If you’re a Portland City Council District 3 (SE) voter, don’t fill out your ballot without hearing our latest episode of Ballot Banter. For this district, I invited none other than D3 resident Mia Birk into the Shed.
Wait! If you or a friend are in District 2 (N/NE) or District 4 (W/Sellwood), don’t miss my conversation about those districts with D2 resident Kiel Johnson and D4 resident Lisa Caballero. OK, back to D3 and Mia Birk…
Mia Birk is a pillar of Portland’s cycling story. When outgoing U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer was commissioner-in-charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation in the mid 1990s and wanted to put us on the map as a cycling city, it was Birk he leaned on to get the job done. And she suceeded. Birk was PBOT’s bicycle coordinator until 1999 and set Portland on its course as the undeniable leader on cycling infrastructure in America. Birk then established the Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) as an adjunct professor at Portland State University and went on to become one of the principals at Alta Planning + Design and co-founder of Alta Bicycle Share. She also wrote, Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet, which was published in 2010. Today she’s a leader in Portland’s Jewish community and executive coach who writes the Fabulous Female Founders Substack.
The impressive and ambitious Mia Birk even found her way into election advocacy as a member of 12 for PDX, an ad hoc, grassroots group of Portlanders who came together to vet City Council candidates and produce a voters guide. That process, Birk’s 30+ years living in Portland, and her experience in government and business, give her considerable perspective on who might be a good fit to represent D3 on council.
In this episode, we go through the list of candidates and talk about who’s stood out on the campaign trail. Birk also explains the vetting process 12 for PDX went through and the rationale behind their four endorsements for D3: Rex Burkholder, Phillipe Knab, Jesse Cornett, and Steve Novick.
Other notable candidates that received airtime include: Daniel DeMelo, Angelita Morillo, Tiffany Koyama-Lane, Kezia Wanner, Jon Walker, Harrison Kass, and Ahlam Osman. I will also say I regret not talking more about Chris Flanary! I’ve been super impressed with Flanary each time I’ve talked to them. Birk liked them too, but felt it was too soon and Flanary needs more experience. Definitely check Flanary out when considering your rankings!
If you consider 12 for PDX as a guide, keep in mind Birk described the political leanings of (herself and) the group as the, “new middle.” These “middle or moderate” voters are what Birk describes as, “People who have been here a while, and we’ve bought our first homes, and we’re paying the taxes, and we’re trying to have a good life, and we’re raising kids,” Birk said. “And the way that [the word] ‘progressive’ has become doesn’t fit right anymore. It doesn’t feel like progressive is the word that we think it is anymore.”
D3 has traditionally been the bastion of lefty politics in Portland. One of the big unanswered questions leading up to election day on November 5th is how many Mia Birks are out there? And just how far to the center has southeast Portland’s electorate gone as the crisis of unsheltered homelessness and related public safety concerns have become such a dominant force in political narratives.
Watch our conversation in the video above or on YouTube, and you’ll also find it in our podcast feed.
Links for this episode:
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“Oh yeah, there is that part north of I-84…”
We had a city staff member who helped us get EPAP started, who frequently pointed out how “tribal” Portland advocates and civic leaders were, that their area was of the first importance, that their issues were the worst in the city. This is something that even Mia Burke seems to reflect – her immediate neighborhood had all these issues that she clearly knows very well, but her knowledge of the neighborhoods further away gradually gets less and less, and you both dismiss Madison South (which actually has Gateway Green within its boundaries but no access) as being too far away to care about. And Mia isn’t unique in her biases, we all do this.
My question is, will Portland’s new city councilors demonstrate such geographic biases as well? Will they focus on just (1) the set of streets and business district near where they happen to live, or go wider and focus on their (2) whole district, or wider still and focus on overall issues and projects that are (3) citywide?
From what I’ve observed in my community of 5 districts and from what I’ve heard about other cities (NYC and Chicago being the most notorious), they will focus 60% on (1), 35% on (2), and maybe 5% on (3).
Local Portland residents, on the other hand, frequently have no clue in what part of town they live in, let alone which district or neighborhood, and folks near the city boundaries aren’t even sure which city they live in – the postal service is no help on this. The only reason they are voting at all is likely because of the presidential election.
