This past May, Oregon Democrats collectively spent over $900,000 running for this open seat for a part-time job that pays $31,000/year. All that money is part of Salem's pay-to-play culture dominated by the Democrat machine. Portland's problems are due to years of supermajority rule and you cannot expect the Democrats to fix problems they created.
Republican candidate Stan Baumhofer is 95 years old, meaning he will be 98 by the end of term, and although I am sure he's a very nice guy, he's not a viable choice due to his age. That's why I am on the ballot - to give the voters a real qualified option. I am a government budgeting expert and policy wonk who has actually changed laws through my activism. I am a good-government moderate, which is what Portland needs.
My opponent, Shannon Isadore Jones, won the Democratic primary because the moderate base that really wants change split among two candidates; meanwhile, she had a superior candidate statement in the voter guide that misrepresented herself crafted by an insider political consultancy. In reality, she is a cookie-cutter Salem Democrat feeding off public contracts who will continue the same pay-to-play dysfunction.
Everyone assumes HD 33 will be won by the Democrat because of the registration advantage over Republicans, but the #2 voting bloc is actually Nonaffiliated, and many Oregonians register Democratic just to vote in the primary. This May, this district voted in an independent DA, Nathan Vasquez who until a few years ago was a Registered Republican.
Shannon Jones's endorsements tell the real story: Teacher's Unions, Public Sector Unions, a superpac affiliated with the Tides foundation, the Building Trades Council, and the Trial Lawyer's Association. Oregon is facing a public pension crisis and public education is underperforming because of the power of these constituencies while we waste money left and right building unnecessary school buildings or on "climate" projects that really don't make a difference. She was also endorsed by Kate Brown, once the most unpopular governor in the country who did nothing to fix a public defense crisis. signed the disastrous Corporate Activity Tax, and imposed unnecessary and harmful 'covid' restrictions that created a downtown office vacancy crisis.
I want to represent the people of this district, not crony insiders.
I don't want to be unnecessarily negative, but Shannon Jones also misrepresented the Oregon Change Clinic as a nonprofit while campaigning. It is not. She personally profits off of Measure 110, and although I am sure she has helped many of her clients, I am troubled that one of her main services is TMS - a giant scam of healthcare fraud unsupported by evidence-based medicine for which it is impossible to conduct double blinded trials. It is hugely expensive - up to $1000 per session with the state covering 30 sessions, so for every patient she takes in to treat depression, she pockets $30,000 from insurance for a treatment less effective than simple exercise.
Since I actually worked in health policy, the state wouldn't cover it until 2014 because the state took an evidence-based approach, but about that time, the Health Evidence Review Commission started to fall under political influence to the point in 2024 the state just got rid of its evidence-based policy. When HERC found itself running afoul of political correctness, it buried an important report that should have influenced Democratic policymakers.
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