After serving nearly 30 years in Congress, Democratic U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer announced last fall that he wouldn’t run for reelection. That leaves an open field for Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District primary this May. We’ll hear from the three most prominent candidates vying for the Democratic nomination: Maxine Dexter is a pulmonologist who represents Northwest Portland in the Oregon House of Representatives; Susheela Jayapal formerly represented North and Northeast Portland on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners; and Eddy Morales is a member of the Gresham City Council. They join us to share why they’re running and what they hope to accomplish if elected.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. When Earl Blumenauer announced last October that he was retiring from Congress, he opened up a very rare opportunity for Portland area Democrats. According to the Cook Political Report, the 3rd Congressional District which includes most of Portland east of the Willamette and most of Multnomah County, is among the safest districts for Democrats in the country, meaning that barring a political earthquake, the winner in the Democratic primary will go on to represent the district in Washington, DC. And if history serves, they could stay for a very long time. There have only been four members in nearly 70 years.
I’m joined today by the three most prominent candidates who want to add their name to that list. Maxine Dexter is a Democratic state representative from Northwest Portland. She is a pulmonary and critical care physician. Susheela Jayapal is a former lawyer who recently represented North and Northeast Portland on the Multnomah County Commission. And Eddy Morales is a former community organizer. He is in his second term as a Gresham city councilor. Welcome to all three of you.
Maxine Dexter / Susheela Jayapal: Thank you for having us.
Eddy Morales: Thank you.
Miller: I should say that we picked your names randomly for this first question before the start of the show. And Eddy Morales, your name came first. Congressional approval is near record lows. Congress can barely pass bills to pay for the government to function. It’s become synonymous with gridlock and with dysfunction. Why do you want to join that club?
Morales: Thanks for the question, Dave. You know, this is a question I get asked very frequently and the truth is, I did live in DC for some time, and worked at a time where there was a split in Congress and I know how to get the work done. The truth is, in my 25 years of organizing and policy making, what I’ve learned is that if you get people to really focus on the issues that are impacting people’s lives, whether it’s being able to afford housing, or addiction, or feeling safe, or addressing violence in the community, you can really create shared points of interest and a place to start.
I have no interest in going to Congress to seek celebrity, or fan flames, or throw mud, but really to get us focused on the issues that are impacting people’s lives, the way that I did that when we passed the Affordable Care Act. I was assigned the states of Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio and Missouri. And I was able to get members from those states in Congress to support the Affordable Care Act by bringing people from their districts and their states to Washington DC, to talk about how not having access to health care, the expensive pricing of medicine, or their pre-existing condition was impacting their lives. And that was able to move members to eventually support the Affordable Care Act.
Miller: I want to turn deeper into questions of some of those issues you brought up – health care, housing – as we go. But, Maxine Dexter, why do you want to join this club? I mean, you’ve sponsored legislation in the legislature that has made it easier for people in Oregon to get Narcan. It would be a lot harder to accomplish something specific like that in Congress. Why not try to stay in the Oregon legislature?
Dexter: Thank you, Dave. As you said, I’ve been a proven, effective lawmaker here in Oregon. And I think that’s exactly why I need to go to Congress. Congress doesn’t work. People are tired of the gridlock and the identity politics. And what I have done is, I’ve proven that I can listen to all sides of an issue, go to the data, where are the solutions, and then apply those to effective lawmaking.
As a state representative, I have led with compassion, courage, and commitment, and I’m gonna take that to Congress where we have to change the culture. My kids don’t believe that Congress can work. They ask me the same question, and my goal is to prove that with care and with determination, we can get our government to do the things that it needs to do: keeping people housed, fed, and safe and secure in their communities, and making sure that everyone has a right to live a full life here in our country.
Miller: Susheela Jayapal, you’re currently one member among five in the commission that serves the largest county in Oregon, a place where numerically, it’s a lot easier to have your voice be heard, or to make the equivalent of legislation, than as one member among 435. Why try to make the switch?
Jayapal: Thank you, Dave. And I’ll note that I’m no longer on the commission. I stepped down, as you know, in November, when I announced that I was running for this seat. I am running for Congress because it is an absolutely pivotal time. It’s a pivotal time in the country and it’s a pivotal time in this district. And in addition to the gridlock that you described, we’re seeing real threats to our democracy. We are seeing rights that we’ve relied on for decades, like the right to abortion, taken away. We’re seeing “Maga” Republicans pushing policies that are gonna hurt everyday Americans – like cutting Social Security and Medicare, and rolling back the progress that we’ve made in recent years on the threat of climate change.
