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This election, for the first time in a decade, homelessness has been supplanted as the most pressing issue on Oregon voters’ minds. The new worry? How to afford living here.
WW's Fall 2026 Endorsements
So when ballots arrive in mailboxes this week, many people may feel a sensation they recognize from every trip to Fred Meyer: Everything costs too much, and we don’t get enough for our money.
By nearly every measure, the performance of our state doesn’t match what taxpayers spend on it. Oregon has all the resources necessary for success but isn’t succeeding and hasn’t been for a while. Not in education, where Oregon students rank last in the nation in fourth grade reading and second to last in eight grade math. Not in housing, where a shortfall of apartments has been met with just a smattering of cranes on the Portland horizon. And certainly not on the streets, where people in the grip of drug addiction and mental illness have no place to go.
Perhaps this is the consequence of a one-party state. But in Portland, a new form of government effectively resulted in a second party—the Democratic Socialists of America—and the fallout on City Council is squabbling and name-calling better suited to one of the playgrounds run by Preschool for All. Across the river, Multnomah County has somehow been run even less effectively.
Yes, we’re in a foul mood. Odds are you are, too. And it’s here that we posit that opening that ballot and filling in some bubbles is both an effective form of therapy and a radical act of hope.
In a way, that’s what our endorsements are: a search every two years for reasons to believe in a better future for Oregon and Portland. Each election cycle, we invite every candidate running for a contested seat in either a statewide race or a Portland-area contest to our offices to talk. (We define a contested race as one in which at least two candidates took the trouble to submit a statement to the Voters’ Pamphlet. That means you might not see your legislative district in the following pages—because the leading candidate is running essentially unopposed.)
The candidates join us in a room for an hour, alongside their opponent or opponents, to discuss issues in a free-flowing conversation. (You can see videos of the full interviews at wweek.com.) The interviews are wide-ranging. Sometimes we come out of the room feeling like we’ve engaged in a thoughtful chat that taught us more about this state and the needs of Oregonians. Sometimes we are dumbstruck by the ridiculous things we hear. And every so often, we find someone who makes us believe that this place we love can turn itself around.
Our editorial board spends many hours crafting questions (including a lighter one—this year, it’s the candidates’ silliest fears from childhood) and discussing whom to endorse. Each member of our newsroom—reporters and the editor—gets one vote. In the following pages, we unpack our thinking, in the hopes that it will inform yours.
If there’s one lesson we draw from the struggles of Portland, it’s the danger of groupthink. In the coming weeks, you’ll read a lot of advertisements (and yes, some newspaper endorsements) that suggest one political faction has cornered the market on truth. We don’t buy that. Instead, we place a premium on independence. We want to know that the people who represent us in the halls of power aren’t beholden to anyone but their constituents. We’re picky shoppers.
And we respect your independence enough to know that you won’t agree with everything we write. In fact, some of what we’re about to suggest is guaranteed to anger you, if it hasn’t already. Honestly, we think that’s healthy. If what you find in the following pages makes you think harder about what the future of our city and state should look like, then this place just got a little better.
Now, go vote.
WW’s editorial board consists of Garrett Andrews, Joanna Hou, Aaron Mesh, Sophie Peel, Rachel Saslow and Andrew Schwartz.
