platform
platform

The challenges facing District 4 are interconnected.

They include protecting green spaces and riverfronts, revitalizing downtown and Chinatown, supporting small businesses, and ensuring that growth benefits both longtime residents and newcomers.

Strong, thoughtful leadership is needed to meet this moment and build a more resilient Portland for everyone.

 
the issues
the issues

Fight Rising Costs

Moratorium on Data Centers

Data centers require enormous amounts of electricity. Even when they pay for the infrastructure built specifically for them, adding massive new demand to a constrained electrical system can require more generation, transmission, and grid expansion.

The numbers are already staggering: Portland General Electric has incurred approximately $210 million in local transmission upgrades to serve data center load, costs that have historically been shared across customers. Between 2019 and 2024, data center growth on PGE’s system was equivalent to adding 162,400 customers, while the residential customer base grew by only 24,300 households.

Oregon’s new POWER Act is an important step toward making large energy users pay their fair share. But shifting infrastructure costs to data centers doesn’t eliminate the underlying demand they’re placing on our regional energy system.

That’s why Jeremy supports a moratorium on new data centers while we determine how much additional demand our electrical system can sustainably support—and how to ensure Portland residents aren’t left competing with some of the world’s largest corporations for affordable power.

Our first responsibility should be keeping electricity reliable and affordable for the people who live here.

Read the Power Act

The long term solution for rising energy costs is to explore a publicly owned power grid.

Right now, much of Portland’s electricity is provided by investor-owned utilities. That means our electric bills don’t just support the power grid—they also support a business that must generate returns for its investors.

Jeremy supports studying whether Portland could transition toward a publicly owned electric utility governed by a democratically elected board.

Public ownership could give Portlanders more control over where our energy comes from, how rates are set, and how we invest in the grid. Public ownership also creates opportunities for long-term workforce development and climate resilience. This work can be supported through broader public infrastructure initiatives inspired by New Deal-era civilian conservation programs that invest directly in sustainability, grid modernization, ecological restoration, and living-wage job creation.

Instead of maximizing private returns, we could invest in local renewable energy, neighborhood resilience, grid modernization, and good-paying jobs—all while making affordable, reliable electricity the priority.

The goal is simple: Portland’s energy system should work for Portlanders.

Getting around Portland shouldn’t require owning a car. We will fight for frequent, reliable, and accessible public transit that connects Portlanders to jobs, schools, services, and each other.

Safety For All

Fully Fund Portland Street Response

Not every crisis needs a cop.

A person having a mental health episode, a person experiencing an overdose, a welfare check on someone in distress, someone causing public distress but not violence– these people need help not punishment.

Portland Street Response (PSR) offers an alternative to sending armed police to behavioral health and non-emergency crisis calls. We support fully funding PSR and expanding its staffing, transportation capacity, hours, and partnerships with treatment and recovery providers.

But crisis response can’t end on the sidewalk. PSR is a voluntary service and cannot compel someone to accept transportation, shelter, treatment, or other services. Portland needs a stronger continuum of care so that when someone is ready to accept help, responders have somewhere appropriate to take them.

We also support establishing a dedicated Safehouse and crisis care hub in Old Town Chinatown to provide consistent access to services for people experiencing houselessness and addiction. Meeting people where they are, in partnership with organizations already serving the community, would help stabilize the neighborhood while supporting long-term recovery, public safety, and economic revitalization.

Portland Street Response

Portland Police are stretched thin responding to calls that can be handled by Portland Street Response.

Fully funding Portland Street Response will reduce unnecessary police interventions so the police can return to investigating stolen property claims and violent crimes.

Stop expansion. Reduce fuel storage. Require seismic upgrades at the CEI Hub.

Portland has concentrated 90% of Oregon’s fuel supply in one earthquake, vulnerable location called the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub. The average tank was built in 1954 and they are sitting on soil that will liquify during an earthquake releasing up to 194 million gallons of flammable gasoline into the Willamette and the north side of the city.

Immediately, we need to move Oregon’s fuel storage tanks away from Portland’s earthquake liquefaction zone and use the city’s zoning authority to shrink the risk of earthquake damage.


Over the coming decades, Oregon needs to reduce its dependence and disperse the stored fuel from this one dangerous fuel-storage site.

CEI Hub Seismic Risk Analysis

Housing For All

Create a Renters’ Bill of Rights

Renters need relief immediately. I will fight to ban rent hikes when Code Violations Exist, require 6 months notice for rent increases, protect children and educators from evictions during the school year, prevent evictions during extreme weather events, establish a right to counsel in Eviction Court and demand that local rent control be allowed throughout Oregon. 

Renters' Bill of Rights

Portland cannot build the housing, businesses, and community spaces we need if projects spend months waiting on City approval. We will streamline permitting, reduce unnecessary delays, improve coordination between bureaus, and prioritize faster review for housing and other projects that serve our communities. Building in Portland should be safe and accountable without being needlessly slow or expensive.

