Earl Blumenauer talks about a long career – and what’s next

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Earl Blumenauer is one of the longest-serving elected officials in Oregon history – if not the longest. He first won election to the Oregon House of Representatives in 1972, when he was in his early 20s. Over the next five decades, he went on to serve on the Multnomah County Commission, Portland City Council and, most famously, for nearly 30 years representing Portland in Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District.

In that time, Blumenauer has stood out for any number of reasons: his bow tie, his enthusiasm for bicycles, and his passion for cannabis legalization, to name a few. Now he’s saying goodbye to public office, and looking forward to a role helping his hometown find its feet.

Blumenauer, 76, visited OPB on Dec.13 to chat about his career, his take on national politics, and what comes next. Here’s that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. To hear the full conversation, click the audio link below or subscribe to OPB Politics Now anywhere you get your podcasts.

It’s got to be a surreal feeling that you flew back from DC for the last time as a congressperson. It sounds exciting, sad, maybe a mix of the two. How are you feeling?

Oh, it’s time. It’s delightful. As you know, I made a decision last October that I really didn’t think it made sense for me to devote two more years of my life to campaign to serve in an increasingly dysfunctional Congress for another two years. I made the assessment that I could do more as a civilian and I’ve been working to wrap it up over these last 14 months and we’ve handed off all our major projects to other members of Congress. I’m feeling really good about where we are.

Before Congress, you served first in the state Legislature, then you moved to the Multnomah County Commission, then you moved to the Portland City Council for I think around a decade… This was also a time when Portland was taking steps to becoming a version of the city that would be seen as a model, as visionary, as kind of the place to be in a sort of a modern American city. What did you or the policymakers of your generation get right?

There was a goal here to empower citizens within the framework that we established. I was in the Oregon Legislature when we did Senate Bill 100 [Oregon’s foundational land-use law]. At the city…. I was responsible for the planning bureau and transportation. Being able to empower citizens in the decision-making process, looking at the big picture, something that I think Portland has done historically, the notion that we can actually plan how we put the pieces together, looking at the long haul and engaging citizens in that planning process. I think Portland did a superb job of that, making it as a model of a livable community recognized far and wide.

Livability has been huge for your career in public service. I was watching an ad from, I think, your first congressional run. You ran past the MAX train, past a curbside recycling [truck]. You’re literally running on these issues. So to the extent that that has been part of your entire 30-year stint in Congress, what do you think has changed from the time you got there to today? Has it gotten easier to push these ideas? Has it suddenly gotten harder as we’ve sort of shifted post-pandemic?

I think the challenge of making Portland the most livable city in the country remains. We made some amazing progress lately. We’ve had problems, particularly as it relates to the pandemic and the issues of homelessness and problems on our streets, but we still have great bones. You move less than half a mile from the problems downtown and you are within some of the most livable neighborhoods in America. I think we got that right.

We’ve got some work to do in terms of being able to continue progress. We’re still recovering from the pandemic. Remember the federal Department of Transportation was telling people not to ride transit because it was dangerous. We’ve had economic problems… but I think basically the principles are the same and around the country, I’ve been in over 200 communities where we’ve worked with issues of streetcar, light rail, land use planning, neighborhood empowerment. It still resonates. People are impressed with what we’re doing here and they want to emulate it.

Since this year’s election, I’ve thought about what me and you talked about when you announced you wouldn’t run again. You told me a couple things. You told me first that there had been some political pinnacles that you’d recently helped achieve with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, your ability to steer dollars via those things. Another thing you said was that your issues that you were still working on, you felt like were teed up and ready for someone to pick up the ball and run them across the finish line. We are now looking at an incoming presidential administration that may try to claw back unspent money from those two big spending bills and a Republican-run Congress where perhaps your issues are harder to achieve. So has that picture changed?

We’ve worked very hard to make sure our livability agenda is not partisan. Whether it’s bike partisan, what we’ve done in terms of water, land use, planning, transportation choices, taming traffic These are all areas that we have achieved on a bipartisan basis. I started this congress in Houston with a large gathering of people who were there interested in the work we did with the energy provisions.

