Repositioning Portland

Portland used to be the place that was crazy-liberal, and in a good way.

Then Portland was the national example of Democratic misrule, a willing victim of riots, vandalism, and homeless encampments.

Portland is getting a new brand: an oasis in a country that has gone MAGA.

Story in Sunday's Oregonlive

Vibe is hard to measure, but it is real.

For a decade Portland, Oregon had developed a reputation as the best city on the West Coast. It was liveable, prosperous, and growing. It was a tech center. It was less expensive than Seattle, San Francisco, L.A.,  and Silicon Valley.

Portlandia image of local residents

The TV sketch comedy Portlandia parodied it. Portland was the place where waiters showed diners family photos of the happy lives of the chicken, before it was served for lunch on a bed of organic kale. 

Then the summer of 2020.

I have been very critical of the way Portland handled the demonstrations -- and then riots -- following the suffocation of George Floyd in 2020. Over the course of a hundred days, anarchists and hooligans positioned themselves amid Black Lives Matter protests. The vandals carried out a campaign of statue-toppling, arson, and window-breaking. Portland's system for civic order broke down. The Multnomah County District Attorney, Michael Schmidt, came into office in August, 2020 as a "reformer," announcing that he was opposed to "mass incarceration" and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. He would not prosecute anarchist vandals. In response, Portland police went on an informal work-stoppage. They weren't going to arrest or stop vandals and arsonists if they weren't going to be prosecuted. Some people within the liberal BLM protesters were conflicted, so they did not identify and exclude the vandals. On one hand, the hooligans were hijacking the protests and destroying their message of peaceful protest. On the other hand they claimed to be ideological allies, also angry about the status quo but more willing to walk the talk. Liberals knew the argument that "violence is the language of oppressed," so one should expect some violence to protest the greater systemic violence done to marginalized people. 

Meanwhile, court decisions in the Ninth Judicial Circuit made it impossible for Portland to control homeless encampments which grew up on sidewalks and roadways. 

Within that mix of opinion and behavior, the very blue Portland sustained a summer and fall of disruption, destruction, and ugliness. The downtown hollowed out. Images of fires showed nightly on Fox News. Portland became the national poster child for Democratic inability to govern. The Portland reputation and vibe went negative. 

Portland is coming out of the funk. Portland citizens voted a major change in its governance. The mayor was replaced by Keith Wilson who ran as a "common sense businessman." The city created a city manager position and expanded the council to 12, which makes them neighborhood representatives, not operational department heads. Mike Schmidt got replaced by a district attorney who said he would prosecute crime. It is too soon to see if the organizational change will improve governance, but it is not too soon for there to be a vibe-change. Portland projects competence again.

Portland -- and Oregon -- is still liberal, and that gives it a brand position. It is still an immigrant sanctuary state. A trans male-to-female high school athlete won races, and is being supported by government officials. There are reasons to think Trump may target Oregon and try to make an example of it, as he is now doing with Maine, which has a female governor who refused his demand for a public apology for saying she would obey Maine laws. Portland and Oregon are giving off a proud don't-tread-on-me vibe. That is the new brand.

It isn't all rosy. Oregon's largest private employer, Intel, was behind the curve on AI and it is laying off people. The federally-sponsored CHIP Act expansions will take place in Arizona, New Mexico, and Ohio -- not Oregon. Nike, headquartered in Oregon, is struggling. With stock at $64/share it is in a four-year slump from a 2021 price of $155. And the supposed Trump increases in timber harvests off federal lands cannot get started if there isn't staff to manage the process. 

Still, Portland is regaining a national role and brand as a leader in the resistance to Trump, DOGE, and MAGA. A premise of this blog is that the Trump movement is now experiencing the exhilarating feeling of winning big. He is overreaching and doing the one thing that will end the MAGA movement's quest for power. Trump's populist movement will be stopped by the public because he does unpopular things. He is beginning to do them. 

Portland is ahead of the curve in being an example of resistance to Trump. DOGE, and MAGA, but the curve may catch up.

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