PORTLAND, Ore. — Inside a local sports bar, more than 20 business owners gathered around Betsy Johnson, the unaffiliated Oregon gubernatorial candidate, to vent their frustrations.
One business owner said crime in Portland has become so rampant that, for the first time, she has felt concerned about the safety of her staff and customers.
Another business owner said his store had been vandalized several times in the past year.
Loretta Guzman, who owns the Bison Coffeehouse in the city, said her storefront windows were broken late one night earlier this month after she announced she was going to hold a “Coffee with a Cop” event.
“Things have gotten so out of control,” Guzman told The Washington Post. “If you want to commit a crime, then right now is a really good time to do it. There is no accountability.”
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Portland was a hotbed of protest activity, with demonstrations lasting for weeks that resulted in more than 500 arrests and millions of dollars in damage. In the time since that unrest, Portland has — like other communities across the country — seen a rise in violent crime. From January to the end of August of this year, Portland recorded a 7.8 percent increase in violent crime — including homicide, robbery and aggravated assault — compared with the same period in 2021, according to a Post data analysis. In 2021, violent crime in Portland was up 27 percent compared with 2020.
Concerns over crime and the fallout from the 2020 protests in the state’s largest city have now become a major focus of the gubernatorial race. While Oregon has been a reliably blue state for decades — voters have not elected a Republican governor here in nearly 40 years — growing frustrations with outgoing governor Kate Brown and attacks painting Democrats as soft on crime have some in the party worried that this year’s race could break the party’s winning streak.
Johnson, a longtime Democratic state legislator who left the party last year, is hoping to capitalize on voters’ discontent with Democrats, looking to siphon off voters who are looking for an alternative but are not yet sure they want to vote for a Republican. The unaffiliated candidate is running a campaign around supporting abortion rights, increasing the budget for law enforcement and addressing homelessness.
Democratic candidate Tina Kotek also has campaigned on preserving abortion access, as well as addressing climate change and tightening gun regulations. But she has struggled to distance herself from the attack that Democrats want to defund the police, despite saying she supports state law enforcement and would invest in hiring more officers.
With voters on the left possibly split between Kotek and Johnson, Republican candidate Christine Drazan could be in position to top them both. She has campaigned on improving Oregon’s public school system, declaring a state of emergency related to homelessness and repealing a 2020 drug decriminalization law while increasing funding for police and prosecutors.
And the governor’s race isn’t the only contest that has Republicans feeling hopeful: There are also three open U.S. House seats that Republicans think are in play. The Congressional Leadership Fund, which supports Republican House candidates, on Wednesday announced a new investment of $800,000 in one race. If Democrats can’t hold the two seats they have and pick up the newly formed district seat, it could signal deeper problems for the party in less reliably liberal areas.
“It’s the first time in a number of years that some of this Democrat stronghold on the state is really in jeopardy,” said Oregon Republican strategist Rebecca Tweed.
In many ways, the political climate in Oregon mirrors the last time a non-Democrat appeared close to taking the governor’s race. In the 2010 midterm elections, with President Barack Obama in office and Democrats controlling the House and Senate, Republican gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley lost to Democrat John Kitzhaber, who had previous served as governor, by just 1.5 percentage points.
But Democrats and Republicans point to the racial reckoning in 2020 as a key difference this time. Hundreds of protesters marched in the streets of Portland for weeks that year, clashing with the police. At one point, protesters erected barricades downtown to create an autonomous zone. A Cook Political Report ranking in September rated the gubernatorial race a toss-up.
Jake Weigler, a Democratic strategist based in Portland, said the issues of crime and homelessness in the city have gained more visibility since the protests.
“It has killed off a number of Democratic voters that would normally vote for the Democrat automatically in the governor’s race, but in this race, they are kind of having some second thoughts,” he said.
Mary Paselk, a resident of Happy Valley outside Portland who attended a Drazan campaign rally in Aurora, Ore., earlier this month, said she had voted for liberal candidates in past elections but remained on the fence about which gubernatorial candidate will bring the change she wants to see in the state.