And then locally, of course, we are facing crises of homelessness and addiction and also the everyday challenges of a middle class that is losing ground, worried about housing, worried about healthcare, worried about aging with dignity. So I’m running for Congress because I believe that there are strong progressive values and policies that the residents of this district believe in, that can address these challenges. And they have to ultimately be shaped and implemented from the federal level. And I believe that we can move the needle on these progressive policies, even in a stuck Congress, and frankly, the last thing we can afford to do is to simply throw up our hands and walk away.
So, I have felt privileged to lead and serve at the local level. I’ve worked on many of the issues that I’d work on in Congress: homelessness, housing, health care, public safety, the environment. I have delivered concrete resources and programs for my constituents. But it’s at the federal level where we can really address these issues at scale, where we can bring the resources to bear at scale. And that’s why I’m running for Congress, because I want to fight for those policies that are gonna make a difference to the people of this district and to the country.
Miller: All right, let’s turn to those policies. Sticking with you, Susheela Jayapal, on homelessness and housing, what policies in particular would you push for?
Jayapal: I’ll mention three. There’s obviously a host… and I also want to mention that Congressman Blumenauer has really led in this area. He’s got a blueprint called “Locked out” [Locked out: Reversing Federal Housing Failures and Unlocking Opportunity] that outlines a series of policies that I think are absolutely critical. I’ll select three.
I believe we need the federal government back in the business of actually building affordable housing. We used to do that, but starting in the 80′s, we backed away, and in fact, there’s currently a law that prevents us from spending more money on building affordable housing. But that is ultimately the solution to homelessness. There are many other issues that we have to address as well. But housing is the ultimate solution, and we are not going to be able to provide housing as a human right unless we get the federal government back in the business of building and maintaining public, affordable housing.
Second, we need to expand the voucher program. Right now, there is a seven to eight year wait in Multnomah County to get access to a voucher, and a voucher, as you know, is rent assistance, essentially. It’s buying down rent in the private market. If you’re on the verge of being evicted, you can’t wait seven or eight years in order to get access to a voucher. So we need to make those vouchers available to everyone who needs them.
And the third, I think there’s a host of policies that can be implemented and resourced at the federal level that allow people to actually buy housing. I mean, we know that in this country, owning a home is a way of building assets and building wealth and getting stability. And I’ll just give one example. In President Biden’s latest budget, there’s a proposal to provide grants or loans for down payments to first-time home buyers. So that’s an example of an “access to housing” policy. So, we need to do all of the things across the spectrum, and those are some examples of the policies and resources that I will fight and advocate for.
Miller: Maxine Dexter, how would you approach homelessness and housing as a member of Congress?
Dexter: Thank you. In the same way that I’ve done it here in Oregon, first with the values. We need to have safe and affordable housing for every family in the community of their choice.
Secondly, food and shelter has to be a priority. It’s a fundamental right, and needs to be considered public infrastructure. Families need stable access to those basic needs to be able to benefit from things like health care and education. We must make sure that these are given, and the government’s obligation is to do the things that people and the local governments cannot do for themselves, at the federal level.
What we’ve done is, as Chair of the House and the Housing and Homelessness Committee, we’ve made historic investments, and we have given rental assistance much more efficiently across the board. We’ve helped build the infrastructure for shelters. Those are important, but we have to make sure that public housing is an investment that is considered infrastructure.
We need working families to have opportunities for building wealth. So, down payment assistance and truly building those starter homes. That’s a missing “middle” right now. And then we absolutely need to keep people housed with rental assistance and tenant protection laws. We’ve passed some of the most progressive tenant protection laws on my watch here in Oregon.
And finally, getting people off the streets. Our local safety nets are failing us, and we have to make sure that we are building public-focused structures to make sure that people have their needs met in shelters, and with mental health, and in keeping people out of that prison pipeline where so many of our marginalized community members are, frankly, not invested in enough, to make sure that they have equal opportunity to succeed in life.
