In 2020, the voters of Portland, Oregon elected Mike Schmidt as the city’s District Attorney. Schmidt – a george soros-supported hard leftist who proudly supports brilliant ideas like defunding the police and pretending non-felonious (and some felonious) crimes aren’t worth vigorous prosecution, received an overwhelming 77% of the vote.
And how did this work out?
Simply stated, during his tenure as DA, Schmidt managed to turn this once vibrant city into a horror show, with going downtown an exercise in risk-taking. Not surprisingly, people are fleeing the city (its population has decreased each of the last three years).
Well, it is now 2024, and the voters of Portland, having been treated to this brilliance for the past four years, just voted on whether to retain Schmidt as DA, or replace him with Nathan Vasquez – a former Republican who has become an independent (good move politically, since it has been 44 years since Portland elected a Republican Mayor).
In contrast with Schmidt, Vasquez ran on a program of treating crime seriously and ridding the city of it prolific number of outdoor drug markets. Here is his platform statement:
We must take lawless behavior seriously and enforce our laws. Studies show the best way to deter crime is the certainty of getting caught, the swiftness of the penalty, and the severity of the punishment. Even ‘petty’ crimes, like theft, vandalism, and littering, public use of illicit drugs and public highs, all contribute to the overall feeling of safety and wellbeing of a community. It’s all of the “small things” that have added up to create an environment of chaos, and completely broken the social contract we all agree to as citizens of a community. When we don’t enforce, we tell our community we don’t care.
So how did things turn out this time?
Well, with 91% of the vote counted, here are the totals:
| Candidate | Votes | Percent |
|---|---|---|
|
Nathan Vasquez
|
100,069 | |
|
Mike Schmidt*incumbent
|
86,902 | |
|
Total Write-ins
|
864 | |
|
Total reported
|
187,835 |
Bye-bye Schmidt. Or, as one pundit (should I say pun-dit) told us “Portland just got the Schmidt kicked out of it”.
It is a testament to the sanity – the newly found sanity – of Portland voters that Schmidt will be gone….though it is also a testament to the retained insanity of Portland voters that he still got 46% of the vote.
Regardless, Portland now will have a District Attorney who intends to actually act like a District Attorney.
With a debilitated, demoralized police force and a Mayor – Ted Wheeler – who is far more toward Schmidt’s views than those of Mr. Vazquez, it won’t be easy. But I wish him well…
…and hope Portland’s voters are sufficiently “rewoke” to assign Wheeler the same fate as Schmidt next time around.