“I’m really disappointed at the drug use, at the homelessness,” she said. “I know we need to change. I just don’t know which candidate is best for that.”
Drazan and other Republican candidates in Oregon have jumped on that discontent, arguing Democrats were responsible for the protests escalating in Portland.
“Tina Kotek is the original defund-the-police candidate,” Drazan said during a recent debate. “She did not support the police even when rioters were attacking a police station. It’s stunning to me that she would talk now like she supports law enforcement.”
Johnson similarly went after Kotek, saying during the debate: “We’ve got to start by respecting our police. That doesn’t mean walking with the rioters or excoriating the police when the riots were happening.” Johnson was referring to a letter Kotek send to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, criticizing the tactics police officers were using against the protesters.
Kotek pushed back, saying she supported funding the police to combat the shortage of law enforcement officers in the state.
“They’re both misrepresenting my record. I do support law enforcement,” she said. “I also think it’s important to hold law enforcement accountable. You can do both.”
In a recent West Coast swing, President Biden offered his support for Kotek.
“She’s rational. She’s smart,” Biden said at an event with Kotek. “She knows what needs to be done. She knows we need more police officers.”
Angela Pederson, 54, who described herself as a longtime Democratic voter, said she is voting for Drazan and Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Republican running in the 5th Congressional District, because she believes they are serious about addressing crime.
“What I’m witnessing happening in our school systems, and just in our community at large, is indicative that the Democrats’ policies are not working and they are destroying our state,” she said while canvassing for Chavez-DeRemer in Gladstone, another Portland suburb. “They are going to bring back some law and order that’s desperately needed.”
Some voters want the conversation shifted away from increasing funding for the police to finding more solutions to issues contributing to the rise in crime, such as the cost of living and the economy.
“It’s not a top concern for me as a voter to have more law enforcement to solve the problems that they haven’t solved for the entirety of their existence,” said Donovan Smith, a Portland resident who typically votes for Democratic candidates.
Darrell Grant, a jazz composer based in Portland, said that homelessness and crime were always present in the city but that the pandemic intensified those issues.
“The seeds of what is happening now has been planted over many years,” Grant said. “So yes, the challenges of the pandemic, the challenges of the racial reckoning that we faced, of course those have exacerbated the problem and diverted the attention and resources and compassion and everything from those challenges that were with us all the time.”
Oregon’s 5th District is represented by a Democrat, but redistricting brought in more-rural areas that could pose a challenge for Democratic candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
McLeod-Skinner, a small-business owner, beat the seven-term incumbent, Rep. Kurt Schrader, in the Democratic primary. McLeod-Skinner ran as a more liberal candidate than Schrader, who had been endorsed by Biden.
Each of the 5th District candidates could make history if elected. Chavez-DeRemer is one of two candidates who would be the first Latinas to serve in Oregon’s congressional delegation. McLeod-Skinner could also be the first openly gay lawmaker in its delegation.
Chavez-DeRemer, the former mayor of Happy Valley, said Democrats’ rhetoric around defunding the police had dissuaded voters.
“People are feeling fearful. People and business owners say they don’t have protection,” she said. “We pay our tax dollars for security and safety, and that’s what people want.”
McLeod-Skinner, an attorney, has pushed back on Chavez-DeRemer’s claims. McLeod-Skinner said she has a track record of increasing funding for the police and wants to continue to help address staffing concerns.
“Here’s the bottom line. … It’s about public safety,” said McLeod-Skinner, who served as the interim city manager in Talent, in southwestern Oregon. “And that means safety in terms of making sure our police officers are fully trained, are fully resourced and have the accountability standards.”
But what happens in the congressional races could come down to how voters are feeling about the top of the ticket.
As Election Day approaches, Ramzy Hattar, who owns the Portland bar where Johnson’s roundtable event was held, said he is willing to shut down his business and move to another state if the crime problem does not improve.
“I just need to plan if things don’t go my way,” he said.
Tyler Pager in Portland and John D. Harden in Washington contributed to this report.