Miller: Eddy Morales, your strategy in terms of housing and homelessness?
Morales: Dave, you know, I grew up…One, I believe that everyone should have access to high quality, affordable housing and that we need to have housing for people at every stage of their lives, whether you’re going out and getting your first place and need to rent or you start planning for really laying roots somewhere, and you’re planning for a family and you want to grow, or you’re at the point of your life where you’re retiring and looking to downsize.
I grew up really housing insecure for the 38 years that I’ve lived here in Oregon. We moved around, based on wherever my mother could provide childcare in exchange for a place to live, and sometimes that was an extra bedroom in someone’s home, and sometimes I was living on someone’s couch. And not having permanent housing was really destabilizing, both for my education as well as our family’s ability to work. So really, I think we need to create housing that the supply meets the needs of the community where they’re at. We know that right now there isn’t enough, and that has definitely caused prices to rise, and people aren’t able to buy their homes and live. And it’s the highest cost in people’s budgets.
So I think building more affordable housing, the way that I’ve done so here in Gresham, we’ve built multigenerational housing so that people can live with grandparents, their children, aunts and uncles. We’ve also built housing that was designed with and for people with disabilities, that is run on solar power. So people who live in these homes don’t have to have an electric bill.
I also think we need to really revamp some of our home ownership programs. You know, the truth is that they are antiquated, and they’re not keeping up with the rising cost of housing. So a lot of our first-time homeowner programs federally cap out at a point where people cannot actually afford what’s on the market. In addition to building more housing, to creating more incentives for affordable housing. Also ensuring that we update our programs and invest in those that are helping people to buy homes, and really start building equity for their families and for generations to come.
Miller: Maxine Dexter, do you see any significant policy differences between yourself and the other two candidates?
Dexter: Dave, thanks so much. I think one is that I’ve really led on, as you mentioned at the beginning, Narcan policy and making sure that we are getting treatment for opioid addiction into our communities. Until we have treatment more available than fentanyl on our streets, we will continue to have an immense crisis here.
Miller: If I may interrupt, I’m not sure that that qualifies as a policy difference. I think you’re talking about one of your accomplishments, and correct me if I’m wrong… the other two folks, if you want to talk about, if you disagree about harm reduction, we can talk about that. But let me give you a chance just to see if there’s anything else where you think that, in any realm, there is a significant policy difference between the three of you. Maxine Dexter?
Dexter: I think one is going to be our approach to health care reform. We all believe, I think, that universal access to health care absolutely is a right and should be affordable. I think that, as a leader in health care, I understand that we cannot do this in a one-step policy. We must iterate and innovate. And I believe that it’s going to be at the state levels that we do that. We need to make waivers much more accessible for states that are willing to innovate, and then scale those innovations at the federal level.
It’s an incredibly complex system, and I have heard a lot of discussions about this and frankly, it can’t work unless we address the issues with making money. Corporate investments in health care are killing our ability to deliver health care. And we absolutely need to address that right away. And I think at the state level, we need to really facilitate some of those innovations. So again, we can learn and then apply at the federal level.
Miller: Susheela Jayapal, same question. Do you see any significant policy disagreements between yourself and the other two candidates who are with us today?
Jayapal: Thank you, Dave. You know, I respect both of my opponents, but there are real differences here, and I’ll start with healthcare as well, but I mentioned a couple of others, also. I am the strongest progressive in this race. And what I think that means is that I am unabashed about putting forward bold policy ideas and simultaneously recognizing that we move over time to those bold policy ideas. But unless we are clear about where we’re heading, we’re not going to get there.
On health care, for example, I am an unabashed supporter of Medicare for All, or another form of universal single-payer health care. We have got to get private insurance companies out of the business of dictating our health care and reaping obscene profits from it. I believe that we need to establish a universal single-payer health care system as our goal. And then of course, take incremental steps that are aligned with that along the way. And I’d say Representative Ro Khanna’s bill that allows states to innovate here is absolutely something I would support.
On climate, my stance on moving away from fossil fuels and taking meaningful action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as my county work on clean air, which I’ve been recognized for, has earned me the endorsement of every environmental organization that has endorsed in this race, from the Sierra Club to Friends of the Earth Action to Food and Water Watch.
