Posts published in “Oregon column”

Oregonians have a front-row seat to watch, though not vote in, an obscure congressional race that could say much about the reshaping of partisan politics in this state and beyond.

I’m not talking about Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, now held by Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, which saw the state’s closest congressional elections for the past two election cycles and may again this year, though, it’s certainly a race to watch.

No, the Evergreen State contest of greatest interest ahead of the Aug. 4 primary is on the east side of the state, just north of Hermiston and Milton-Freewater and Enterprise, in the 5th district stretching from Oregon to Canada.

The reason is the uncertainty thrown into the works by — wait for it — an independent candidate. And independents, whether of the same-named party or actually non-aligned, always are a big factor in Oregon.

The district, mostly rural but centered around Spokane, seems an unlikely magnet for close attention because there have been no close general elections there in many years. This was the district Democrat Tom Foley, who rose to speaker of the House, represented for three decades before his loss in the Republican sweep of 1994.

Republicans have held it in the 32 years since, first George Nethercutt, then Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and since 2025, Michael Baumgartner.

None of those Republicans have had a close call in all these years. A few of the Democratic candidates have been highly capable and well positioned, but even the strongest of them – Lisa Brown, a long-time state legislator and current mayor of Spokane — could do no better than fall nearly 10 points short.

Still, while Donald Trump won this district in the last two elections, he did so both times with a blah 54% of the vote. The Cook Partisan Index gives the district a mere 5% Republican lean, suggesting it could be competitive. In this year of mid-term discontent, might Baumgartner be at some risk?

There’s at least one reason to think so: Baumgartner himself has left an indicator to that effect.

His opposition heading into the primary includes 11 candidates, an unusually large field almost evenly divided between Democrats and independents (meaning, not associated with a party). Just two of these 11 seem to be well ahead of the others: Democrat Carmela Conroy and independent Nate Powell.

Conroy has been around this track once before: She ran against Baumgartner two years ago and lost to him 60.6% to 39.3%, a normal partisan result for this district in this century.

She has made the argument that she’d be a stronger and better established candidate the second time, and that Baumgartner would be weaker because of problems associated with the Trump administration. Baumgartner has been an across the board Trump loyalist in the House, including on issues like tariffs and the Iran war which are highly unpopular back home.

Powell, a Spokane firefighter, Marine veteran and first-time candidate, has a different take: Go after not only Trump but the political system. He said in one news report, “The problems we’re facing are not left-right issues. They are top-bottom issues, because we have let billionaires and large corporations pay lobbyists to buy politicians to own our government, and until we fix the problem of corporations being overrepresented in our government, we will never be able to support working people.”

He sounds, in other words, like many of the anti-Trump insurgents, such as fellow independent Dan Osborn in Nebraska.

At this point we need to remember, as Baumgartner clearly does, how Washington’s primary system works. It’s a top two, meaning that the two candidates who receive the highest number of votes in Tuesday’s primary election will go on to November, regardless of which if any party they have joined. Baumgartner clearly will be one of the finalists, but who will be the other?

Here’s a clue: Baumgartner is spending a good deal of money on an ad purporting to attack Conroy, in terms that make her sound appealing to Democratic primary voters.

Conroy does have, or did as of recent reports, a fundraising advantage over Powell. But Powell is getting significant funding from PACs, to the tune of at least $800,000, including one that provided critical help to Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022.

One of those high-frequency ads describes Powell as the “only candidate who will fight for Medicare for All, beat Baumgartner, and stop Trump.” The race between the two of them seems highly competitive.

If Powell wins, he would not have to worry about a Democrat competing with him for anti-Baumgartner votes.

That would make a useful test — courtesy of Washington’s top-two election system — for the theory that an independent running head to head against a Republican (or Democrat) in a district dominated by that opponent’s party might have a shot at winning.

Keep an eye on Washington’s 5th District.

Originally posted in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

If Portland offered the Trail Blazers a blank check to stay, how much would be enough?

Next month, when a major deal-cutting deadline hits, the Portland City Council will be faced with that and other hard questions about the future of the Moda Center and its major tenant and financial core, the Trail Blazers. The city is in a tough spot because their negotiating partner has more leverage than they do. Portland may not be prepared for what comes next.

The Blazers, founded in 1970 by Harry Glickman, passed to other owners including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. After Allen died, his estate in August 2025 sold the team to Dallas businessman Thomas Dundon. The National Basketball Association Board of Governors approved that sale in March.

When Dundon bought the team, he was not constrained by any requirement that it stay in Portland; major league team purchases occasionally prompt moves to other places. Eager to keep the Blazers, Oregon officials quickly said when the Blazers went up for sale they would work with the new owner.