As a NE District 3 resident, I can confirm that it’s no fun being the red-headed stepchild of the district. But hey, the boundary had to be drawn somewhere, and there are actually a handful of candidates, including some with a bit of backing behind them, that come from the area. Chris Flanary, for example, is close by in Montavilla, which I would argue has more in common with Madison South than Laurelhurst.
As to the question of focusing on small areas versus the wider city, I think that’s just going to always be a consequence of having geographical districts. But the new system sure as hell beats the current commission system, where almost all commissioners focused on what made Portland Metro Chamber (nee Portland Business Alliance) happy and what made the central city look best.
We’re specifically electing folks to represent us and our district. To do that most effectively, sometimes it may require taking a whole-city view, sometimes not.
Do people vote for pronouns?
Only in the bizarro world of SE Portland would Rex Burkholder, Phillipe Knab, Jesse Cornett, and Steve Novick. be considered “moderate” or “centrist”.
If you want moderate or centrist candidates (who would still be considered far left in Oklahoma) take a good look at Kezia Waner, Harrison Kass, Sandeep Bali, Daniel Gill, Terry Parker and Kent Landgraver.
Look at who are the big-money backers of Birk’s picks. And their cop and real-estate endorsers. And maybe you’ll start to see that these are conservatives who she is trying to promote as “the new middle” as she gets more financially comfortable and conservative.
Harrison Kass writes/works for a conservative think tank founded by Richard Nixon. If that’s your definition of “centrist”, I’d hate to see your definition of a conservative.
Still deciding how to vote, so it would be more useful to explain what about this (or other) candidates you do or don’t like rather than just guilt by association.
Which Kass positions do you dislike?
Watts, have you read the Oct 21st letter from the city auditor regarding Rene Gonzalez using city funds to alter his wikipedia page? Not the original finding, but the recent letter about the cover-up that involves Harrison Kass:
The auditors PR release stated (bold mine):
Lying to investigators is disqualifying.
I agree. That’s actually useful information.
My thoughts exactly
Terry Parker is literally the most anti-bike, pro-car candidate out of all of the candidates running citywide. No thank you. Just watch the first two minutes of this League of Women’s Voters interview with him.
https://youtu.be/3AR1pMdDdVw?si=27aHmSgP03iVGDkU
Are you taking issue with the term “taxpaying motorists”? I didn’t hear him say anything inaccurate, as the vast majority of PBOT funding comes from parking and gas tax revenues. It sounds like he has issues with PBOT’s outreach process.
I didn’t rank him, but I’m not seeing why you think he is so radical.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/budget/overview#toc-how-is-pbot-funded-
Terry has been around Portland forever. He regularly testifies at City Council and neighborhood meetings. It’s not just those few words that make me know he is anti-bike. It’s the decades of anti-bike testimony he has given and neighborhood activism that demonstrate my statement.
Well we happen to be voting in Portland, so I think labels for what is actually happening here politically, can be useful. I don’t care what someone would be considered in Oklahoma. I only care where their perspectives and positions land them on the Portland political spectrum.
Good morning, Jonathan! Mia Birk brought up the label question too, a little differently than I did, but it was there. Here’s the thing, I am a liberal Democrat, I even used to call myself a progressive in the 2000s. My politics haven’t changed. (Hillary Clinton also defined herself as an evidence-based progressive in the 2000s.)
But a voter poorly informed about the issues, who just votes the label “progressive,” can end up voting against their policy wishes.
Meaning, if you define “progressive” as being against arresting a camper who refuses to move despite being given a choice of shelter types, poorly informed voters might vote “progressive” even though they are unhappy with how the County has handled street camping over the past few years.
The beliefs and policies that have been defined as “progressive” have changed so much that many don’t recognize what it means any longer.
Labels are the lazy way out in this election. Voters should look at the individual candidates, look at their experience, see if they are qualified to sit on council and if they agree with the candidate’s specific policy positions. Slogans don’t cut it with me.
Hi Lisa,
You keep making this point and I feel like it implies that I believe something that I don’t believe.
I’m not being lazy here and I don’t think what I’m doing is simply throwing out “slogans.” I am not afraid of using words just because some people can’t think critically and keep an open mind when they hear them and I think people are generally smarter than they’re given credit for. The framing of “left-right-center” I believe is a useful and often necessary tool for having conversations about politics.
The way your critiques sound it makes it seem like I’m just telling people to let these labels decide who to vote for. That’s not what I’m doing at all. I’m adding context and trying to help folks understand how those useful and historic labels should be defined in Portland in 2024. The way you come at this is almost as if we should just scrub those words out of our language? I think it’s our job as leaders and journalists to help people understand that a word’s meaning can change over time — and not to just stop using the word because it’s politically-charged.