Housing should be built to house people, not just generate profit. We will invest in permanently affordable, publicly supported social housing for Portlanders at a range of incomes. By keeping homes in public or community ownership, we can create long-term affordability, build mixed-income communities, and give Portlanders more options outside the private rental market.

Fight Back Against Trump

Defend Our Immigrant Community

Portland must remain a sanctuary for our immigrant neighbors, regardless of immigration status. We will fully enforce our Sanctuary City protections, protect personal information held by the City, keep federal immigration enforcement out of City services and nonpublic facilities, and make sure Portlanders know their rights when confronted by ICE. We will strengthen rapid-response networks, legal support, and multilingual resources for families facing detention or deportation. When the federal government targets our neighbors, we will use every lawful tool available to protect our communities and keep Portland a sanctuary city.

Protect Our Trans Neighbors

Portland must remain a city where trans people can live safely, openly, and with dignity. We will protect access to City services regardless of gender identity, defend the privacy of personal information held by the City, enforce protections against discrimination, and ensure our public spaces, shelters, programs, and facilities are safe and accessible for trans Portlanders.

As federal protections are threatened, we will use every lawful tool available to make Portland a place where our trans neighbors are protected and welcome.

From Portland to Palestine, we must oppose human rights violations carried out or supported by our federal government. While billions of our tax dollars fund detention, deportation, war, and violence, our communities are told there is not enough money for housing, healthcare, schools, transit, and infrastructure. We can use the power we have here in Portland to push back. We can fully enforce our Sanctuary City protections, end Portland’s sister-city relationship with Ashkelon, Israel, and examine City investments, contracts, and purchasing practices to identify and end financial relationships that support military violence or human rights abuses.

We may not control federal policy from City Hall, but we can decide what Portland participates in, what we fund, and what we refuse to normalize.

Green New Deal for PDX

Create the Ross Island Ecological Park

Every summer, the Ross Island Lagoon develops toxic algae blooms that make parts of the Willamette River unsafe for swimming and dangerous for wildlife and pets. These blooms threaten Sellwood docks, beaches downstream, and public access to one of Portland’s most important natural resources. These conditions are preventable.

By placing the Ross Islands into the care of Portland Parks & Recreation as a protected ecological reserve — similar to the management model used at Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge — Portland can address two crises at once: restoring river health and preventing the spread of toxic algae blooms throughout the river corridor.

This proposal would establish the Ross Island Ecological Park as a world-class public ecological reserve in the center of the city while preventing private industrial interests from continuing to use the lagoon as a dumping site for contaminated material connected to the Portland Harbor Superfund area. The plan calls for transitioning ownership of Ross Island from Ross Island Sand & Gravel into public stewardship in order to prioritize ecological restoration, habitat protection, and safe public river access over industrial dumping practices. This effort could also become part of a broader public land strategy that reinvests in underutilized land and expands access to parks, riverfronts, and ecological spaces for Portland residents.

Read about Oregon State University’s channel study and proposed interventions to reduce annual toxic algae blooms here.

Preventing Algae Blooms

Portland has committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. We need to turn that commitment into action by making climate impact a part of every major decision we make about transportation, energy, buildings, infrastructure, and public investment. We need to complete the transition to a renewable energy economy to meet our Net Zero goal by 2050.

Forest Park is one of Portland’s greatest public treasures and a critical habitat, watershed, and climate resource. We will protect it from development and degradation, invest in wildfire resilience and ecological restoration, and preserve its forests, trails, and wildlife for generations to come.

A Thriving Economy

Protect Small Businesses

Stabilize Commercial Rents.

We can create city-wide policy which would tie allowable rent increases to the condition, amenities, and accommodations a building actually provides. This will go along way to protect small businesses from predatory leases. 

Establishing a standard for fair exit and renegotiation protections so local businesses facing closure, disaster, or severe economic hardship are not trapped paying years of rent on spaces they can no longer use.

Working Portlanders deserve more. A job is how people support their families and build stability in their lives. When workers can be fired without explanation, that stability disappears overnight. Just Cause protections recognize that employment is not disposable. I will fight for workplace protections so Portlanders can lead secure, sustainable, and happy lives.

Portlanders have repeatedly funded programs intended to address houselessness, addiction, and mental health crises. Yet residents, workers, and small businesses, particularly in Old Town Chinatown and downtown, are still asking a fair question:

Where is the money going, and why aren’t we seeing better results?

Portlanders deserve a say in how their tax funds are spent. Participatory Budgeting empowers historically marginalized Portlanders to decide what projects get funded. When more Portlanders are invited to participate in the Democratic Process, we come up with better ideas that benefit all of us.

Let's build the future of Portland together.

I am a husband, a parent, and a Project Manager at Portland State University. I believe city government should prepare Portland for 2050 by investing in a strong social safety net while being a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars. 

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