And then the third: I’ll mention one of the most prominent foreign policy issues of our time. I am the only candidate among the three of us to have called for a ceasefire in Gaza. I have publicly stated that while I condemn the Hamas attack of October 7th, and I support Israel’s right to defend itself, the Netanyahu government’s approach has created a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions that will not lead to peace or safety or security for anyone, Israeli or Palestinian. And I have also publicly stated that I don’t believe the United States can continue to provide unconditional military aid that supports this approach. And I am the only candidate who’s been very clear that they will not accept support from AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and I think you know, Dave, this is the Super PAC that has been pouring tens of millions of dollars into democratic primaries in order to oppose progressives.
So these issues I think are important, because foreign policy is an incredibly important part of the work of a congressperson, and it is related to domestic policy, and it’s related to the challenges that we’re facing on our streets here. So those are some policy differences.
Miller: Eddy Morales, let me give you a chance to respond and then Maxine Dexter, I do want to hear from you as well, about Israel and Gaza. But Eddy Morales, you can either talk broadly about policy disagreements that you think you have, or more specifically about single-payer or universal health care,which both of your opponents have mentioned, or Israel and Gaza.
Morales: Thank you so much, Dave. I just want to say that the three of us share the same values and I want to say a quick thing. You know, my mother came to this country in the trunk of a car, and my eight siblings came to this country in the back seat of strangers’ cars. My mother got a 10-year ban when she went to Mexico to be with her dying mother. And it’s first-hand experience of our broken immigration system. I’ve lost two brothers to gun violence, senseless acts. I’ve lost a sister to opioid addiction. And like I mentioned earlier, I grew up really housing insecure. Those are the policy failures that have motivated me for the last 25 years to do work.
Miller: But if I may, just to bring us back to this question, we can talk more, if we have time, about the ways in which your various life and work experiences – all of your experiences – have shaped who you are, and why you think it also would make you the right candidate for Congress. I also want listeners to hear your articulation of, if and where there are policy disagreements, differences in what you would actually want to do.
Morales: Like I said earlier, I think we all share very similar values. I think one of the areas that I really focused on, and have been effective in, is really addressing violence and crime. And again, motivated by my personal story and experience. And one of the ways that you do that is, you do find public safety and you do retrain people to address these issues of safety and violence upstream, through preventative programming and opportunities. And you bring in, not just our public safety officials, but community organizations in the school district. And you create an ecosystem that supports safety, and that’s how we’ve been able to decrease and address violence and crime. And I would say that that’s one of the things that sets me apart besides the fact that I focused on multigenerational affordable housing, not just single homes.
Miller: Maxine Dexter, I want to go to you briefly again, just to get some clarity here, because you and Susheela Jayapal both said that there are differences in terms of your approach to single-payer health care, but you both used the word incremental. So, what do you see as different? And do you agree that Medicare for All should be the goal?
Dexter: Yeah, thank you. A universal single-payer health plan may absolutely be where we end up. But we have to make sure that we are doing the things on the ground to get those pieces in place so that it can become a reality. I absolutely have led on this and I do believe that incremental change is what we need.
I will just pivot to air quality, and that has been an issue that I have led on since the day I was elected, and it is not a differentiator in this. As a pulmonologist, I care for people who are impacted by this and the climate work in the House... We have innovated and established ourselves as climate leaders. I was able to get housing investments for healthy homes and have absolutely been leading in that space.
Miller What about the question of military aid for Netanyahu and Israel?
Dexter: I have absolutely called for a negotiated ceasefire and that is on my website, it’s very clear. I think the challenges that we have are that we have an ally in the Middle East that we have already made an MOU [Memo of Understanding] Agreement with, and at this point in time, the president is putting stipulations around that, and I support that.
Miller: Eddy Morales, back to you. I’m curious, freshman members of Congress, they’re pretty limited in their ability to pick committee spots or subcommittee spots. But, what would you want to serve on?
Morales: Thank you, Dave. And, before we move on, I just want to say that I do support Medicare for All, and like I said, I worked on the ACA, and that moved us closer to that. And I also think that the war that is happening is horrific, but to your point really quickly – I really am passionate about education and workforce issues. I believe people have the right to have good jobs with benefits, and ultimately retire with dignity. I’m a product of the public education system from preschool through public university, here at the University of Oregon. And that was made possible because of federal funding, of early intervention programs, of programs that supported English as a second language, of students with disabilities, as well as the Pell Grant and federally subsidized loans.
