already has some grand plans once games resume with fans in the stands: “I might have to put a tifo up,” says co-owner Colin Rath.

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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POTLANDER REVIEW

Who’s Got the Herbals?

Cannabis lifestyle brand Barbari spices up your herb with…herbs.

BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R

My first reaction to inhaling a Barbari herbal spliff was a vivid scent memory of my teenage self, puffing cloves and making out with one of my boyfriends on a soft green bit of turf that overlooked the 101 freeway in Hollywood.

The overwhelming theme of that memory was less “young love” and more “not being brave or old enough to smoke what we actually wanted to smoke: weed.”

The distinct flavor of that memory prompted my 15-year-old inner self to ask, “Why would you smoke this when you smoke actual marijuana?” I’m not actually sure.

Typically, a “spliff ” is a 50-50 tobacco-cannabis hand-rolled cigarette. Barbari’s blends replace the tobacco with formulations that soften, sharpen or sexify the rougher edges of your weed stash. But more than that, each blend can be burned as incense, steeped

for tea, or sprinkled over a warm bath. Smokable herb blends are by no means a new concept, but the Portland company’s branding tells a story that leans far more toward radical self-care than head shop. Plus, each pot of herbs delivers precisely the type of complex perfume you’d expect smoldering from the pipe of a wizard.

Eager to test my mettle as a witchy herbal spliff smoker, and quiet my bratty inner 15-year-old, I tried each blend as a spliff, a stand-alone smoke, a tea and, in one case, a desktop aromatherapy feature. Crushed raspberry leaf anchors each blend, and each jar contains 10 grams of the smokable potpourri, retailing for about $25.

My teenage self might have a valid question—why are we smoking things that aren’t weed?—but 40-yearold me is steadily morphing into a forest witch and as such is very down to develop an appreciation for flower petals and kitchen herbs atop my OG Kush.

Car Sex

Airplane Mode

Muse

There is a sharp, savory perfume to Barbari’s Car Sex blend—the mullein, white sage, and bright orange dagga flowers produce a smoke that is heady and rich. When smoked as a spliff, cannabis flavors tempered the heft of the exhale, but on its own, the blend was weighed down by a bitter, savory aftertaste. When sipped as a tea, though, the aromatics that weighed on the smoke are mild to nonexistent.

But who cares about flavor descriptions when the product is called “Car Sex”? I can say with relative authority that this blend did indeed light a fire within my kundalini. While neither euphoric nor intoxicating, it did suggest a subtle sensuality that was easily stoked into full-on eroticism, human sex partner suggested but by no means necessary. Frankly, I was dissuaded from multiple Car Sex auditions. I just don’t have time to be that level of sexed-up more than once, maybe twice a week.

Airplane Mode’s perfume is the most familiar of the potted blends: Its ingredients—lavender, sage and rose—are common curbside plants. But it’s the addition of blue lotus that makes this blend a more effective mood-brightener than whiffing your neighbor’s roses. Blue lotus has been used as a calming aphrodisiac for hundreds of years, but its most recent brush with popularity was as an ornamental water plant. The dried, smokable version feels a bit more purposeful, but judgment is reserved for those who favor the blue blossom’s backyard aesthetic to its reputation as a smokable herb.

The first inhale of Airplane Mode, though, is straightup reminiscent of soap. The brisk, acetic lavender dominates the profile at first blush, with flowery rose and savory sage playing supportive roles. The blue lotus only makes itself known after inhalation. After a spliff that married the herb blend with a punchy sativa hybrid, I felt my eyes tighten as if the muscles were having their last powerful stretch before bedtime. The tension that lives in my shoulders, jaw and forehead fell away like dominos, and despite all these clear signs of superficial relaxation, I could still capitalize on the zip of the sativa.

As a stand-alone bowl or cup of tea, the mouthfeel was just too soapy to appreciate. Frankly, tossing a pinch across the surface of a glittery spa bath felt like the most effective, smoke-free way to let the herbs ease you into complacency.

Of all Barbari blends, Muse convinced me to integrate smokable herbs into my regular consumption. The profile is a careful balance of crisp peppermint, pungent sage, and airy jasmine flower. Purely as an aromatherapeutic, it opens up the chest and clears the mind. As a smokable blend, it cradled the most creative aspects of the strain I rolled it with, resulting in clear-headed focus that balanced the weed’s’ dopier effects.

As a tea, that complex perfume is subdued, but the result is calming and uplifting. As a spliff, I found it to be just as effective as a cup of coffee for priming me for focused creativity. But even though I applaud the spliff, this pot of herbs has since come to live rent-free on my desktop—not for smoking, but for sniffing the heck out of when I become distracted during work. It’s an unexpected feature I ended up valuing more than any of the other suggested uses.