The Rose Garden — uh, Moda Center — opened in October 1995 with an audience capacity of around 20,000, depending on the type of event. It has been home to an endless list of sporting, musical and other entertainment activities, and even memorable political events, such as one of the biggest rallies held by then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and a speech by then-President Bill Clinton.

But from the beginning and as planned, the major tenant and financial cornerstone has been the Blazers. Even so the center has had financial stress over the years. The Oregon Arena Corporation, its one-time operator, filed for bankruptcy in 2004. There  have been ownership transitions (and conflicts with the Blazers) since. The last sale was in August 2024 when the Portland City Council agreed to buy it for $7.1 million. (Wonder if anyone at City Hall has second thoughts about that now …)

If that sounds like a fire sale price (construction cost was more than a half-billion of today’s dollars), there were reasons, one being the need for upgrades and renovation. The Moda is said to be the NBA facility which has gone longest without a major renovation.

But how much should be spent, and by who?

The stakes are state-level as well as local. In April, Gov. Tina Kotek signed Senate Bill 1501 setting up a “pathway” toward joint Portland city-Oregon state ownership of the center, along with other provisions.

A group of Portland-area businesses and organizers called We Are Rip City unveiled its website on July 16, saying, “The State of Oregon is offering $365 million to help modernize the Moda Center. Portland and Multnomah County can pay for the rest with existing funds – no new taxes, no tax increases.” It said that $670 million in economic impact — much of that directly tied to the Blazers — is at risk.

The day before, mayors from 24 Portland-area cities sent a letter to Portland City Hall pleading with the city to make a deal.

Portland officials do not seem resistant to that. About the same time as all that pro-deal flurry, the Portland City Council released a term sheet describing elements of what a deal with Blazer owner Dundon might look like (as an opening bid). The city called it “reasonable, fair, and focused on keeping the Trail Blazers in Portland, ensuring the long?term viability of the city?owned arena, and delivering meaningful community benefits.”

The Blazers camp has used other language. A string of news reports on their perspective includes phrases like “non-starter” and “very far apart.” So far, there’s nothing resembling a note of optimism.

Of course, negotiations often look difficult on the front end.

But Blazers owner Dundon has little incentive to compromise, or maybe even to work with Portland at all.

He lives in Dallas, and his interests mostly focus on the southeast quadrant of the country. (His other major sports team is the Carolina Hurricanes in the National Hockey League.) He has a record of negotiating tough, and has famously gotten the nickname “el cheapo” for cost cutting that has yielded some grumbling within the Blazer environment.

He may not feel inclined to do favors for Oregon. The news site ProPublica reported in October 2025 that “Dundon created a company Oregon accused in 2020 of preying on residents through high-interest car loans they couldn’t afford. The state’s then-attorney general said that the business practices of Santander Consumer USA were ‘predatory and harmful and will not be tolerated in Oregon’ as she announced Oregon’s piece of a $550 million multistate lawsuit settlement with the company. In addition, Oregon is part of an ongoing multistate investigation into another national subprime lender for which Dundon has served in a leadership role, Exeter Finance.”

The city of Portland, simply, holds precious few high cards. There’s no significant barrier to Dundon doing what he chooses.

For Portland, it may have to come to a serious decision, in the next couple of weeks, of just how much it is willing to pay to keep the Blazers. And there’s no guarantee any rational amount will be enough.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

When Dennis Richardson was elected Oregon secretary of state, on the same day and party ticket as Donald Trump first was elected president, he moved quickly to look into a subject Trump talked about then and ever since: Voter fraud and election corruption.

The following February, Richardson reported what he found in the Oregon voting system: Some areas for improvement, but generally a system that works well and cleanly. Once a skeptic of the Motor Voter registration system, he had revised his view, saying it “actually has strengthened us in some ways.”

He warned against unfounded claims of voting problems because “it causes greater distrust of the government. … I want to make sure that the citizens of the state can trust their (voting) system.”

Richardson did not stop looking for bugs in the system, however, and he found some. In September 2017, he reported his office had found 54 possible instances of voter fraud, across Oregon, in the previous year’s general election — in an election where 2,051,448 ballots were cast, or about 0.002%. And those were simply questionable votes. Upon investigation, nearly all cases were found not to merit criminal charges.

In 2020, the Legislative Fiscal Office reviewed vote by mail in Oregon and found the state attorney general’s office (which handles cases of voter fraud) “obtained 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud out of the 60.9 million ballots in Oregon elections cast over a 19-year period. That amounts to a rate of .00006%. These figures demonstrate that voter fraud is exceedingly rare in Oregon, and is no more widespread in vote by mail elections than it is in polling place elections.”

