Murmurs: One In, One Pondering

ONE IN, ONE PONDERING: On June 30, three days after the legislative session fizzled to a close, Gov. Tina Kotek reported a $50,000 in-kind contribution from the Democratic Governors Association. The money went to a Washington, D.C., polling firm that often works for leading Democrats, more indication that Kotek will soon announce her 2026 reelection bid. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) is now more than a week past the self-imposed deadline he set in April for announcing whether he will seek a fourth term in 2026. Merkley’s continued silence is fanning speculation he will not run, a prospect that has two Portland-area Democratic congresswomen, U.S. Reps. Maxine Dexter (3rd District) and Andrea Salinas (6th District), jockeying for pole position to replace him. Merkley’s spokeswoman, Maggie Sunstrum, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BIVINS TRIAL BEGINS: A Multnomah County jury heard opening arguments July 8 in the bias crime trial of Mike Bivins, a former freelance journalist accused of starting a fire at a mosque, vandalizing two Jewish synagogues, and smashing the window of a Black-owned restaurant in 2022. Bivins, who worked as a stringer for WW and other news outlets covering extremism and political street brawls, faces felony charges of criminal mischief and arson. In his opening statement Tuesday morning, deputy district attorney Charlie Weiss said the state would demonstrate that Bivins picked his victims for their race and religion. “These are five targeted acts of violence and intimidation against members of our community,” Weiss said. Prosecutors showed the jury Bivins’ computer search history, which included queries for the Ku Klux Klan and Stormfront, and displayed his antisemitic and racist posts on social media. (Those who knew Bivins have told WW his mental state deteriorated in 2021, about two years after his last bylines as a journalist.) His defense attorney said if the jury weighed Bivins’ intentions and actions individually for each incident, they would find him not guilty.

ELECTIONS COMMISSION PONDERS DONATION SWAPS: The Portland Elections Commission released a report this week on the effectiveness of the city’s Small Donor Elections program, which matches small donations by up to a 9-to-1 ratio with taxpayer dollars, in an election that saw more than 100 candidates seek office last November. The top-line finding: The program has created an environment in which candidates who lack deep-pocketed supporters can win an election with lots of small contributions. That’s a vindication for the program, which in the fall was racked by controversy. One issue first reported by WW: candidates who agreed in writing to swap donations with one another, a number of which were then matched by the program and helped candidates reach the next tier of fundraising. The commission stopped short of saying definitively whether the practice was antithetical to the program, pending the results of an investigation by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. The commission called it an “unorthodox method” of fundraising that candidates “agreed that if the program had been adequately funded and matching fund caps not reduced dramatically, this conduct would not have occurred.” The commission recommended, among other changes, that the program “continue to match contributions from all Portlanders, including candidates, but do not count contributions from candidates toward certification or qualifying for the next tier.” The biggest threat to the program in future cycles, however, is underfunding, the commission wrote. “Underfunding will diminish the effectiveness of the program, the quality of our democracy and public trust in our government.”

BIG BILL SHAKES ROSE QUARTER: Politics makes strange carpools, which is how Portland environmentalists found themselves seizing on the congressional passage of President Donald Trump’s sweeping policy bill as an opportunity to kill the widening of Interstate 5 in the Rose Quarter. As WW first reported June 4, the bill jeopardizes high-profile federal transportation grants that state and local officials have penciled in to their budgets—including $488 million for an overhaul of Portland’s Rose Quarter. Most of that money was directed by the feds last year to build caps over the freeway, a project backed by Albina Vision Trust as a way to restore a Black neighborhood severed by the highway. J.T. Flowers, the government affairs director for Albina Vision Trust, sees “plenty of reason to be optimistic about the federal government’s participation in the delivery of the Rose Quarter project.” But an Oregon Department of Transportation spokesperson told Oregon Public Broadcasting on July 8 that the bill “appears to eliminate federal grant funding.” The uncertain status of the federal grants follows a failure by the Oregon Legislature to deliver a transportation funding package. “As ODOT gears up to make unbearable cuts and lay off the hundreds of maintenance and operations staff who plow Oregon mountain passes and repair our highways,” No More Freeways organizer Chris Smith said, “it’s unfathomable the agency is gearing up to begin a $2 billion freeway expansion with barely any of the funding in hand to begin the project.”