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

BUY: Barbari Herbal spliffs and blends are available throughout Oregon. See barbarishop.com.

Unfold is now even more accessible with equity pricing!

Visit our website to make an appointment 717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com

Crisp heirloom carats

Maloy’s is now OPEN BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Book online to shop our collection of fine antique jewelry, or for custom or repair work. We also buy.

Our classes are now all online, plus Park Pop-ups!

unfoldportland.com Single classes are $5 - 15 Unlimited memberships range from $25 - 120/month Not your typical yoga studio, we feature: Gentle, Yin, Restorative, Strength, Flow & Chair Yoga, plus Meditation!

Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

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Written by: Scout Brobst Contact: sbrobst@wweek.com PORTLAND OPERA

ZOOM ROOM TUNES: Merging the work of singers and musicians for An Evening With Portland Opera was daunting.

Opera’s Digital Light at the End of the Tunnel Portland Opera unites the stars of its canceled productions for a free virtual concert.

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E LL FE RGUS O N

When baritone Will Liverman was in high school, his love of opera went supernova during a trip to the Met. “It was a lot of opera, and we were way up in the nosebleeds,” he says. “But I was just really shocked and surprised and in awe of how the voices from that stage were hitting me. Even as a high schooler, I was like, ‘Wow, this art form has a lot to offer, and it’s something that I think I want to pursue.’”

While the COVID -19 pandemic has kept Liverman off the stage since he played Silvio in Opera Colorado’s production of Pagliacci in February, that hasn’t stopped him from pursuing his passion. He’s one of the stars of An Evening With Portland Opera, a virtual concert featuring singers and musicians from Portland Opera productions that were canceled because of the pandemic (Liverman had been scheduled to return as Silvio in a Portland-produced Pagliacci).

“We weren’t going to be able to do anything with them, and that just felt so painful,” says Laura Hassell, Portland Opera’s producing director. “And we were trying to figure out, could we really not do anything, was there a way we could do something?” Interim artistic director Daniel Biaggi suggested a virtual concert, kicking off a grueling quest to create an event that wouldn’t force artists not based in Portland to travel.

An Evening With Portland Opera, which includes arias

by Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Verdi, called for a sense of unity that would transcend the miles separating performers. “Since we were not able to have everybody in the same room,” Hassell says, “keeping it all together and making it sound like music and not like a bunch of people practicing random parts in their bedrooms was quite challenging.”

Enter music director George Manahan. A video of him conducting at his home in New York became a guide for the concert, along with recorded piano accompaniment performed by Nicholas Fox—which was particularly helpful for Philadelphia-based mezzo-soprano Daryl Freedman, who recorded an aria from Il Trovatore in her living room, rather than go to a studio.

“We just had a baby and we’re quarantining super hard because we’re really nervous about the virus, especially since we have a newborn in the house,” says Freedman,

who married her wife, Jackie Freedman, in 2017—their wedding was officiated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an opera devotee.

To make sure her voice would be synchronized with the music, Freedman watched footage of Fox on her computer.

“It’s very different to sing with a prerecorded track than to perform live with a pianist or with an orchestra,” she says, adding that she had to “watch his hands and make sure that when I saw his hands move for the next chord, I knew to finish my note and move onto the next note.”

Merging the work of the singers and the musicians proved daunting. “None of the cutoffs were together, no one was playing at the same time,” Hassell says. Delicate audio engineering was required to complete the hourlong concert, which begins with the overture of Carmen and concludes with “Te Deum” from Tosca. Biaggi says the program alternates between “big picture, grand scale” and “the intimacy of one singer in a close-up.”

The premiere of An Evening With Portland Opera on Vimeo and YouTube raises questions about what comes next. Portland Opera has been busy—it’s been staging concerts on the balcony of its headquarters, the Hampton Opera Center—but general director Sue Dixon estimates the organization lost $1.5 million during its 2019-20 season due to the pandemic, not counting the $1 million in expenses resulting from performance cancellations (while the upcoming concert is free, donations will be accepted).

Yet uncertainty about live opera’s future hasn’t stopped the stars of An Evening With Portland Opera from creating. Freedman plans to perform in a Portland Opera production of Il Trovatore scheduled for 2021, and Liverman, whose contribution to the concert is an aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, is currently developing a version of The Barber of Seville set in a Black barbershop.

