Oregon Ousts Progressive DA: Enough is Enough
[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
Looking at you, Los Angeles.
Dana (8e902f) — 5/23/2024 @ 7:59 amPray for Los Angeles. It needs all it can get.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 5/23/2024 @ 8:03 amThis is a message for Seattle, too.
Paul Montagu (895dc0) — 5/23/2024 @ 8:34 amThey elected the least liberal mayor of the liberal candidates, and the socialist city council is less socialist, and law enforcement has improved at least superficially as the homeless are less present than before. As Jonah mentioned recently, maybe nature is healing.
Things will move to the right only so long as the situation is intolerable. Once tolerability is reached, they will start digging the hole again.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 5/23/2024 @ 10:29 amThere was a woman on LA radio KFI talking about the inanity of some people in the LA DA office, some of whom, she says, believe that a person of color charged with crimes today should be be released because a totally different person of color in the past was mistreated by law enforcement. The person in the past could actually be guilty, doesn’t matter and the mistreatment can be simply alleged. I wasn’t able to pay 100% attention, so I may have this garbled- but it doesn’t sound wrong. No shock here if someone in the Gascon orbit thinks and does this whenever they can
steveg (524b76) — 5/23/2024 @ 3:57 pmsteveg, That was City Journal writer Heather Mac Donald talking about California’s Racial Justice Act.
https://www.ospd.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/AB-256-Racial-Justice-Act-retroactivity_Accessible.pdf
JoeH (390085) — 5/23/2024 @ 4:26 pmThank you JoeH
steveg (524b76) — 5/23/2024 @ 5:55 pmLets see how smart you are. Who gets the most benefit from his loss.
asset (f8d793) — 5/23/2024 @ 9:12 pmKevin M (a9545f) — 5/23/2024 @ 10:29 am
Quite right. It is almost the same thing with raising teens.
felipe (599ae5) — 5/24/2024 @ 6:11 amI hope that George Gascón is taking one of those seminars on how to make your résumé stand out from others, and how to pursue job opportunities after age 60.
JVW (7ad0bf) — 5/24/2024 @ 8:42 amMake that age 70, which he attained back in March.
JVW (7ad0bf) — 5/24/2024 @ 8:43 amMore on the soft on crime DA front:
Baltimore’s former top prosecutor spared prison for mortgage fraud and perjury
Biden appointee soft on crime Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby unleashed the mighty wet noodle: “You have an absolute right to maintain your innocence and should not be punished in any way for doing so.”
Judge Griggsby questioned Assistant US Attorney Sean Delaney in court demanding: “Are there victims and who are they?”
Yeah, because it’s all about the victims.
lloyd (a4d94d) — 5/24/2024 @ 9:30 amIt is partially about victims. There probably are specific victims but, ultimately, the victims are everyone who has a mortgage without fraud and the legal system.
DRJ (7cdd25) — 5/24/2024 @ 10:18 amPlus the mortgage companies.
DRJ (7cdd25) — 5/24/2024 @ 10:19 am