KGW’s Straight Talk

Coming this November, Portlanders will face many decisions on the ballot, including picking the city’s next city mayor. Whoever wins will become the first mayor under Portland's new system of government starting in January 2025.

So far, there are three leading candidates in terms of money raised, and they're all current Portland City Commissioners: Rene Gonzalez, Mingus Mapps and Carmen Rubio.

Rubio was a guest on this week’s episode of “Straight Talk” to discuss how she plans to tackle Portland’s homeless crisis, public safety and climate crisis.

Read the full story at KGW.com

As foreign aid and border security remain as hot topics in U.S. Congress, Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives unveil a new funding bill to provide aid and security — one week after Speaker Mike Johnson rejected a similar bill.

The $66.3 billion bipartisan package, titled the "Defending Borders, Defending Democracies Act," a new funding bill includes both aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, in addition to a new border security policy.

Read more at KGW.com

The race for district attorney in Multnomah County in the 2024 election is stacking up to be one of the most important races, as crime and homicide rates have spiked in recent years.

Nathan Vasquez, a career prosecutor and senior deputy district attorney, is running against his boss Mike Schmidt, who was elected as the district attorney in a lopsided victory in 2020 during racial justice protests.

However, Schmidt’s popularity has fallen in many Portlander’s eyes blaming him for the increase in crime, which he denies in a Straight Talk episode with Laural Porter in September.

This week, his opponent Vasquez joined Straight Talk to discuss why he’s running for election and what he hopes to do.

Read the full story at KGW.com

While Portland leaders have touted recent progress on metrics like crime, new polling shows that many people in the metro area remain deeply pessimistic about their quality of life and how it compares to the area's cost of living.

The polling comes from the Portland Metro Chamber, formerly known as the Portland Business Alliance. The group takes an annual assessment of voter sentiments, and they commissioned local firm DHM Research to conduct a survey of 500 voters in the tri-county area late last year. Portlanders made up half of the people polled.

On week's episode of "Straight Talk," Portland Metro Chamber's President Andrew Hoan, DHM Research President Michelle Neiss and ECOnorthwest Director of Analytics Mike Wilkerson discussed the recent poll and why Portland has struggled with affordability.  

To read the full story visit KGW.com

Portlanders will face a large number of decisions on the ballot in November, but one of the most of important and consequential will be choosing the city's next mayor. Whoever wins will take office right when the city switches to a brand new form of government, one completely different from the one Portland has used for more than a century.

The new mayor will immediately be tasked with hiring Portland's first permanent city administrator, and they'll also help set the city's agenda and set the tone for the culture of the new city government. So far, there are three leading candidates in terms of money raised, and they're all current Portland city commissioners: Rene Gonzalez, Mingus Mapps and Carmen Rubio.

Gonzalez was a guest on this week's episode of "Straight Talk" to discuss how he plans to tackle Portland's challenges with crime, homelessness, addiction and ambulance response times. Public safety and livability were a key part of his campaign when he was elected to the city council in November 2022, and he said he's maintaining that focus in his mayoral campaign.

"We went from very safe to average overnight, and that's been brutal for Portlanders," he said. "That was a big part of our identity. You could walk to the neighborhood grocery store or to a restaurant and feel safe, that your children could bike to the park. And all of that has been implicated in recent years."

Oregon’s 2024 legislative session got underway last Monday, tackling big state challenges like housing, homelessness and the drug crisis. On this week’s episode of Straight Talk, Gov. Tina Kotek stopped by to discuss her own bill that she hopes will make big gains on Oregon’s critical housing shortage, plus what she would like to see come out of talks to amend Measure 110, a voter-approved bill that decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs.

While the race for Portland City Council has gained a lot of attention as the city transitions the form of government it has used for over a century. At Multnomah County, the four seats on the ballot, have high stakes too. Elected officials will have the responsibility of dealing with some the region's toughest challenges, like homelessness, behavioral health and public safety.

Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards, of District 3, was a guest on this week's episode of Straight Talk to discuss her reasons for reelection and hopes for more urgency at the county-level in tackling the communities challenges. 

Portland is now less than a year away from abandoning the commission-style form of government that the city has used for more than a century. It's a dramatic change, and the plan that Portlanders approved in late 2022 gave the city only two years to prepare. With half of that time already gone, city leaders are racing against the clock to meet that deadline.

The mayor and commissioners function as the city council and also directly oversee city bureaus under the current system, but the overhaul will split up those roles. The council will expand to 12 members — three from each of four new geographic districts — and it will only set policy. The mayor will no longer be on the council and will instead oversee a professional city administrator in charge of all day-to-day operations.

Jordan previously directed Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services, and before that he was a Clackamas County Commissioner and worked for 11 years at Pacific Power and Light. Jordan was a guest on this week's episode of Straight Talk to help make sense of the new city government structure and provide an update on the progress of the transition process.

Portland city commissioner Dan Ryan has announced that he will be run for City Council this year. As a longtime resident of North Portland, Ryan said he will be aiming for one of the three seats that will represent District 2 on the expanded 12-person council that will take over city governance at the start of 2025.

Ryan is the first of the city's current five council members to make a bid for a position on the new council. Fellow commissioners Mingus Mapps, Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio have all announced plans to run for mayor. Current mayor Ted Wheeler has ruled out running for a third term, but has not announced any further plans.

Ryan was rumored to be considering a mayoral run last fall, but said he wanted to wait a few more months to make a decision. He ultimately declared in December that he wouldn't seek the mayor's office, but he didn't rule out the possibility of a council run, declaring only that he didn't want to mount a citywide campaign in 2024.