“There are certain jobs where I feel like it’s definitely work,” Liverman says. “You know, you go in and it’s just like, ‘This is my 12th Bohème, here we go.’ And I feel like the pandemic really put that in check. I mean, you really stop and think about how fortunate we—folks who are able to sing and do it for a living—are.”

SEE IT: An Evening With Portland Opera streams on Portland Opera’s Vimeo and YouTube channels Saturday, Oct. 17. 7:30 pm. Free.

FIVE RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTS

If I Had Two Wings, Randall Kenan Just a few short weeks before his death, Randall Kenan published If I Had Two Wings, a collection of 10 short stories that bring a heavenly mysticism to the wooded enclaves of North Carolina, or at least some version of it— Kenan sets his characters in a fictional town called Tims Creek, a place where ordinary lives are graced by the divine in all its forms. One is Billy Idol, another a boar hog. Kenan offers enough of each character to draw the reader close and comfortable, only to move on to another miracle and another slice of salvation.

Owls of the Eastern Ice, Jonathan C. Slaght When men are sent on quests, it’s usually not for owls. But that is the all-consuming task of field scientist Jonathan C. Slaght, whose only interest is one singular creature, the Blakiston’s fish owl. By any measure, it is a bird worth tracking, if you are into that sort of thing: It is the largest of its species, yellow-eyed and notoriously elusive, sending Slaght on a yearslong journey through far-east Russia. “Backlit by the hazy gray of a winter sky, it seemed almost too big and too comical to be a real bird,” Slaght writes. “As if someone had hastily glued fistfuls of feathers to a yearling bear, then propped the dazed beast in the tree.”

Guillotine, Eduardo C. Corral Eduardo C. Corral’s second collection of poems follows Slow Lightning, and it shares his debut’s skillful blending of language, culture and memory. Lines move from Spanish to English as they see fit, illuminating the ways in which violence takes hold in the lives of undocumented immigrants, Border Patrol agents and ill-timed lovers. Each poem exists as its own small story, using Corral’s gift for imaginative prose to establish an intimacy between writer and reader in only a handful of words.

The Helios Disaster, Linda Boström Knausgård “I am born of a father,” Knausgård writes in her novel The Helios Disaster. “I split his head.” And from there begins the magical realism and distinctly Scandanavian sense of mythology that color this retelling of the myth of Athena. Knausgård writes from the perspective of her young protagonist, Anna, a girl who burns too bright in her need for belonging and in turn belongs to no one. Seven years after its original release in Swedish, the novel has been translated into English by Rachel Willson-Broyles.

Apple (Skin to the Core), Eric Gansworth In Apple, Eric Gansworth tells his own story in his own words, resisting the narratives that have been projected onto Native communities for generations.

“Apple” is the derogatory term for someone who is “red on the outside, white on the inside,” a slur Gansworth dismantles in clean, sharp prose. While the book is marketed toward a young adult audience, it has been widely acclaimed by all ages, with a universal weight that will resonate with all who appreciate memoir in verse.

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Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com H O R R O R N O I R E D O C U M E N TA R Y

SCREENER

MOVIES

GET YO UR REPS I N While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. For the month of October, we highlight all the best horror for your Halloween movie marathons. This week’s theme is found footage, a low-budget and naturalistic subgenre that appears to be filmed by the characters themselves, planting the viewer firmly in their terror-stricken perspective.

As Above, So Below (2014)

SCARY MOVIE: The Shudder documentary Horror Noire was the partial inspiration for 31 Days of Black Horror.

Using Horror to Overcome Fear A Portland filmmaker is highlighting one Black horror film a day in October to educate and fundraise.

BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F EI FER

@chance_s_p

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

Your most seen: Definitely Dawn of the Dead. I just rewatched my VHS copy. I’d say it’s probably my favorite film ever.

Most purely frightening: Flying Lotus made a film on Shudder called Kuso. I’ve never been so frightened just by texture. Stuff will be wet and everybody has boils on their face. It’s definitely from someone you can tell is a great artist.

Most exciting recent discovery: Sweetheart on Netflix. It’s basically Cast Away—a woman on an island. It’s maybe the best story of a Black horror film since Get Out, in that when you figure out what the film is doing, I was like, oh, this a #BelieveWomen movie in a way I didn’t know you could turn into a plot.

Cloverfield (2008) When a massive alien-monster emerges from the Atlantic Ocean, a group of party guests must race across New York City to save their stranded friend, and themselves. It was successful enough to spawn two sequels of varying quality: 10 Cloverfield Lane (two thumbs up!) and The Cloverfield Paradox (two thumbs down). Amazon Prime, Google Play, Roku Channel, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.

