by Mary Lou Masters
Voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, which includes Portland and the surrounding area, will have the opportunity to kick out left-leaning District Attorney Mike Schmidt (pictured above, left) on Tuesday.
Attorney Nathan Vasquez (pictured above, right), a Republican-turned-independent for Schmidt, could unseat the district attorney in a direct, nonpartisan primary if he receives more than 50% of the vote. Schmidt would be the latest left-wing prosecutor financed by groups linked to George Soros to fail to secure another term after critics said they had a supple approach to crime.
“When I knock on doors, it’s like, ‘Hey, I consider myself very liberal, but that’s inappropriate — we’re not well served,’” Vasquez told Politico. “People definitely want public safety. This doesn’t mean people are completely abandoning the idea of criminal justice reform. They just want it delivered in a pragmatic and practical way.”
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was dismissed in June 2022; In April 2023, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx decided not to seek re-election in Chicago; and Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón will face former California Republican attorney general candidate Nathan Hochman in November.
Schmidt was elected by a majority vote in May 2020, just before the George Floyd riots broke out in Portland and other blue cities across the country.
“Before he took office, our caseload was between 12,000 and 20,000 a year,” Vasquez told Politico of the decline in prosecutions since 2020. “Under his administration, after Covid, we were below 6,000.”
Crime in Portland increased in 2021 and 2022 after the city defunded its police force in 2020.
Oregon became the first state to decriminalize demanding drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and oxycodone on a ballot measure in 2020. Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek signed a bill in early April recriminalizing drug possession after Oregon declared a state of emergency in January to combat a surge number of overdoses.
According to Politico, Multnomah County hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1960 or for a GOP candidate since 1986. The last time Oregon elected a GOP governor was in 1982, when Victor G. Atiyeh secured a second term.
Schmidt’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Mary Lou Masters is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Mike Schmidt” by Microphone Schmidt for DA and “Nathan Vasquez” by Vote for Nathan Vasquez.