I feel like both you and Mia are doing a bit of anti-labels posturing and using me to act as a foil to prove you are somehow beyond labels and not lazy. I’m actually trying to do the work of educating folks about who fits where in the political spectrum based on their beliefs, positions, and so on. So I’d say it’s not about my use of the labels in a vacuum, it’s my use of these labels in the context of the work and discussions that I am sharing. And in the latter sense, I think it’s necessary and not as superficial and lazy as you are making it seem.
I also think it’s notable that you and Mia had this concern — when both of you are supporting candidates that are more to the political right than folks might expect. For example, when I shared my picks for left/center/right with Kiel he just said, “yep, that sounds about right.”
This is a nuanced conversation that is challenging to make productive even in person, must less electronically! So I appreciate your grace and of course I love hearing your feedback as always.
Meanwhile, as always, I hear your concerns and I’ll continue to interrogate my use of those labels and adjust if I feel like it would be a more helpful way of informing folks.
Personally, I think most political discourse I have heard over the past couple of weeks (mostly not here) would be better off without the labels and without the concern about where people fit on the left-right “political spectrum” (a concept we all know is BS).
People are complex. Examining a candidate’s ideas and priorities and willingness to listen and ability to deliver should give you a pretty good idea of whether they will be an effective representative or not. Whether they fit into a particular pigeon hole seems less useful.
Labels are often used as a way of tribalizing politics in a way that I think is not constructive.
I know that Watts! But you are also doing what Mia and Lisa are doing. I’m, “examining a candidate’s ideas and priorities” and then sharing where on the political spectrum those ideas and priorities lie and then trying to come up with an overall bucket they might fit in — if they fit at all. I’m also often saying exactly what you and Mia and Lisa are saying about how this election is very interesting and how the politicians defy traditional labels and that everyone needs to do a lot of homework to be well informed. If you actually listen and read all my work, you will see that I’m not pigeon-holing anyone! Just because I speak those words, doesn’t mean I’m using them a particular way.
This is so exhausting to be told, “people are complex” as if that’s not one of my foundational concepts of how I see all this stuff. I 100% agree and my record reflects that I understand that, yet comments like these imply that I don’t. Do you see how that’s frustrating for me?
I expect the “people are complex” message resonates with you because that’s often your response to people trying to fit you into one particular bucket or another.
Left-right doesn’t even work for many of the issues we face: getting homeless people indoors is often labeled “right” whereas letting them fend for themselves on the street is “left”. Huh?
Knowing what an ill fit those labels are for you, why apply them to others?
Left-right fits very well actually, for your example. And for that matter, almost all political issues.
Getting homeless people indoors is not a policy, it’s a wish. How you do it though matters. Prison is indoors, police are a way to get them there. That’s a right wing solution. Housing and treatment are also indoors. Public housing is generally left. Letting them fend for themselves in tents is fairly right leaning, as it’s the state doing nothing, indecision. But when the options are doing nothing or cops and prison, it is indeed the more left leaning option.
The problem isn’t that “left vs right” doesn’t fit, it’s that one individual’s opinions aren’t all left or right, and that for political reasons, people like to label bad things with labels they don’t like (e.g. “tents are a loony left solution”). It’s not that the label left or right doesn’t fit, it’s that the people using it don’t know what they’re talking about (or are deliberately misleading).
No one is proposing sheltering people by throwing them in prison, so we don’t need to spend more time on strawmen like that.
Is Wheeler’s TASS program coded “left” or “right”? (Getting people into government funded shelter could be considered “left”, but it’s run by private contractors so maybe not?) How about opening Bybee Hope Center? (Maybe more right because it’s privately funded?) What about the county opposition to the creation of that facility (by politicians generally coded “left”)? How about giving out tents (a policy I could see libertarians embracing as a way of minimizing government and maximizing individual freedom.)
I don’t think any of these efforts can be reduced to “left” or “right” (even the tents). They are policies and efforts with different effects and records of success, all carried out by people with solidly “left” views by American standards.
Absolutely. 99% of the time, when someone does that it’s because they’re trying to sneak in positions/policies that would (accurately) be labeled more right leaning. I.e. they don’t like the labels that would now fit them, or they know they’re unpopular.