Lake Mungo (2008) This critically acclaimed Australian docufiction is more of an exploration of bereavement than classic horror, centering on a family attempting to come to terms with their daughter’s drowning, as well as subsequent supernatural events. The improvisational acting style makes this one feel all too real, eliciting scares stemming from both ghosts and grief. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Tubi, Vudu, YouTube.

Creep (2014) A struggling videographer (Patrick Kack-Brice, who also directs) accepts an unusual job from Josef (Mark Duplass), an eccentric man with an inoperable brain tumor who asks him to record a video diary for his unborn son. All seems fine at first, but as Josef’s strange behavior intensifies, so does Aaron’s fear for his life. Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu, YouTube.

MEDIUM

Jeff Oliver has far more than 31 reasons to launch a monthlong Instagram project on Black horror films.

The Portland filmmaker is a lifelong devotee of the genre and last fall began writing a horror script inspired by the gentrification of North Portland. Oliver is also the production manager for Open Signal Labs, an incubator program seeking to empower and invest in local Black media makers.

But the new Janelle Monáe-starring film Antebellum was the “nail in the coffin” of Oliver’s decision to spotlight one Black horror film each day of October. In Oliver’s view, Antebellum depicted little but meaningless, retrograde brutality in the wake of a winding, multidimensional history of Black horror cresting in recent years with Get Out. “It was as if they were trying to tell people slavery had been bad for the first time,” Oliver says of Antebellum.

“We’re so far past this, in my mind.”

Enter the inaugural title and partial inspiration of Oliver’s fundraiser: Horror Noire. Oliver calls the 2019 Shudder documentary “mind-blowing” for how it synthesizes an odyssey of Black horror that begins 50 years before Duane Jones’ Ben iconically declared himself the “boss” in Night of the Living Dead (1968). On the contrary, Horror Noire, based on the book by Robin R. Means Coleman, first examines The Birth of a Nation in tracing how Black actors have played monsters, sidekicks, symbols, glaring absences and, finally, protagonists in a century of horror films.

“I think it’s a phenomenal way to deconstruct these movies we love and their relationship to race,” Oliver says. “It’s really emotional to have something that you felt for a long time be turned into a film and realize I’m not alone in that way.”

While informing and diversifying his followers’ Halloween watchlists are a portion of the project, Oliver’s end goal is raising $8,000 for local Black media makers. Those efforts fall under the banner of Open Signal’s Our Stories Our Lives response fund, which has allocated stipends throughout the summer and fall. The fund has currently raised about one-fifth of its $100,000 goal.

Within his own horror fandom, Oliver can draw a clear connection between DIY filmmaking and representation.

George Romero’s first two zombie masterpieces, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, unlocked new cinematic concepts for a teenage Oliver: both by casting

Black leads and entertaining audiences via minuscule budgets and titanic allegories.

“I could picture myself making those movies [as a teenager],” he says. “Romero was able to mesh social commentary and horror in a way I’d never seen done before.”

On that note, Oliver joined us in a lightning interview round on his movie selections for 31 Days of Black Horror.

Filmed in the actual catacombs under Paris, this underrated gem follows an archaeologist (Perdita Weeks) as she and her documentary crew search the subterranean labyrinth for a legendary artifact. Things take a treacherous turn when they realize they’re trapped—and the only way out is through the seven layers of hell. Amazon Prime, Cinemax, Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu, YouTube.

Most cathartic: The People Under the Stairs from Wes Craven. As a kid, I just thought it was gross. As an adult, I was really satisfied by it. It’s about a Black kid whose family is about to be evicted from their apartment.

Least heralded title you’re excited to recommend: Tyrel (currently on Hulu), though it might be a little controversial as a horror film. It’s from this director Sebastián Silva, who’s from Chile and did a movie called Magic Magic (2013) that’s really good. I’m really interested in the conversation around Tyrel because I would 100 percent call it a horror film, but I think other people, maybe especially white people, may not have the same reaction.

SEE IT: 31 Days of Black Horror is available on Instagram at @thatjeffoliver. You can donate to the Our Stories, Our Lives Black Media Maker Response Fund at secure.givelively.org/ donate/open-signal/our-stories-our-lives-black-media-makerresponse-fund/jeff-oliver-1.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) A cluster of student filmmakers hike through the woods to make a documentary about the mythical Blair Witch.

They never return. With a budget of under $500,000, this horror blueprint earned a whopping $248.6 million at the box office, kick-starting the digital found-footage craze. Most of the films on this list probably wouldn’t exist without it! Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Shudder, Sling TV, Vudu, YouTube.