For some Oregonians — and other people around the country — all this still doesn’t feel quite right. Getting ballots through the mail, and sending them out that way (though many people, myself included, prefer to use one of the state’s ballot boxes) somehow intuitively doesn’t seem very secure, not in the same visible way filled-out ballots are when quickly dropped in a locked box at a polling place in front of poll workers.

The Trump administration has piled on, implicitly accusing many states, Oregon among them, of failing to keep people who shouldn’t be voting from casting ballots.

Across the border in Idaho, state officials like those in Oregon have declined to provide to federal officials some sensitive voter information. That has led to federal legal action, and as in Oregon threatening letters were sent from the Trump Department of Justice. In Trump-supportive Idaho the attorney general’s office replied with the rebuke, “Stop threatening your friends in Idaho.”

Evidently, threatening states which voted against Trump would be less objectionable, although Oregon (like many other states) has also objected strongly.

Intuitive or not, the Oregon voting process is secure.

Bear in mind that most election administration happens at the county level. Clerks in Oregon’s 36 counties are most directly responsible for distributing ballots and counting those returned, and the process is handled by local people. The secretary of state, who does have responsibility for overseeing election processes, is mainly concerned with ensuring the counties are acting properly. That’s worth remembering: Any claim that elections have been corrupted is really an accusation that all our county clerks have been — and there’s no evidence of that.

The statewide system seems robust. Each ballot has a unique bar code, and they are tracked through the system. (During election periods, voters can obtain notices from the state about when their ballot was received by county officials, and where it is in the system.)

The 2020 legislative audit said “There are numerous processes built into Oregon’s vote by mail system to ensure integrity, including unique barcodes to track ballots, signature verification to prove voters’ identities, and election security plans filed by county elections offices. Vote by mail also leaves a paper trail that can be audited. In fact, two academic studies have concluded that the election results in vote by mail elections are generally more accurate than the election results in polling place elections.”

Cyberattacks are always a threat, but so far the system seems well protected (and regularly reviewed), and the core counting and related processes aren’t linked to the internet.

On the back end, the initially-reported election results are rechecked in several ways. Since 2008 the state has overseen after-election audits which include human hand counts to verify the accuracy of the machine counts. Many other states take similar steps, and around the nation the results have been generally the same: Mistakes are rare.

To be human-made and human-operated is to be less than perfect. But the babble from the beltway notwithstanding, Oregon’s mechanisms for voting come remarkably close.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

The Trump administration’s take on monopolies, mega-mergers and related activity, among the most important economic actions available to a government, often has been buried under many of the other national headlines in the last year and a half.

But the Oregon attorney general’s office — with counterparts in other states — may be about to launch a significant effort in the area.

The general purpose of anti-trust laws has been “to protect the process of competition for the benefit of consumers, making sure there are strong incentives for businesses to operate efficiently, keep prices down, and keep quality up.” The laws have often fallen far behind the times, especially in times of rapid technology change, and often leave out concerns other than consumer prices.

Anti-trust enforcement in this country was kick-started here when Congress passed the Sherman Act in 1890, but less known is that some states were working on it even earlier, and Congress voted partly in reaction to them.

Nationally, anti-trust action has trended ever weaker over the last century, and as one analysis from a large law firm working in anti-trust noted, “the transition to the second Trump administration has ushered in a much more favorable antitrust enforcement climate for M&A [mergers and acquisitions].” Friends and allies of the administration appear to get concierge service rather than tough skepticism.

But the feds aren’t the only anti-trust game around.

Most states have anti-trust laws on their books as well, some preceding federal laws and sometimes mirroring them, and many states have been active in enforcing them. That’s not a far reach, either; even the Federal Trade Commission (one of the major national anti-trust enforcers, at least in theory) says on its website, “most states have antitrust laws that are enforced by state attorneys general or private plaintiffs. Many of these statutes are based on the federal antitrust laws.”

In recent years, states increasingly have been banding together to bring major anti-trust actions. Earlier this year, eight attorneys general (led by California’s but including Oregon’s) moved to stop the planned merger of Nexstar Media Group and the broadcast company Tegna,which owns KGW-TV; that fight is ongoing.

In May, five states (again including Oregon) went to court with an attempt to expand their ability to undertake more kinds of anti-trust action.

Oregon was also among the parties in the legal battle against the Kroger-Albertsons grocery merger, which ultimately fell apart. It also was a player in the Live Nation/Ticketmaster case.