And so I want to go there and continue to make sure that that opportunity to go from your education to a good paying job is there. And so the Education and Workforce would be the committee that I want to land in.
Miller: Susheela Jayapal, what would you push for, to the extent that you have any ability to push, as an incoming first-time lawmaker?
Jayapal: Yes, a lot of humility about your ability to push from that position. You know, I would ask for Financial Services, for a whole bunch of reasons. First, that is the committee under which Housing and Homelessness lives. It’s a subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee and obviously, Housing and Homelessness would be one of my top priorities.
And the other reason is that, while Financial Services might sound sort of boring and small-bore, in the stuck congress that you’ve described, where it is gonna continue for a long time to be very difficult to pass significant legislation, or any legislation at all, I think there are a host of regulatory and what might seem small-bore sorts of things that we can do to improve people’s daily lives, and Financial Services houses a lot of those. For example, addressing fees and fines that people in poverty run into, addressing really abusive practices that banks engage in that affect people who have very little money, those sorts of things. So that’s why I would ask for Financial Services.
Miller: Maxine Dexter, what about you?
Dexter: I would ask for Energy and Commerce, first and foremost, overseeing healthcare and climate. But I agree, Financial Services, which oversees Housing, is not a long second place. Finally, Appropriations. No freshman probably gets to have any choice, but that would also be one that I would absolutely want to serve on, because a budget is a values document and it’s something that I work really hard on in the House.
Miller: Susheela Jayapal, you mentioned climate change earlier. Where do you see any possibility of bipartisan agreement when it comes to climate change?
Jayapal: Well, there’s so much that we need to do to address climate change, so I’ll start there. We all know that this is both an existential threat and it’s a real opportunity…
Miller: I should say, you’re asking voters to put you into a job where I think that that last statement is categorically not true. You would be working with about half of your colleagues who would disagree with that fact. They would say, “No, it is not a serious threat,” or they might obfuscate and say, “It’s not clear that humans are doing this.” But the reason I asked the question earlier, in terms of bipartisan issues, is that climate change has become so politicized that I’m wondering where you see room for things to actually get passed?
Jayapal: Thank you for the modification, Dave. I think I met all of us on this screen. I agree that climate change is an existential threat and I think the majority of voters in this district do as well. There’s a range of things we need to do. One of the places where I think there is a real opportunity is the fact that, if we can make the transition in a way that really creates good jobs for people, that is a bipartisan issue, everybody here…I think I am correct, most people believe that we need good jobs for Americans, for everybody who lives here. And that’s the opportunity that I see, in terms of making this transition in a really thoughtful way, that addresses the fact that across the country, in rural areas, for example, people need jobs. So, if we can create the infrastructure that we need to make the transition, I think that will address a bipartisan need.
And then I think there are a range of other issues again, that seem smaller but are really meaningful. Clean air, I think that is a place where there can be room for bipartisan agreement, and I’ll mention conversations I’ve had with a rural county commissioner colleague, a Republican. There are many things we don’t agree on, but we share some common values. We did an exchange last summer. I went out to Union County. He came here to Multnomah County. No agenda, no policy list that we were working on. Just to get to know each other’s regions. And some of the common ground we found was the need for workforce, for example. The need for jobs, the need to stop corporatization of, in his case, farm and agriculture, and I was talking about health care.
And then also this issue around protecting our environment, because for rural counties, clean air, clean water, clean land, is imperative. So I think that those are some places where we can find common ground.
Miller: Eddy Morales, what about you?
Morales: Thanks Dave. One, a few years ago here in Gresham and in East County, we were one of the hottest places on the planet. We lost over 100 people in our community because of that. And just a few weeks ago, we saw with the ice storm, a lot of people in my community who did not have electricity for two or three weeks. I think we can find common ground around infrastructure projects as well. I think people could agree that we probably need to update our electrical grid to make sure that as we get more severe storms, that it’s not impacting people like this.