MOVIES E W. C O M

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Kajillionaire In the new film by legendary former Portland polymath Miranda July, a miserable con artist called Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) could use space from her parents (Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger). For one thing, she literally bends over backward for their nickel-and-dime schemes, limboing beneath security cameras to shoplift. For another, they had the gall to name her Old Dolio. Whether in film (Me and You and Everyone We Know) or fiction (The First Bad Man), July’s worlds typically hang on off-kilter drabness. In Kajillionaire, the family lives in an office building where soap seeps through the walls each afternoon, and a barely recognizable Wood dresses in Biff Tannen tracksuits and talks a bit like Napoleon Dynamite. Yet the truth of the hyperbole is that the Dyne family is just trying to make the rent. When a captivatingly bubbly stranger (Gina Roriguez) questions the family’s methods, July’s film poses a clear and timeless question: Can parents ever change? Crushing, hilarious and hopeful, the central conflict becomes Old Dolio vs. attachment theory. Will her first relationships on this earth shape all future ones, like a heartless developmental cookie cutter? Don’t be scared of the final answer.

By the end, you’ll want to call a parent. Or you won’t. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

OUR KEY

KAJILLIONAIRE

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.

ALSO PLAYING Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets While most Oregonians haven’t set foot in their local for months, we’ve all passed that one obscure watering hole and thought, “Has this place been open the whole time?” Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is an ode to just that kind of dive. Experimental filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross train their lenses on Las Vegas’ Roaring ’20s on its final day in business, and we meet the affable barkeeps, trauma-soaked vets, wayward youngsters and shaggy loners toasting farewell to their only sense of community, no matter that it feeds on their marginalization and addiction. The weeping, the slurred professions of love, the gallows humor, the last dances—it’s as profoundly affecting as it is authentically scuzzy, but there’s a trick afoot. The amateur performers are clearly operating from some vague script, even if they are completely plastered. The sad-bastard country soundtrack is a little too on pitch and, in fact, the interior of the bar is not even in Vegas. Winner of the True/False Film Festival’s True Vision Award, Bloody Nose waltzes at the forefront of creative cinematic nonfiction. And this premise blurs the line between fact and fiction perfectly. After all, there is no stark reality for the spiraling barfly. The tears look damn real, and they flow like swill. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

Save Yourselves!

Alien invasions are often fraught with drama, but co-writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer’s debut can make even the most ruthless kill seem…cute? Though their script overloads on violence, there’s still a

warm tone that drives this science fiction-comedy hybrid. When Su (Sunita Mani of Glow) and Jack (John Reynolds of Search Party) realize they are spending more time on their phones than with each other, the Brooklyn couple make a pact to go upstate and turn off their electronics. What a week to unplug: Aliens take over the world, but they don’t get the news. They are too busy learning how to fish, hike and chop wood to notice the invasion. The extraterrestrials, overseen by visual effects supervisor Jeff Desom, are a marvel of dexterity, with 10-foot tongues that shoot out of their round, furry bodies.

The “poofballs” are a perfect metaphor for the seemingly innocent, cutesy-themed social media sites that suck us dry (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). After all, this is a film about a couple disconnecting to reconnect.

When Su and Jack unplug, they are no longer alienated from each other.

R. ASHER LUBERTO. On Demand.

The Doorman Another take on the ever more familiar tale of a dispossessed paladin single-handedly battling foreign thieves acting as a late-stage capitalism metaphor, The Doorman is hardly the first ill-conceived variant of Die Hard. However, this latest iteration might well be the laziest. Leave aside the improbability that PTSDbeset combat soldier Ali (Ruby Rose) has embraced the glorified greeter duties in the titular role, overseeing the lobby of a ritzy Manhattan co-op. The building also just happens to house the family of her widowed brother-in-law and former crush. And what are the odds that a squad of murderous art thieves (led by a sleepwalking Jean Reno) hid stolen Rembrandts in the walls of the very same structure?

It’s a ridiculous scenario fueled by absurd circumstances driving forward a protagonist who would never actually exist, though Rose’s manic deathbot heroine seems no

less unlikely than the actress-model-living anime herself. If nothing else, she knows how to throw a punch following tours of duty in Batwoman and John Wick: Chapter 2. Director Ryûhei Kitamura knows how to frame her weaponized flexibility to best sell the daft premise.

Nothing about this awkwardly constructed dreck bears even the slightest resemblance to life as lived by real people, but the sheer shimmering strangeness of its star captivates nonetheless. R. JAY HORTON. On Demand.