Nearly all states have anti-trust law in place; Oregon’s is the simply-named Oregon Anti-Trust Law (in chapter 646 of title 50). One review of state anti-trust laws notes that while it includes provisions against cartels and conspiracy, single-firm conduct and price discrimination, it doesn’t include provisions other states have concerning monopsony (where a single major buyer effectively controls the market), buyer power or interlocking directorates.

The whole area of anti-trust law has been busy enough that the Oregon State Bar has an Antitrust and Trade Regulation Section for members.

Don’t be surprised if a few expansions in Oregon’s anti-trust are proposed in an upcoming session of the legislature.

Legal activity seems about ready to expand. On June 17, Attorney General Dan Rayfield asked the Oregon Legislature’s Emergency Board for permission to hire 16 staffers — five attorneys and 11 other support staff — to triple the capacity of the already-existing Antitrust Division.

That speaks to something more ambitious than the state has seen so far. You can get a sense of that from the source of the funding for the new jobs: Not from state tax funds but from money recovered from losers in anti-trust cases.

In his statement after the funding approval, Rayfield seemed to indicate what he has in mind:.“Grocery bills are skyrocketing, there are fewer choices for things like cable and internet service, and things like tickets to concerts and movies are increasingly out of reach. A big part of the reason is that corporations are being allowed to consolidate unchecked – with no federal oversight. Oregon and other states are now the last line of defense to protect working families and that’s what drove the urgency behind today’s action.”

As a matter of politics, such a mindset is aimed directly at the barely affordable cost of living so many Oregonians experience. The Democratic argument writes itself: The Trump administration won’t do anything meaningful about prices, so we will.

Expect to hear more about this in the months ahead.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Not everything in the newly-released report of the Governor’s Prosperity Council is uncontroversial, or should be, or points specifically to major systemic problems that limit Oregon’s economic growth.

But some do. Two general proposals especially, which may at first sound almost like anodyne boilerplate, seem on reflection like matters of real significance and specific relevance to the way Oregon works, or doesn’t.

And in theory at least, both ought not to be non-controversial because they touch on matters of simple competence and fairness.

Gov. Tina Kotek formed the 15-member council, which includes a number of business leaders around the state, in January to “recommend actionable steps to accelerate Oregon’s economy, create good paying jobs, and recruit and grow Oregon’s businesses.

It didn’t stint on recommendations: The report runs 452 pages. Some of its ideas are very specific, such as those concerning taxes and spending, and some still seem a little more vague, even if numbers are attached (such as a recommendation to reduce regulations by a set percentage, without more specificity on which regulations exactly should be dropped).

But at least two ideas have deeper implications for the way things are or should be done in Oregon.

The topline for the first: ”The state should transform Business Oregon [a state economic development organization] into the Oregon Commerce Authority, governed by a board of business and innovation leaders and the Governor …”

Which sounds like: “Great, let’s set up a committee and slap a new name on it.”

Except that’s not what the report was getting at. (The new name would be beside the point.) There’s an underlying problem in Oregon’s economic development system this proposal is designed to address:

“More than 850 organizations make up Oregon’s economic development system, all broadly focused on business growth and job creation. However, consistent collaboration around shared priorities is the exception, not the norm. For businesses of all sizes, this fragmentation can make it difficult to identify a clear entry point, navigate available programs, or receive coordinated support.”

The simple number of 850 economic development organizations in Oregon suggests the issue: Clearly the problem doesn’t involve inadequate resources or effort, but rather the lack of a unified effort. If Oregon’s economic development efforts are that fractured, that incoherent, there should be little argument the system presents a real handicap to economic growth.

The point of the Authority would be to place someone in actual charge, someone setting a consistent approach and message and harnessing the grab-bag of small pieces into a larger, comprehensive effort.

It went on: “The Authority should establish measurable statewide economic development goals and maintain a public-facing dashboard tracking key metrics such as business growth, job creation, project timelines, regional investment, customer response times, and economic competitiveness outcomes to improve transparency and accountability …”

Simple provision of coordination and competence could help quite a bit. It’s not that all those people working in economic development aren’t capable; lots of them surely are. But if they’re not working together, the state isn’t going to get traction from them.

The argument for the second point may be a little less clear cut for some people, but the underlying principle should not be: Justice delayed is justice denied.

This relates to the state’s overall system — not so much its content, but its process — of regulation. The Council said that people commenting on it around the state said much of the statewide regulatory system is “fragmented, lengthy, inconsistent, and costly.”

That assessment probably wouldn’t draw a serious argument broadly around the state, and across a large number of agencies, and it would apply to individuals and non-profits as well, and really almost anyone other than people trying to use the flaws in the cumbersome system to achieve a result not through merit but through wearing down the opposition.