Now there’s loose talk from a somewhat erratic president. Who knows what it is that he really believes, if he really believes, and he said all sorts of reckless things? We’re going to deport all these agricultural workers, which will shut down the dairy industry in the United States. His campaign rhetoric will hit reality, but the work we’ve done has all been on a bipartisan basis.

In 2017, we had a bigger Republican majority and Trump and the Republicans wanted to unwind the agreement we reached dealing with wind energy. They were doing that in the reconciliation package. It should have been smooth sailing and we stopped them. There is bipartisan support for what we did. A number of these projects in transportation and energy are centered in red districts. As a practical matter, the new regime cannot ignore engineering, the economy and science and what we’ve done relates to all of those. All those were bipartisan achievements.

There are a number of things that are in the pipeline. That’s part of what I’ve been working on is helping people understand how to take advantage of it… The core of what we’ve done has had Republican and Democratic support, and they are what the communities want. So I think there’s resilience behind this.

Another place where you’ve had significant influence during your career has been on trade policy, through your role on the Ways and Means Committee. And we also have a president coming in who’s got some very notable, often talked about trade ideas around tariffs that I think some people in Oregon feel could be pretty destructive to their ability to export. How are you looking at the proposals that you’ve seen?

Well, the biggest achievement in the prior Congress that Trump attempts to take credit for is the revision for [the North American Free Trade Agreement]. Trump did nothing with that. We took a bill that was dead on arrival. We worked with Robert Lighthizer, his trade representative, and fashioned an approach that actually got a majority of Democrats to support and strong Republican support having an agenda that is not a series of drive-by tariffs.

They’re shooting with real bullets. If you’re going to upset our largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico – if you want their cooperation on immigration and migrants, for instance – threatening to invade the country is, I would say gently, counterproductive. Early on, they declared working with Canada a national security threat. Really? An ally that worked with us on NATO? We’ve got this long border and they’re a national security threat? So a lot of this stuff is just random talk…I can’t make sense out of campaign charges that Donald Trump has made, they would be disastrous and it’s recognized as such, drive up prices and divide us from some of our closest allies But he’s going to have to work that out. Reality is going to intervene.

This notion that somehow he’s got two people who are going to help him cut the deficit 40% and leave social security and Medicare alone is lunacy. It won’t happen, and so at some point reality intervenes, they backtrack or they just deny they ever said it. That’s not my problem anymore.

Well, that is a perfect segue. You have accepted a senior fellowship role at Portland State University. If I’m right, this is a second stint at PSU for you.

That was my first job out of Lewis and Clark College was working for two of the presidents at Portland State. I really enjoyed that. I loved the institution. I learned a lot and came to appreciate the power that Portland State exerted. In terms of our community vitality. Portland State is 18% of the downtown area. There are about 20,000 people a week on that campus, and there are some extraordinary programs dealing with urban studies, engineering, behavioral health. These are opportunities for Portland going forward.

Walk me through what you envision for the new role. What are you being hired to do? What do you see as the thing that Earl Blumenauer is going to bring to PSU and Portland?

Well, part of what I’m doing is finding out how we can best help that equation. I have some strong feelings. I’ve had some experience, but I am not there for another 20 days. Part of what I want to do is work with the community to see ways that my experience and the Institute for Metropolitan Studies can add value.

Historically, there has been a much more vibrant role of Portland State University in the city of Portland. In fact, in the seventies, there was a Ford Foundation grant called Vital Partners and focused on the role that Portland State played with its relationship with the city. I think recently that has not been top of mind. Opportunities that we used to have where it was a pipeline between people who worked in the university and people who would be in local government can be strengthened.

You have been strikingly candid about your concerns about where the city of Portland is at. When you announced you were running for reelection in 2022, you said in that announcement, “Portland is broken.” You told Politico some pieces of downtown looked like bombed out Dresden in World War II. So I want to ask the second part of a question that I asked you earlier: What are city and county leaders today not getting right?