Eternal Beauty Opening on the heaving sobs of a lovely young fiancée just informed of her groom’s disappearance, Eternal Beauty’s first scene tells us all we need to know about our abandoned bride-never-to-be. Summarily dismissed by her older sister Alice (a deadeyed Alice Lowe), co-opted by younger sister Nicola (Billie Piper as an aging sexpot), and blamed by her vicious mother (Penelope Wilton), the film’s tragic heroine collapses in absolute despair.

Somehow that may have been her high point. Flashing forward a few decades to an IG-filtered swath of Britain’s dreariest suburb, we learn that unrelenting familial abuse and ruinous psychiatric treatments have rendered the former beauty queen (played by Sally Hawkins) an unrecognizable electroshock casualty shuffling through uninterested doctors. Even as the pace slows and the depths of Jane’s disorder become clearer, there’s still a nervy thrill to rooting along such ill-fated plans, which include abducting her drowsy young nephew or shacking up with David Thewlis’ curdled punk. But following the inevitable split of that engagement, Eternal Beauty loses the plot during an interminable succession of cruelties, detailing what Jane has suffered without the slightest care for why.

Preserve the mystery or examine the motives, but showing the same mistakes made over and over again and expecting emotional resonance feels like the definition of inanity. R. JAY HORTON. On Demand.

The Glorias A bus. Black and white. The only color is the yellow of the road. The only passengers are four women of different ages. These are the titular Glorias, liminal representations of legendary feminist Gloria Steinem. Two of them are Academy Award winners Julianne Moore and Alicia Vikander, the latter portraying Steinem from ages 20 to 40, the former from 40 onward. Using the bus as a narrative framing device, this biopic chronicles her journey from troubled childhood to underappreciated journalist to political activist to co-founder of the groundbreaking Ms. magazine. Julie Taymor’s direction is at its most compelling when indulging in whimsical fantasy sequences reminiscent of her Beatles musical Across the Universe (2007). Her huge swings don’t always hit as intended, but they at least differentiate it from the boiler-plate biopics that inexplicably dominate the cinema landscape.

It’s exactly these sporadic, creative risks that make the frequent expository dialogue and bloated storyline that much more exasperating.

There’s an engaging film buried in the 139-minute runtime, and it’s a treat when it occasionally rears its head, be it in the form of co-stars Bette Midler and Janelle Monáe or the crucial amplification of intersectional feminism. Though this road trip is undeniably necessary, it’s a bit of a slog nonetheless. R. MIA VICINO. Amazon Prime, On Digital.

She’s in Portland First-time director Marc Carlini makes his debut with this meandering film about meandering people.

Low-key indie She’s in Portland has some touching moments in its story of two friends at a crossroads, but it feels like an initial draft whose script could have used some cuts, particularly in the road-trip sections. When former college buddies Wes (Tommy Dewey) and Luke (François Arnaud) reunite in Los Angeles, they have a lot of catching up to do—26 hours of catching up. That’s how long it takes to drive from L.A. to Portland, where they hope to find Wes’ college crush. Along the way, they stop by

UC Santa Barbara, Big Sur and San Francisco for high jinks that don’t add much to the plot, except that all of this time gives Wes and Luke the chance to prattle on about their midlife crises. This is the kind of film where rich, handsome white guys complain about life, sex and marriage for two hours, then realize they have everything they ever wanted at home. It babbles along, never achieving any emotional highs or lows, soaking up the California coast and late-afternoon sunshine until all the contrived issues are sorted out and everyone gets their way. Well, everyone except the audience. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play.

Spiral The potential for a retro paranoia thriller presents itself early in this new Shudder Original. Circa 1995, partners Malik and Aaron move to the country with Aaron’s teenage daughter and immediately encounter the leering microaggressions of their white Midwestern neighbors. The setup is interesting enough. Kayla is warming up to her dad’s partner while Malik ghostwrites the biography of a slowly revealed homophobe. From there, action and social commentary alike are lost in the execution. Spiral can’t decide whether it’s driven by trauma, schizophrenia, blood sacrifice, sexual entrapment, hauntings, immortal killers, conspiracies or just bad ol’-fashioned Newt Gingrich xenophobia. With choppy scenes that seldom last longer than two minutes before cutting to black, it’s both much too easy (another screeching jump scare) and too hard (is any of this really happening?) to figure out what’s going on.

The drama hangs on Malik playing detective, yet Spiral seems determined to strip him of not just reliability, but coherence. Certainly, the time is ripe for horror films about covertly embedded American hatred. But whether shooting for an M. Night voilà, a Peele puzzle box, or a bludgeoning Craven allegory, canny choices catalyze the blend of politics and terror. Pick something, not everything. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Shudder.

