POLICY POSITIONS: No word salad.
REGENERATIVE ECONOMY
The problem:
Oregon has never found a common economic direction since timber. We keep organizing for the inorganic economy of the past instead of building towards a sustainable future.
What I think we should do:
• Treat care, housing, and workforce development as economic infrastructure, not ‘charity’
• Build on Oregon's strengths in emerging markets: plant medicine integration, regenerative agriculture, circular manufacturing, sustainable forestry
• Reform regulatory culture away from endless rule-making to public partnership; regulators should help Oregon businesses compete beyond our borders, not just comply with our petty bureaucrats
• Replace the Prosperity Council model (closed-door panels of insiders) with more public support for the innovators already actually building things
WORKERS RIGHTS AND LABOR
The problem: Unions are the best tool we currently have for collective bargaining on wages and benefits - but they're either a blunt instrument for the granular, individual, nuanced workplace issues where most workers actually struggle, or they don’t have the leverage to matter. Meanwhile government has outsourced too much of the foundational expectation that all workers deserve basic safety, dignity, and recourse. That baseline shouldn't depend on whether your workplace happens to be organized.
What I think we should do:
Statutory labor protections should be a genuine floor, dignity, safety, fair pay, and recourse that exist whether you're unionized or not
Explore guild models for licensed professions; where the profession itself advocates for workers inside workplaces, not just at the bargaining table
Build ombudsman/mediation infrastructure into existing state licensing frameworks — think esthetic trades, massage therapy, early childcare providers and other licensed professions already regulated by the state but who have no labor protections built into that relationship; licensing renewal could include access to mediation and workplace advocacy
Build independent ombudsman/ mediation infrastructure for individual workplace disputes; nimble, neutral, accessible without triggering a full adversarial machinery
OreCorps as a public baseline, a state-defined standard for early career work that private employers have to compete with
Support unions where they work while being honest that they work better at some scales and in some contexts than others
ORECORPS: OREGON CIVIC LABOR COMPACT
The problem:
Oregon faces critical workforce shortages in healthcare, trades, legal services, infrastructure, and education. Young Oregonians face debt, credential barriers, and no clear pathway into stable work.
What I think we should do:
• Create OreCorps: a structured civic labor compact for 17-24 year olds
• Five pathways: healthcare, legal administration, trades, civil engineering and infrastructure, education
• Participants receive: living stipend, stackable college and licensing credit, loan forgiveness, tiered certifications that build toward full credentials
• 3, 5, or 7 year service contracts — longer service, greater benefits
• Administered through community colleges, with university partnerships and Department of Education oversight
• PPP funding model — PERS investment as potential capital source
• Connects to high school credit flexibility — a softer on-ramp to adulthood
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE
The problem: Oregon voters passed Measure 111 in 2022 establishing healthcare as a constitutional right. The Universal Health Plan Governance Board will deliver a complete single-payer plan to the legislature in September 2026 — right as the next governor takes office. Multnomah County carries an outsized burden of unmet behavioral health, substance use, and housing instability needs that compound each other without integrated care. Single-payer isn't a dream; it largely pays for itself through administrative consolidation. The question isn't whether Oregon has a plan. It's whether the next governor will fight for it.
What I think we should do:
Champion the single-payer plan in the 2027 legislative session and make it the number one priority; Oregon made a constitutional promise in 2022 and the next governor's job is to keep it
Push for fast-track implementation aligned with the next open enrollment period
Back a ballot initiative if the legislature won't act
Integrate behavioral health, substance use treatment, and social support; siloed services don't work and Oregonians navigating multiple systems pay the price, pilot plant medicine integrations under Schedule 3 changes.
Recognize that single-payer unlocks economic growth by making small business entrepreneurship more stable.
EDUCATION
The problem:
Oregon ranks 47th nationally in academic proficiency while asking teachers to be educators, social workers, mental health providers, and crisis responders simultaneously. That is not sustainable.