Let me just say, in the two years that have passed, I think there’s been remarkable progress. The governor has been an amazing partner. There’s no political benefit being mayor of Portland. Tina Kotek has made a significant investment in strengthening that partnership. The downtown task force a number of people participated in. I think there’s been a reset in county government and there’s greater cooperation between the city and the county than there was three years ago.

And the most recent election process gives me more optimism. I wasn’t certain how the new charter was going to work out, and it could have gone sideways with ranked-choice voting and competing for attention. It could have spotlighted people who were being negative. That didn’t happen in the main. It was a constructive set of conversations. I was pleasantly surprised, and we’ve got a new council that I think is starting with a clean slate. The administrative structure is being put in place. It looks like [City Manager] Michael Jordan may stay for another year or two, and we’ve had some people empowered as administrators in ways that are more consolidated and focused than we’ve seen in the past. These are delightful developments. I think there’s a different attitude with the public, and I think there’s a different attitude in terms of what we’re doing in local government.

One of the ways I look at your congressional career is working to export the values of Portland to the wider world nationally. Certainly with things like light rail and the transportation stuff. We talked about livability. You are coming back from 30 years in Congress to be in Portland full-time, thinking about its issues full time. Are there things you would import from your time in DC to the city?

I think the formula remains the same. Being able to work on a collaborative basis, looking at the big picture and the long haul and being able to mobilize resources where you find them – whether it’s private sector or programs that we’ve helped create at the federal level and fund – it requires a comprehensive approach. That is an approach I took to Congress. It’s one that I’m proud of.

Portland has more opportunities now than anytime I can think of. Whether you’re talking about the opportunities at OMSI; the extension of streetcar from John’s Landing to Montgomery Park; Lloyd Center; the work downtown; some of the revitalization that we’re seeing in various neighborhoods; Albina Vision Trust, with a half billion dollars that’s available to unlock a problem that we’ve had since it was created. The approach in terms of big picture collaboration, being able to strengthen the fundamentals of transportation and land use. I think they continue. I think the principles are solid today as they were 10 or 15 years ago.

My initial idea for our discussion, as you know, was that you and I would bike around the city. We weren’t able to do this because it’s very cold and very wet outside today, and I frankly, I’m happy to be indoors, but my idea was to visit places of significance either to you or the moment the city is in. We are not able to do that, but where would you have wanted to go?

[Long pause.]

What’s your favorite Portland restaurant? Who’s your favorite child? I am really encouraged by the elements that we’ve been able to put together. I mentioned OMSI with a new vision that’s taking place there. What we’re seeing in terms of bike and pedestrian opportunities, I suppose I should mention the Blumenauer Bridge. Pretty powerful symbolically, but these are elements that are part of a larger picture work we’re doing.

Something I’m extraordinarily proud of is the work on 82nd Avenue. These are, I call ‘em orphan highways. The federal government now calls them legacy highways. We’ve been able to develop 27 revenue streams to help people take these tired state highways that are dangerous and unsafe and are an impediment to economic development and be able to invest in them

82nd Avenue: We’re putting millions into that. There’s more along the way. These are opportunities that I find exciting, and I hope that we can get people to focus on what they are. They’re simple. It’s not complex, but they have defied being able to make a difference up till now.

There was a part of me that hoped you would walk in this morning with a fruitcake. Sadly, there was no fruitcake. Are your fruitcake days behind you?

Well, it’s been a pretty intense period, trying to wrap up 54 years – 28 years in Congress – close down and move on, and to make sure that all my projects are handed off to people. There was no opportunity to this point to take the time to bake fruitcake. But I’ve got 20 days. I’m not going to be in Washington, D.C. I’m hopeful that there may be one or two fruitcakes in my future, Not the industrial scale of production that I’ve done in the past, with over 300 fruitcakes, but I think there may be one or two that are there, given the fact that I will be here not on a plane 14 hours a week.