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COMICS N’ ART FEATURED ARTIST: Jesus Gavez, Visual Artist, Painter, Illustrator, Muralist

Be a Willamette Week featured artist! Any art style is welcome!

Let’s share your art! Contact us at art@wweek.com.

About the Artist/ Bio: Self-Taught, Queer, LatinX. Jesus Galvez pushes and stretches the lines of the imagination through his art. Traveling through dimensions, the subconscious, and circling back through the ancestral path. His paintings with an array of forms, stories, and quirkiness (the dedication to being a kid all your life) tries to help us understand ourselves and the world around us one painting/ creation at a time.

Website: oilonh2o.com Instagram: @oilonh2o

JACK KENT’S

Jack draws exactly what he sees n’ hears from the streets.

IG @sketchypeoplepdx kentcomics.com

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Willamette Week OCTOBER 14, 2020 wweek.com

JONESIN’

Week of October 22

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"Stretch Those Quads!"--a hardcore freestyle workout. [#570, May 2012]

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

"I’ve been told that nobody sings the word 'hunger' like I do," testified Aries chanteuse Billie Holiday. She wasn't suggesting that she had a stylish way of crooning about fine dining. Rather, she meant "hunger" in the sense of the longing for life's poignant richness. Her genius-level ability to express such beauty was due in part to her skillful vocal technique, but also because she was a master of cultivating soulful emotions. Your assignment in the coming weeks, Aries, is to refine and deepen your own hunger.

I vote in American elections, but I've never belonged to a political party. One of my favorite politicians is Bernie Sanders, who for most of his career has been an Independent. But now I'm a staunch advocate for the Democrats. Why? Because Republicans are so thoroughly under the curse of the nasty, cruel, toxic person known as Donald Trump. I'm convinced that it's crucial for our country's well-being that Democrats achieve total victory in the upcoming election. In accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to do your personal equivalent of what I've done: Unambiguously align yourself with influences that represent your highest, noblest values. Take a sacred stand not just for yourself, but also in behalf of everything you love.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) Author Renata Adler expresses my own feelings when she writes, "Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature." I bet if you're honest, Taurus, you would say the same. It's almost certainly the case that the people you regard as worthy of your love and interest are absolutely unique. In the sense that there are no other characters like them in the world, they are superstars and prodigies. I bring this to your attention because now is an excellent time to fully express your appreciation for their one-of-a-kind beauty—to honor and celebrate them for their entertainment value and precious influence and unparalleled blessings.

GEMINI (May 21-June20) "If you cannot find an element of humor in something, you’re not taking it seriously enough," writes author Ilyas Kassam. That's a key thought for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. Levity and joking will be necessities, not luxuries. Fun and amusement will be essential ingredients in the quest to make good decisions. You can't afford to be solemn and stern, because allowing those states to dominate you would diminish your intelligence. Being playful—even in the face of challenges—will ensure your ultimate success.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

ACROSS

56 Insider's knowledge

1 Last half of a ball game?

57 Viktor Bout or Adnan Khashoggi

5 Used (to) 15 She uses a bird to sweep the house

58 Dark form of quartz DOWN

17 Computer overhaul

1 Off-kilter

18 Gridiron measurements (abbr.)

2 Messed with the facts

19 Little bite

3 World Series precursor, for short

20 Gold, to Guatemalans

4 "As I see it," in chatrooms

21 "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?" network

5 Tack on

22 Bodybuilder's units 24 Word before Earth or City, in computer games 27 Drab shade 29 She was Dorothy on "The Golden Girls" 30 Org. that listens for alien signals 31 It's obsolete 35 Jovial question from someone eager to help 36 It covers Miami, Montpelier and Montreal 37 SOPA subject 38 Opera follower?

39 New Year's, in Hanoi 40 Mandolin relative 41 Robin Meade's network 42 Southwest sch. whose mascot is King Triton 44 Daily grind 45 Guy to say "'Sup?" to 46 "_ _ _ Ho" (Best Original Song Oscar winner of 2009) 47 The D in OED 50 Easy lunch to prepare

6 Shorten nails 7 Smoke

33 Heart location?

I'm hoping the horoscopes I wrote for you in late August helped propel you into a higher level of commitment to the art of transformation. In any case, I suspect that you will have the chance, in the coming weeks, to go even further in your mastery of that art.

