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Bernie Giusto gets a challenger: Don DuPay wants the sheriff's job.
The underdog challenging Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto is a pot-smoking grandfather and social worker who co-hosts a cable-access television show called Cannabis Common Sense.
Before you say Don DuPay, 69, is unqualified, know that he at least meets the job's law-enforcement requirement because he served as a Portland police officer from 1961 to 1978.
DuPay has a long, gray ponytail and blue eyes. He is tall and slim, with a large Roman nose that holds up a large pair of glasses. He wears no undershirt beneath his oxford shirt, which makes it easy to show off the blurry blue Navy tattoo on his left pectoral.
DuPay treats the symptoms of his hepatitis C, which he contracted in the late 1970s by injecting cocaine, with marijuana joints he rolls from the leaves of several plants growing in the spare bedroom of the Gateway apartment where he lives with his partner, Ramona Corcovelos.
In addition to his state-issued medical-marijuana card, DuPay's Velcro wallet holds a Multnomah County concealed-weapons permit. He keeps a snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson in his 1991 Cadillac DeVille.
"The police are not your bodyguards," he says. "Nobody can protect you but you."
The central plank of his campaign platform is making marijuana a lower priority for law enforcement. DuPay also wants to put citizen observers in jails and patrol cars, and use the mothballed Wapato Jail as a homeless shelter. He would revoke the sheriff's participation in the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Recent headlines about Giusto's overspending on overtime and disgruntlement among some of his deputies offer potential ammunition for DuPay's nascent campaign. But he's got the challenge of taking on an entrenched incumbent who has the backing of the union representing jail deputies.
Giusto did not return calls seeking comment about his opponent.
If voters elect him, DuPay would have to give up his $26,000 yearly income from Transition Projects, where he manages a homeless shelter. He says he would donate $30,000 of the sheriff's $110,000 annual salary to charity.
DuPay graduated from Grant High School in 1954 and went on active duty two years later in the Navy. He finished his tour in 1959 and ended up with the Portland Police Bureau, which he says was rife with corruption.
"I was able to stay away from the corruption by mostly working alone," he says. "They didn't share things with me that they shared with the others, because they knew I wasn't going to be involved."
In the late 1970s, his supervisor refused to let him investigate a death that had been ruled a suicide. DuPay thought the victim had been slain in a drug-related execution. The supervisor, DuPay says, told him, "He's a nigger, he's 16, he's a junkie and we don't care. Go do something else."
DuPay says, "I decided that if he was so powerful that he could say that I couldn't investigate someone's murder because of their color, that I couldn't stay anymore."
Early this month, DuPay started getting calls from his TV-show fans encouraging him to run for sheriff. So, on the March 7 filing deadline, he took the day off work, went to the county election office, and plunked down $350 of his own cash to get his name on the ballot and in the Voters' Pamphlet.—Angela Valdez
Can You Believe This?
Perhaps Nike's new slogan this political season should be "even when you beat 'em, try to join 'em."
Oregon's only Fortune 500 company has been riding a yearlong winning streak against Beaverton. Nike got the Legislature to kill any prospect of Beaverton bringing the shoe behemoth (and its property taxes) inside city limits, then prevailed in a court battle with Beaverton to see city officials' email traffic about annexation and Nike.
Yet for all Nike's efforts to stay out of Beaverton, its employees are sure taking an interest in the May 16 election for the city.
Beaverton City Council hopeful Bob Burke's candidate committee director is Rodger Seid, who works in information technology for Nike. And one of the 15 people who signed Burke's nominating petition is Allison Nowack, an assistant to Nike lobbyist Julia Brim-Edwards.
Burke, a 49-year-old mortgage loan officer, comes off as an amiable sort as he discusses his small-business platform and says, "Nike is not really involved with me."
That said, he opposes annexing the Nike campus into Beaverton because "big companies have moved before."
Brim-Edwards says Nike has not yet decided whether to back Burke against City Councilor Betty Bode but adds, "We believe it is positive for the community to have a choice on Election Day."
Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake's conclusion about Nike's interest in a local council race: "I don't think the people of Beaverton will like this." —Henry Stern
Blog Watch
Kari Chisholm at BlueOregon was the first to jump on filing-deadline news that Democratic state Sen. Frank Shields would drop any re-election bid in his East Portland-Happy Valley district, and that the beneficiary had been shaping up to be Shields' friend, former state senator and Metro councilor Rod Monroe. Chisholm was the first to call Monroe's last-minute filing last Tuesday in the May 16 primary a "two-person conspiracy" aimed at letting Monroe get an unopposed run before anybody else could learn Shields wouldn't run again. Chisholm's thorough coverage (www.blueoregon.com/2006/03/intrigue_at_the.html) of the District 24 debacle should come as no surprise: It was BlueOregon co-founder Jesse Cornett who short-circuited any Shields-Monroe deal by filing to run against Monroe 30 minutes before the deadline closed.
Jack K. of The Grumpy Forester (www.grumpyforester.blogspot.com) calls it a "shrewd gambit" by the four Democrats running for Republican Greg Walden's U.S. House seat to forgo the traditional pre-primary bloodbath. Instead of blasting each other while seeking the party nomination to challenge Walden in November, they've pledged at their joint appearances to focus on voicing collective objections to Walden's agenda. Whether they hold to that agreement remains to be seen. But the four are counting on their criticism of Walden's support for the Patriot Act and the Bush administration's domestic spying to give them an advantage in Eastern and Southern Oregon's libertarian-leaning 2nd Congressional District.
Got a political blog you want us to check out? Email bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
The Main Event
Wednesday, March 15
City Commissioner Dan Saltzman and two challengers trying to unseat him "debate" at 10:30 pm before the Sissyboys show at Holocene. Drag queen Splendora hosts what organizers promise will be a "smart, sassy and sexy" discussion. 1001 SE Morrison St. $5. 21+.
Friday, March 17
Although Gov. Ted Kulongoski's debate no-show tour will avoid the City Club of Portland's weekly Friday Forum, now's your chance to hear from his two Democratic challengers. Lane County Commissioner Pete Sorenson and former state Treasurer Jim Hill will debate (and bash the absent guv) starting at 12:15 pm at the Governor Hotel. 614 SW 11th Ave., pdxcityclub.org. $16-$20 for lunch, $5 general seating.
If you have a political event you want people to know about, please email sgreen@wweek.com.
One Question, One Answer
To: Amanda Fritz, a part-time OHSU nurse and longtime community activist running for City Council against Commissioner Dan Saltzman.
Q: Should city employees pick up a higher share of health-care costs?
A: No. The reason health-care premiums are so high is that so many people in the community don't have health insurance. The lack of universal health care is the root problem; the solution is to encourage employers to provide health insurance, and the city could do that by only contracting with companies that provide health insurance to their employees.
Got a burning question for a candidate? Email it to hstern@wweek.com.
Ted Wheeler
What he's doing:
Running for Multnomah County chair.
What he's done:
Goodnik in the nonprofit and charity scene who has dabbled in investment, real estate and teaching college government.
What he wants you to know:
He's not his politically vulnerable opponent, County Chair Diane Linn.
What he doesn't want you to know:
He's the scion of a wealthy timber family.
WWeek 2015