What I think we should do:
• Treat care as the precondition for education, kids can't learn in crisis
• Pilot a four-term balanced calendar in willing districts, teachers rotate through three of four terms, not more work for the same pay
• Expand the CC-to-teaching credentialing pipeline for existing caregivers
• Partner with the Ballmer Institute model to embed behavioral health support in schools
• Flexible credit for farm work, volunteering, summer jobs, and apprenticeships
• Connect K-12 more directly to higher education through dual enrollment and civic internships
• Use federal Department of Education disruption as an opportunity to build something Oregon-specific
HOUSING
The problem: Oregon is short roughly 140,000 homes. When supply is constrained, landlords keep rents high regardless of wages. Displacement costs are real; they show up in emergency rooms, schools, and city budgets, but they're paid by everyone except the people who cause them.
What I think we should do:
• Social depreciation tax on large institutional landlords — if you extract value from a community, you pay for the damage
• Rebuild SRO housing stock through an institutional owner / nonprofit operator model
• Expand community land trusts using patient capital — PERS investment as a potential vehicle
• Scale-based displacement penalties and maintenance deferral fees
• Community reinvestment requirements for large portfolio owners
HOMELESSNESS
The problem:
A majority of Oregon’s homeless population lived in their local area before they lost housing. This is primarily a housing supply and affordability crisis, not a services crisis, though services matter too.
What I think we should do:
• Housing supply is the main lever; support continued permitting reform and housing production
• Different interventions work for different people: rapid rehousing for some, intensive wraparound services for others
• End siloed services: coordinated intake across behavioral health, housing, and primary care
• Real-time shared data across agencies; monthly, not annual point-in-time counts
• Universal healthcare as the structural fix that makes coordination possible
• Rebuild the missing middle; SROs and transitional housing between shelter and apartment
• West coast regional coordination as federal support becomes less reliable
IMMIGRATION
The problem:
Unaccountable enforcement (masked agents with no identification operating without coordination with local law enforcement) creates conditions for violence, robbery, and sexual assault against everyone, regardless of status. That is not law enforcement. That is a public safety threat.
What I think:
• I’m proud of Oregon's sanctuary status; it reflects our values and I will defend it
• Accountability is not optional: no masked agents, visible identification numbers required, enforcement must be coordinated within jurisdictions
• Oregonians should be able to verify that people exercising authority over them are actually following the law
• This is not an anti-enforcement position. It is a rule of law position
PLANT MEDICINE AND EMERGING WELLNESS INDUSTRIES
The problem:
Oregon has led the country on cannabis legalization and therapeutic psilocybin, then repeatedly strangled those industries with regulatory proliferation while offering no strategic support. Entrepreneurs took enormous personal risk to build something legitimate inside federal frameworks that are opaque, contradictory, and designed for a different era.
What I think we should do:
• Oregon should be a national leader in defining what good policy looks like for plant medicine integration including cannabis, hemp, and therapeutic psilocybin
• Regulators should help Oregon businesses compete, not just add friction.
• Schedule 3 is an opening for a new conversation, but needs strategic handling to support both the wellness and economic opportunities
• The people who built Oregon's legal cannabis industry deserve a governor who shows up for the conversation
DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL REFORM
The problem:
Oregon's political system is pay-to-play. The voters pamphlet fee, campaign finance structures, and institutional gatekeeping make it harder for new voices and ideas to enter public life.Discretionary spending has become the primary filter for who gets to participate in public life; not ideas, not experience, not community trust. When the entry fee to democratic participation is that high, we're not running a democracy. We're running an auction.
What I think matters:
• Strengthen campaign finance transparency so voters know who is funding the messages they receive
• Support ranked choice voting and other reforms that expand real voter choice, including open primaries to produce better candidates and better policy
• Time and Dignity Test applied to political participation itself: does this system respect people's time, reduce unnecessary friction, and preserve dignity without requiring money or expertise most people don't have?