To inspire you in your efforts, I'll encourage you to at least temporarily adopt one or more of the nicknames in the following list: 1. Flux Luster 2. Fateful Fluctuator 3. Shift Virtuoso 4. Flow Maestro 5. Alteration Adept 6. Change Arranger 7. Mutability Savant 8. Transition Connoisseur

34 Ophthalmologist's concerns

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

30 Lose your composure, in junior high-speak 31 "Anchors _ _ _" 32 Senator Jake who flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery

42 Implored 43 Richard who played Don Barzini in "The Godfather" 44 Vacation time, in slang 45 _ _ _ the Younger (Arthurian knight)

8 Palindromic prime minister of the 1940s-60s

46 Director Campion

9 Leather sharpener used in old-timey barber shops

48 Disgusting

10 Old rulers 11 Chemist Hahn 12 "Excusez-_ _ _ ..."

13 Roxy Music name 14 Room for board games, perhaps 16 Person with a booming voice, often

47 Zoologist Fossey 49 Cereal with gluten-free varieties 50 Org. that bestows merit badges 51 "Love, Reign _ _ _ Me" (The Who) 52 420, for 20 and 21 (abbr.)

53 "Just as I suspected!"

21 Donut shop option

54 "On the Road" protagonist _ _ _ Paradise

22 Upgraded

55 "Never heard of her"

23 Fail spectacularly, like a skateboarder 24 _ _ _ Saga (David Feintuch series of sci-fi novels) 25 "No need to pay" 26 Bishops' wear 27 Grain alcohol 28 Put someone in their place 29 Some hats worn on The Oregon Trail

©2020 - 2012 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

last week’s answers

"When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, too," wrote author Anne Morrow Lindbergh. "If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. Only when one is connected to one's own core, is one connected to others." In bringing these thoughts to your attention, Leo, I don't mean to imply that you are out of touch with your deep self. Not at all. But in my view, all of us can benefit from getting into ever-closer communion with our deep selves. In the coming weeks, you especially need to work on that—and are likely to have extra success in doing so.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) My cosmic tipsters told me that you will be even smarter than usual in the coming weeks. As I scoured the heavenly maps, I detected signs that you have the potential to be a skilled code-cracker, riddledecipherer, and solver of knotty problems and tricky dilemmas. That's why I suggest you express gratitude to your beautiful brain, Virgo. Sing it sweet songs and tell it how much you love it and find out which foods you can eat to strengthen it even more. Now read Diane Ackerman's description of the brain: "that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome."

HOMEWORK: Name five things you do to make yourself feel good. Then think of another thing to add to the list.

FreeWillAstrology.com

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) "I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity," said fashion writer Diana Vreeland. Here's how I interpret that: People who care mostly for their own feelings and welfare, and who believe they're more important than everyone else, are boring and repellent. But those who enjoy looking their best and expressing their unique beauty may do so out of a desire to share their gifts with the world. Their motivation might be artistry and generosity, not self-centeredness. In accordance with cosmic potentials, Scorpio, I invite you to elude the temptations of narcissism as you explore benevolent forms of vanity.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Yes, do let people see you sweat. At least for now, be forthright and revelatory. Let people witness your secret fire, your fierce tang, your salty tears, and your unhealed wounds. Hold nothing back as you give what you haven't been able to give before. Be gleefully expressive as you unveil every truth, every question, every buried joy. Don't be crude and insensitive, of course. Be as elegant and respectful as possible.

But make it your priority to experiment with sacred vulnerability. Find out how far you can safely go as you strip away the disguises that have kept you out of touch with your full power.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) Between 2008 and 2017, Southern California had two sizable earthquakes: 5.5 and 5.1 on the Richter scale.

But during the same period, the area had 1.8 million small quakes that were mostly too mild to be felt. The ground beneath the feet of the local people was shaking at the rate of once every three minutes. Metaphorically speaking, Capricorn, you're now in a phase that resembles the mild shakes. There's a lot of action going on beneath the surface, although not much of it is obvious. I think this is a good thing. The changes you're shepherding are proceeding at a safe, gradual, well-integrated pace.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) No American woman was allowed to earn a medical degree and practice as a physician until Aquarian-born Elizabeth Blackwell did it in 1849. It was an almost impossible feat, since the all-male college she attended undermined her mercilessly. Once she began her career a doctor, she constantly had to outwit men who made it difficult for her. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Eventually, she helped create a medical school for women in England and made it possible for 476 women to practice medicine there. I propose that we make her your patron saint for now. May she inspire you to redouble your diligent pursuit of your big dream.

Here's your motto: "Nevertheless, I'm persisting."

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) Henry David Thoreau wrote, "I fear my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced." You'll be wise to have a similar fear, Pisces.

According to my analysis, you can generate good fortune for yourself by transcending what you already know and think. Life is conspiring to nudge you and coax you into seeking experiences that will expand your understanding of everything. Take advantage of this opportunity to blow your own mind!

Check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes

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