This presumes that a person should be labeled based on their most right-leaning position. Otherwise, you might be snuggling in more left leaning policies. (So easy to get sucked into the left-right false dichotomy.)
It sounds as if we all agree that people hold a variety of views on a range of issues, and that trying to condense all that into a single label is prone to error.
Jonathan, I’m sorry if my comments came across as being directed toward you, I didn’t mean them that way. I’ll try re-wording.
The Oregonian commissioned a poll of Portland-area voters in October,
“56% of Portland voters polled said they strongly or somewhat support the county spending money to “step up law enforcement efforts to reduce unsheltered homelessness and send to jail anyone caught repeatedly breaking local camping regulations.”
Perhaps more telling, those polled had a more favorable view of the government’s handling of homelessness since Portland began enforcing a camping ban in July. Those are very specific issues on which every candidate can and should be directly queried: “Do you support enforcing the camping ban?”
Nobody is purer than a virgin. Some of the most pristine words about transportation policy and homelessness are coming from candidates who can’t point to anything they have accomplished in those fields. Nada, no experience. Never got their hands dirty.
I am voting experience over correct speech.
Italian olive oil producers have “defined” Extra Virgin olive oil as the first pressing of olives in the oil production process – subsequent pressings are defined as “pure”, “olive flavored”, and so on. However, they actually have two even higher grades – “Immaculate Conception” olive oil is the first pressing of manually selected ripe olives at select artisanal producers, while “Pharmaceutical Grade” olive oil has absolutely no taste whatsoever and is further processed to be used in pills.
LOL Thanks for the laugh!
Hi Jonathan,
I think what you are interpreting as anti-label “posturing” on my and Mia’s part, might really just be political experience.
I’ll take a shot at explaining. Local politics and national politics are different. Labels like “left” and “right” are more useful nationally than locally. My experience with local actions (Portland, but also including in San Diego and New York City) is that labels, and even party affiliation, aren’t particularly important. My biggest accomplishments have come while working with people I might disagree with on a range of issues — other than the one on which we were working together.
That’s why looking at a candidate’s experience is so important. What have they accomplished? Who did they work with to make it happen? Do other people respect them?
Candidate questionaires miss this if they only ask for opinions on issues. Anybody who writes well can look good in writing. That is why the 12 for PDX endorsements are so helpful — the group is savvy enough politically not to be seduced into supporting a candidate who talks a golden talk, but gosh, has no relevant accomplishments. Their endorsement list for D4 looks like my filled-out ballot (well, except for the order).
And when you find that experienced candidate, beware that experience is often viewed negatively in a woman. So tropes like, “too ambitious,” “not likeable,” “Lady Macbeth,” and “political animal” will be used against them. Nobody says that about Steve Novick.
The policy positions I’m interested in are whether council candidates are openly opposed to Portland’s ubiquitous laissez faire capitalism. I guess this makes me “lazy” because this is synonymous with a certain political label.
Not at all. But your label means something very specific. What liberals have been living through over the past decade is a war over language, and what specific words mean. “Progressive” doesn’t have a commonly accepted meaning in Portland anymore.
I’m “liberal” in that I believe in the regulatory state, and civil rights and women’s rights.
Who has taken any position on “laissez faire capitalism”? That’s not a topic I’ve heard discussed much .
Basically, the US Constitution and the earlier Declaration of Independence are Enlightenment laissez faire capitalist documents.
In late 18th Century politics (and early 19th Century), “laissez faire capitalism” was also called “Liberal Economics”, as advocated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and many others, as opposed to “Mercantile Capitalism”. The dominant British Whig Party changed their name to Liberals in 1834, the Tory Party to Conservative soon afterwards (Labour came much later, in the 1870s). In the 1970s the Liberals merged with the Social Democrats to form the Liberal Democrats.
Most of the rich white men who wrote our constitution were laissez faire capitalists, many of whom belonged to the Whig Party. The US branch of the Whig Party eventually became the Democratic Party, as most Torys migrated to Canada after the war (and later formed the Progressive Conservatives). There were also Federalists (who believed in a regulatory state) and various other political stripings in the US. (Modern Republicans didn’t really exist until the 1850s.)
So for many people around the world, “liberalism” = laissez faire capitalism. They assume that is what the US is all about – they see it in our constitution, our laws, what we enforce (and more importantly what we fail to enforce), our foreign policy, our huge global corporations, and most importantly of all, our total lack of a viable left-wing social democratic party.