• Transparent, accountable government: metrics, data, and honest reporting on what's working
WILDFIRE PREVENTION & DISASTER RECOVERY
The problem: Climate change is creating hotter, drier, longer summers that increase the length and intensity of Oregon’s fire season- a problem for public safety and our budgets. In 2024 we spent $350 million fighting wildfires, a state record, and then had to call an emergency legislative session because we couldn't pay the contractors. State land makes up less than 2% of burned acres. The federal government, which manages 60% of Oregon's forests, takes years to reimburse Oregon for suppression costs on fires that start on their land and burn into ours. Meanwhile the Administration is cutting the monitoring systems; snowpack, weather, flood warning, that tell us when and where fire risk is highest. Five years after the Almeda Fire, Talent and Phoenix are still rebuilding, and federal funding freezes have left contractors who completed recovery work waiting for reimbursement that may never come. Our current approach is unsustainable.
What I think we should do:
Expand Oregon's Prescribed Burn Association program. It’s community-led and built in partnership with tribal nations whose fire stewardship knowledge of this region goes back centuries
Make the case for responsible mechanical thinning on O&C lands, the 2.5 million acres the federal government is legally required to manage for timber production and revenue sharing with rural Oregon counties. Those counties are being starved of promised revenue while fuel loads build on unmanaged land that burns into their communities
Create a dedicated state wildfire fund, not emergency appropriations after the fact, but a sustainable funding mechanism that doesn't depend on federal reimbursement timelines
Hold utilities accountable: direct the Public Utility Commission to require wildfire mitigation plans as a condition of rate approvals, and oppose rate increases that pass negligence costs onto customers rather than shareholders
Build state capacity for critical environmental monitoring, partner with OSU, tribal environmental departments, and Pacific Northwest states to replace federal snowpack and weather monitoring that is being eliminated
Pursue public-private partnerships to develop fire-resistant, affordable building standards, starting with communities like Talent and Phoenix as demonstration sites. Oregon should lead on outcome-based fire-resilient building codes that encourage innovation and keep costs accessible for lower-income households
Say publicly and clearly who is responsible when federal land mismanagement creates state costs, and pursue every available legal and political mechanism to recover those costs
WE SAVE US/ FEDERAL RESILIENCE
The problem:
Federal funding, mandates, and program structures that Oregon has relied on are becoming unreliable or actively hostile. Oregon needs to build resilience, not just resistance.
What I think we should do:
• Build state-level capacity to replace federal programs where necessary; healthcare, education, housing
• West coast coordination with Washington, California, and others on shared infrastructure and policy
• Treat federal disruption as an opportunity to design Oregon-specific systems that actually work for Oregonians
• Fiscal honesty- we need to know what we can fund at the state level and what requires new revenue mechanisms
PERS MISMANAGEMENT IS DEFUNDING CLASSROOMS
The problem:
Classroom budgets are shrinking around the state because of under performance in the Oregon's Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF). Over investment in private equity assets that consistently miss their targets, against advice, with increasing, opaque fees has already robbed us all of $3.7 billion. The additional resulting costs will more than erase the recent education funding increases while doing nothing to address our performance gaps. Private equity investments also aren't held to the same standards of transparency, while the costs of mismanagement continue to be passed on to our communities.
What I think we should do:
• Require full transparency in OPERF private equity reporting; individual fund performance, fees paid, and deviation from investment policy targets should be public information
Direct the Oregon Investment Council to return private equity allocation to policy-compliant levels and prioritize public equities and fixed income where transparency and liquidity are higher
Hold investment managers accountable to their benchmarks; fees should reflect performance, not just assets under management
Advocate for state relief to school districts bearing disproportionate PERS cost increases driven by investment underperformance rather than their own hiring or wage decisions
Explore redirecting a portion of PERS real estate investment toward community land trusts and permanently affordable housing, stable long-term returns that build community assets instead of extracting them
Treat PERS governance as a public accountability issue: 415,000 Oregonians depend on this fund and every school district in Oregon is affected by how it is managed