Those too-frequent realities of the system build distrust generally in government systems, and ought to be something advocates of government action would want to address as well.

The proposed solutions involve setting action deadlines and even penalties for unnecessary delays: “The process should prevent projects from being delayed indefinitely and should include accountability measures such as public reporting and partial fee refunds when deadlines are missed.”

The idea is for greater efficiency and timeliness in addressing regulatory issues, not merely as an aspiration but backed up with legal teeth and top-level enforcement. A more rigorous system surely would provide economic benefits, but the positive implications would ripple beyond that.

These are things a governor and Legislature should be able easily to do. They seem clear and obvious enough, and the benefits seem direct enough if the rules are strong enough and they are enforced from the top down.

This column first appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

Oregon and the Northwest generally have gotten off light so far this year when it comes to wildfires. That can change and probably will, because wildfires tend to take a worsening turn in the month or so ahead.

But starting this year, we may have some new tools for planning for their arrival.

As of June 25, the National Interagency Fire Center has reported a total 35,118 fires nationwide burning 2.9 million acres — both numbers considerably higher for this point in the year than any year in the last decade and well above the average this century. The northwest, with its fire-friendly weather and other conditions this year, is unlikely to escape for much longer.

In fact, the Oregon Department of Forestry said June 15 that all of its forestry districts are now considered to be in fire season. Fire Protection Division Chief Michael Curran said that “Looking at the current conditions and projections for the summer, ODF is prepared to have another busy fire season.”

Apart from the usual preparation efforts of assembling firefighters, equipment and supplies, is there anything Oregon can do to get ready?

Might this, in part, be a job for artificial intelligence?

An April 10 report from Oregon State University and the Nature Conservancy offers what amount to predictive tools about wildfire probabilities, including some factors wildfire analysts may have missed in the past.

Their model breaks wildfire risk into three groups of factors. One of them, wildfire hazard, includes the probability and intensity of burns, and researchers over the years ordinarily have considered them. Relative dryness, availability of burnable material, climate changes and other environmental considerations are all readily reduced to numbers.

But the new study also includes two more major areas: Infrastructure vulnerability (structural and neighborhood characteristics and defensible space) and social vulnerability (demographics, socioeconomics and types of housing and transportation), both of which seem a little less obvious.

The ability of an area to resist major fires can be broken down into specific physical factors (access to water, materials to block fire, easily burnable buildings or other materials). And detailed information about those factors can be developed at a hyperlocal level using Census and other other data.

In other words, the relative fire risk of the places we live based on elements ranging from building materials to how development is concentrated or scattered can be reduced to a specific number — and implicitly, more factors besides those. The study found large degrees of social vulnerability around the Cascade and Coastal ranges and across much of eastern Oregon, though the most vulnerable tracts were widely scattered.

The writers made the point that they weren’t trying to establish specific cause-and-effect relationships between fires and community statistics, but simply that certain of these things tended to go together. From that, over time, researchers could start to focus in on risk factors.

In the new study, all these things were developed for about 400 communities in Oregon and Washington.

For example, co-author Chris Dunn from the OSU College of Forestry said, “Warm Springs and Goldendale have slightly lower wildfire exposure than some nearby, better-resourced communities like Bend and Leavenworth, but they experience greater social vulnerability and therefore are likely to experience greater impacts if a fire occurred. By blending a mix of factors, our assessment method is a path toward more equitable investments in community wildfire risk reduction.”

The manipulation of vast amounts of information and assessment of new patterns and sets of probabilities is very much in the wheelhouse of AI, artificial intelligence. Its use in wildfire analysis has not been central yet, but could become more so.

For example: An extensive September 2025 academic study based in Switzerland titled AI for Wildfire Management: From Prediction to Detection, Simulation, and Impact Analysis looked into the uses even at that point, and existing limits, for AI in fire prediction and planning for containment.

It said “the main domains of wildfire management where AI has been applied — susceptibility mapping, prediction, detection, simulation, and impact assessment — and highlight critical limitations that hinder practical adoption. These include challenges with dataset imbalance and accessibility, the inadequacy of commonly used metrics, the choice of prediction formats, and the computational costs of large-scale models, all of which reduce model trustworthiness and applicability.”

Some of these constraints could be eased as the technology progresses.

Whether the OSU and Nature Conservancy used AI in developing their reports didn’t seem entirely clear, but going forward AI looks like exactly the sort of tool that might be useful in working our areas of risk from wildfire.

Oregon may need all the help it can get.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.