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It’s safe to say that Multnomah County Circuit Judge Adrian Brown is not enjoying campaign season.
Brown wasn’t expecting an opponent in the May election, but public defender Peter Klym threw his hat in the ring on the last day before the filing deadline. Brown begged her colleagues on the bench to fill in for her on felony trials so she could campaign—“I wouldn’t wish this on any of us,” she wrote on Microsoft Teams—which earned her a rebuke from the presiding judge and a round of bad headlines. She missed the deadline to get her candidate statement in the Voter’s Pamphlet.
This snowballing series of misfortunes began last May, when Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez announced his office would no longer argue Measure 11 felony cases—serious crimes, like murder and robbery—in her courtroom. “Our office’s experience with Judge Brown’s rulings has led us to make the decision,” Vasquez told The Oregonian then. The prosecutorial boycott of Brown’s courtroom was the first signal that she was vulnerable to an election challenge.
Naturally, the subject came up when Brown and Klym visited our office for an endorsement interview this month. Klym said that public defenders were equally frustrated with Brown’s unpredictable rulings, and that they had considered filing their own notice before Vasquez beat them to it.
Brown had a very different account. She said Vasquez has never filed the memorandum required to sideline her from Measure 11 cases, and he was “gaslighting” her with his statements to the press. By her telling, the DA is trying to chill her rulings by smearing her in the court of public opinion.
“Our democracy is at stake here,” Brown told our editorial board. “On the national level; on the local level as well.”
We had questions. Watch the full exchange below.