Let’s face it, most our Democratic members of congress are well to the right of the British Conservative Party and the Canadian Progressive Conservatives, and our Republicans are even further to the right. Even British Conservatives believe in and fully fund the National Health Service when they can, rather than supporting huge bloated multi-national health insurance companies with some sort of imaginary health insurance scheme as American politicians seem to push.
So which Portland candidates are taking positions on this?
Pretty much everyone puts on the moderate/balanced talking point.
It’s kind of telling that Birk is avoiding the term progressive, as she self-defines the group as homeowners and taxpayers “trying to have a good life.”
Homeownership is a privilege. Only 53% of Portlanders are such; generally the wealthier.
And to put down “paying the taxes” as a frame is a pretty right-wing frame. We all pay taxes. Wealthier people like Birk pay more, as they should.
The group includes doctors, venture capitalists, business owners, health care executives, chamber of commerce…
Anyway, I don’t have a huge disagreement with the list of folks they support – Novick and Cornett are solid, Burkholder is fine except his support for spending a third of all our money on highway expansions. It’s interesting it’s four white men.
“East Portland Chamber of Commerce” represents everything east of the Willamette River, but most particularly (historically) business associations west of 82nd – “East Portland” in this case refers to the old City of East Portland which merged with Portland in the early 20th century. The business associations east of 82nd traditionally worked independently or with Gresham and have only recently started to work with the East Portland Chamber of Commerce. It’s hard to say which group is more conservative, PBA or the East Portland Chamber of Commerce.
You’re really reaching here in an attempt to paint homeowners in Portland as out of touch, wealthy, etc. As you state yourself, it’s a majority of the citizens. The group includes hospital workers, mechanics, construction workers, retail workers, restaurant employees…
We’ve seen massive increases in city/county funding for homeless services and housing while our public schools get worse every year. Former “progressives” like Birk aren’t going to come out and say it in the open because it is politically unpopular, but there is a feeling that our local government cares more about drug addicts who move here or get bussed here by other cities than they do about the children who are born here. Drugs and feces in our parks, blocked sidewalks, insane people on public transit. Everyone has limits, and many “progressive” parents in PDX have been pushed past it.
I noted the exact statistic, you use non-representative anecdata.
To be clear: homeowners are much wealthier than renters. From the National Association of Home Builders:
“Net worth, the measure of households’ wealth, is the difference between families’ assets and liabilities. An analysis of the 2022 SCF found that homeowners had a median net worth of $396,000, while renters had the median net worth of just $10,400. Thus, homeowners are wealthier than renters.
“In 2022, the median net worth for homeowners was about 38 times the median net worth for renters.”
I’m not saying Birk is out of touch, just that she’s more in touch with a wealthier reality than the middle/low-income reality. Her views may align with the majority of Portlanders.
I admit to caring far more about the children of low-income folk than the privileged children of “former-progressive” homeowners. As for your use of “born here”, I am just opposed to xenophobic regionalism as I am to xenophobic nationalism because they are two faces of the same bigoted coin.
In a just society that cares about human flourishing it is critically important to direct “care” to those who need it the most.
How would you reform government in Oregon?
The City of Portland doesn’t fund schools directly – there are 9 different school districts that serve different parts of the city, even the Portland Public School District serves part of Beaverton, and District 1 has parts of 5 different public school districts (PPS, David Douglas, Parkrose, Reynolds, & Centennial), all of which are supported with perfectly legal property tax authority that competes directly with the city – and the counties don’t fund schools either.
Streets, sidewalks, maintenance, it’s a mix of city, county, state, schools, homeowners, and institutions who all do their little parts, or rather blame others for not doing their parts, as the case may be.
Do you think Oregon ought to be more like those states that have banned referendums and statewide measures?
Oregon absolutely needs to reform school funding. We need to roll back measure 5 and measure 50 so higher cost of living areas like Portland can spend more per student.
Obviously, that is a statewide issue. But we do need to focus locally as well. If we don’t have local leaders who value children and families, we will not be in a position to get the funding we need to reduce class sizes, stave off school closures, etc.
We’re spending roughly $50,000 locally per homeless person every year, and about $12,000 per PPS student per year. Something is very wrong.
https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/news/multnomah-county-board-approves-36-billion-spending-plan-2024
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state