Voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, which encompasses Portland and its surrounding area, could boot left-wing District Attorney Mike Schmidt on Tuesday.
Prosecutor Nathan Vasquez, a Republican-turned-independent who works under Schmidt, could oust the district attorney in the head-to-head nonpartisan primary if he secures over 50% of the vote. Schmidt would be the latest left-wing prosecutor, funded by groups linked to George Soros, to not secure another term after critics argued they were soft-on-crime.
“What I hear when I’m knocking on doors, is ‘Hey, I consider myself very liberal but this is out of step — we’re not getting served well,’” Vasquez told Politico. “People definitely want public safety. It doesn’t mean people are wholly abandoning the idea of criminal justice reform. They just want it delivered in a pragmatic, practical way.”
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled in June 2022; Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx decided in April 2023 not to run for reelection in Chicago; and Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón is facing former Republican California attorney general candidate Nathan Hochman in November.
Schmidt was overwhelmingly elected in May 2020, just before the George Floyd riots broke out in Portland and other blue cities across the country. (RELATED: Republican Challenger Declares Victory Over Soros-Backed Prosecutor)
A person walks covered with a blanket past an encampment of tents on the street near Union Station in Portland, Oregon on January 24, 2024. (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)
“Prior to him coming into office, we ranged somewhere between 12,000 to 20,000 cases a year,” Vasquez told Politico of the drop in prosecutions since 2020. “Under him, post-Covid, we were under 6,000.”
Crime jumped in 2021 and 2022 in Portland after the city defunded part of the police force in 2020.
Oregon became the first state to decriminalize hard drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and oxycodone via a ballot measure in 2020. Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek signed legislation in early April re-criminalizing possession of the drugs after Oregon declared a state of emergency in January to combat the surge in overdoses.
Multnomah County hasn’t voted Republican for president since 1960, or a GOP candidate since 1986, according to Politico. The last time Oregon elected a GOP governor was when Victor G. Atiyeh secured a second term in 1982.
Schmidt’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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