[guest post by Dana]

When voters have had enough…even in Portland:

Centrist district attorney candidate Nathan Vasquez has ousted the incumbent progressive prosecutor in Oregon’s Multnomah County, home to Portland, after running a campaign in which he vowed to be tough on crime.

One of District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s deputies, Vasquez was endorsed by several police groups. He won Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary election after returns showed him receiving more than 50% of the vote. While there was a write in option, Vasquez and Schmidt were the only two candidates in the race.

According to the report, Schmidt had vowed to reform the criminal justice system. He was responsible for initiatives “to review wrongful convictions and prison sentences and focus prosecutions on violent crime rather than low-level offenses”. He had also supported a ballot measure to decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs. That measure has since been rolled back, in light of the number of overdoses.

Upon his win, Vasquez said:

“I am committed to ending open air drug dealing and drug use while helping connect individuals to treatment, to rebuilding the broken relationships between the DA’s office and the community, and to ensuring that victims are the number one priority of my office,” he added.

When open drug use with minimal or no consequences increases, as well as an increasing homeless population puts businesses and tax paying residents at risk while impeding a city’s ability to function, more of these surprise outcomes will happen. See: San Francisco, Seattle.

–Dana