Right here in Gresham, right now, I am working with a council that is filled with Republicans and Democrats on helping to ensure that we are transitioning homes from wood-burning stoves or gas- burning stoves to heat pumps. And part of the way that we’re able to see around this issue is that it’s also bringing down the electrical cost for the people in our community. And although the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] had some of these incentives in there, the truth is that working families and low-income, moderate- income families were not able to pay those upfront costs. And so I think that there is an ability for the private and public sector to come together to help with these infrastructure projects, as well as figure out ways that we’re saving people real dollars in their pockets.
Miller: And, Maxine Dexter, to you, the same question, about bipartisan possibilities for addressing climate change.
Dexter: Yeah, absolutely. Air quality is one, we know that when air quality worsens that we have enormous immediate impacts on the health of people. Healthy homes are another. We know that if we want to make people resilient in the era of ongoing climate disasters and events such as the heat dome that put people in harm’s way, it’s very much a bipartisan issue. I will just share that I have led bipartisan work and have been working with our Republican colleagues in the past with a historic housing package that had enormous investments in resilient, healthy homes with full bipartisan support.
And we also know that we have the Portland Harbor Superfund site that is a bipartisan issue, getting it cleaned up. We have to bring people to the table, and what we know is, when you can find the areas of shared values such as jobs, we can make sure that that gets done in a thoughtful, environmentally-focused way. And we did that with House Bill 4080, making a plan for how we’re going to bring offshore wind here to Oregon. And it protects workers. It makes sure that the environmental community is brought in, and it lays the groundwork for how we have that conversation in an intentional and very meaningful way. That was bipartisan, and I will continue that work in Congress.
Miller: I have a couple more questions. If you answer briefly, that’d be great, because we’re almost out of time. Susheela Jayapal, first. Is there any issue where you break from Democratic Party orthodoxy?
Jayapal: As I’ve said before, Dave, I am the strongest progressive in this race, and some of the progressive platforms and really bold policies that have been pushed for have not always been supported by Democratic leadership. I’ll give you an example. The Green New Deal, originally proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, and thought to be unachievable. And then what we’ve seen in the almost decade or so since he first started talking about the Green New Deal, is that elements of that vision and that set of policy proposals were included in the Infrastructure Reduction Act.
I don’t know that that qualifies as departing from Democratic orthodoxy necessarily, but I do think that what being a progressive means to me is that we are leading on creating a bold vision for change. Then, we are working in specific concrete ways to bring smaller changes to our constituents and some examples...
Miller: Actually, sorry, we gotta move on. Maxine Dexter, any areas where you think that you break from the majority of your party?
Dexter: Yeah, I have a voting record. You can see when I’ve broken from my party, and some of those bills have been when we needed to prioritize putting people in homes and making sure that we built the homes that people need. It ended up being a bipartisan issue, but I helped lead the way to make sure that we maintained affordable housing as a priority in getting that housing built.
On some of the mandates around health care, some of the mandates that have been led by Democratic priorities have been, quite frankly, bad for health care. And so I’ve been the only “No,” or one of the only “No’s,” multiple times. I think one of the things you can count on is my record, and I have an extremely progressive record and have some of the highest ratings in progressive values.
But I also understand that we need to get things done and we need to work together for shared values. I’m one of the pragmatic leaders who will make sure that if I have to, that I’ll support what the needs of my community are, over the leadership that dictate some of our votes.
Miller: And Eddy Morales, last question to you, any issues you can point to, where you could argue that you are not with mainstream Democrats?
Morales: Yes, Dave. For 25 years, I’ve been, I would say, pushing the Democratic Party to be more progressive. Twenty-four years ago, I was talking about education being free and a right for everybody. I was pushing for the Dream Act, for undocumented youth to be part of our system. I was pushing for healthcare for all. And yes, I’ve learned how to be pragmatic, to get things done. Hence the ACA and DACA. But for 25 years, I’ve always had this vision and unlike my colleagues here, who’ve recently come around to be identified as progressives. I’ve been doing this for 25 years.
Miller: Eddy Morales, Susheela Jayapal and Maxine Dexter, thank you very much.
All: Thank you.
Miller: These are the three top candidates who are running in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District. It is an open seat, following Congressman Earl Blumenauer’s announcement last October that he is not seeking re-election. Eddy Morales is a member of the Gresham City Council. Susheela Jayapal is a former Multnomah County Commissioner for Northeast and North Portland, and Maxine Dexter is a Democratic State Representative from Northwest Portland.
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