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Ready or not, Oregon's campaign season is underway. The election cycle kicked off this week at Oaks Park, with most of the state's elected officials dropping by the annual Oregon AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic to cozy up to union rank and file.
Martin Hahn III and Renee Stephens didn't attend the Sept. 7 picnic. Yet these two Portland-area residents are seeking the nation's highest elected office.
Any natural-born citizen at least 35 years old who has been a U.S. resident for 14 years is eligible to run for president. More than 1,093 people have filed applications with the Federal Election Commission to run in the 2016 election. Nine of them are from Oregon.
Fringe candidates are often the subject of mockery. But WW talked for nearly an hour each with Hahn and Stephens, and we found them better prepared than many local office-seekers to discuss their unorthodox solutions for a nation they see as fundamentally broken.
Hahn, 48, who lives in Milwaukie, says she's the first transgender presidential candidate and is currently transitioning from male to female. On disability, she's a former bill collector who served as minister at St. Valentine's Christian Church, a traveling congregation that meets in Portland-area public parks near bodies of water.
Stephens, 37, is a Jefferson High School graduate and former Nike designer now working as a carpenter in the Maplewood neighborhood. He and his wife, Karellen, propose one of the more radical policies WW has heard: They want to abolish money. The Stephens have spent much of the past decade in court battles, which Karellen Stephens details in a self-published book alleging a wide-reaching conspiracy by Nike, Oregon Health & Science University and the Stephens' own attorneys. The couple founded the Pay It Forward Leadership Society to rid the world of paper currency, and attended the interview in matching white T-shirts. "Money is not real," Renee Stephens' shirt read. "I am."
Here's what else Hahn and Stephens have to say.
WW: What would your first day in the White House look like?
Martin Hahn III: It would be very chaotic. We've got a lot of things to fix in this country. A lot of times our government works for the businesses instead of the people, and the people need a lot of help. We need to help the person that's down here become the person in the middle. And we need to help the people in the middle move forward. We need to constantly progress, not decline like we've been doing for years.
Renee Stephens: I would address the nation and let everybody know that I'm here to change things up. What we would do is basically educate. Our philosophy is that we have actually replaced the value of life with money. So, in order to change things, we're going to make life the value. You are now the currency. So when you go into a business, because you are there, because of your presence, that is actually the payment for the cost of doing business. Everything has a cost. Human labor, time, raw materials, resources, everything. But what we're trying to say is that life is actually worth the cost of doing business.
Is Donald Trump right on immigration?
Hahn: I don't think Donald Trump is right in a lot of ways. Immigration is a good thing for this country. I feel having a border fence up is wrong, because that's sending the wrong signal. It says, we're trying to keep people out, when no, that's not the case. We're trying to let them in, but there is a legal process.
Stephens: I believe that this country was built on immigrants. And I believe that we should be working with immigrants because they're coming here to establish a better life for themselves. We should be inviting people here and then taking care of them and helping them, and asking them to help make this place better.
What message you are trying to send by running?
Hahn: I'm wanting to bring the people together to rise up against a government that is broken. To restructure it and rebuild it. To help restore the country to the greatness that it once was and could be again, and to open the eyes of everybody in the country as to what's been going on in the country, and to help bring that to the forefront so the people know how the government works, so they can be a part of it.
Stephens: That life is what is valuable. Money isn't necessarily the problem—it is that we have replaced the value of life with anything. Because we're living beings. We're trying to live. That's what every other living being on the planet is trying to do. But as human beings we've kind of veered away from the idea that we're here to live.
If you couldn't vote for yourself, who would you vote for?
Hahn: Bernie Sanders. He's got a fire in him that I can see.
Stephens: I wouldn't vote for anybody. We've been getting puppets in the presidency. And they're just easily puppeteered by the big-money interests.
Where do you stand on the Iran deal?
Hahn: I don't think it's a safe thing. Not until Iran shows that they're willing to work with us and they're willing to work with other communities. We need to play it safe and protect everybody. An Iran policy that would be reasonable would be to give them five years to start allowing us access to view these sites, to answer some questions that we may have, without roadblocks in our way. We need to have full access.
Stephens: I see that Iran wants nuclear energy to provide electricity to their country. I think there are better ways to provide energy, and these ways are not being brought to the market because of money. There are big monetary interests involved. But if it's no longer about money, if it's about getting these people electricity, then I think that we can move on even beyond nuclear energy. You can turn nuclear, or any type of energy form into a weapon. What we want to stop is the desire to do that.
WWeek 2015