Category POLITICS

Senate President Peter Courtney seeks political civility in the approaching session of the Oregon Legislature. (Portland Tribune/Jaime Valdez) SALEM — Peter Courtney is worried. His party is in power. He’s been nominated yet again for Senate president. In Gov. Kate Brown, he’s working with an…

Juan Carlos Gonzalez is the first Hispanic elected to Metro’s council in Portland. (Portland Tribune/Jaime Valdez) Juan Carlos Gonzalez was a high school junior from Forest Grove when he encountered President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C., through the Boys Nation leadership program. Meeting the nation’s…

State Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, will be co-chair of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee that sets spending by state agencies. (File/Portland Tribune) State Sen. Betsy Johnson, a coastal legislator known for tough questioning of state bureaucrats, is getting a more powerful perch to watch over state…

SALEM — A record 37 Oregon women will serve as state legislators in 2019. Come January, once new lawmakers are sworn in, women will hold 28 out of 60 seats in the House. Women also picked up one seat in the Senate, bringing their numbers…

Here is the history of elections for governor in Oregon: 2014 In 2014, Democrat John Kitzhaber secured his fourth term overall as governor, and second consecutive, by beating Republican Dennis Richardson 733,230 to 648,542. Kitzhaber also served as governor from 1995 to 2003. However, he…

Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler closes out his campaign day Monday at his headquarters in Tualatin (Photo courtesy of the Buehler campaign) In the closing hours of Oregon governor’s race on Monday, Kate Brown and Knute Buehler took very different approaches to finishing up a…

SALEM — Advocates have long tried to curtail political spending in Oregon, and are back at it again now, circulating an initiative petition in an effort to let voters decide, in 2020, whether to allow limits. Those efforts got a boost Tuesday after Patrick Starnes, the…

Gov. Kate Brown, Democratic incumbent, Patrick Starnes, Independent Party candidate for governor, and KATU anchor Debora Knapp at the station’s studio Tuesday after Starnes decided to endorse Brown. (Oregon Capital Bureau/Paris Achen) On Sunday evening, Patrick Starnes, a cabinet maker and would-be governor, hit “send”…

Oregon Democrats are returning election ballots at a much higher rate than Republicans and other voters, according to report Tuesday by the state Elections Division. Out of over 66,000 ballots returned as of Tuesday, more than half came from Democrats, even though they are one-third…