The Schmidt Show PDX cover art

The Schmidt Show PDX

The Schmidt Show PDX

By: Mike Schmidt
Listen for free

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 31 August 2026.
The Schmidt Show PDX covers positive local news and happenings in and around Portland, Oregon. The podcast is hosted by former Multnomah DA, Mike Schmidt.

www.schmidtshowpdx.comMike Schmidt Social Sciences
Episodes
  • We Like to Party

    We Like to Party
    Aug 5 2026

    Guest: Annie Naranjo Rivera, State Director, Oregon Working Families Party

    Episode Summary

    44% of registered Oregon voters — 1.4 million people — aren’t registered with either major party. This spring, the Working Families Party (WFP) went on a run in Democratic primaries, unseating a sitting state senator for the first time since 2018 and winning 37 of its 49 endorsed races. Mike sits down with Oregon WFP State Director Annie Naranjo Rivera to unpack what the party actually stands for, how fusion voting works in Oregon, and whether a party built to primary Democrats can also speak to the huge bloc of voters who’ve walked away from both parties entirely.

    The WFP has five planks —

    * a home you can afford,

    * healthcare you can rely on,

    * a good job to support your family,

    * childcare when and where you need it, and

    * time to spend with your family.

    Sound good? This might be the political party for you.

    In This Episode

    * The state of the electorate in Oregon — only 26% think the state is headed in the right direction; 85% say cost of living is worsening; 77% say housing is worsening

    * Annie’s origin story — daughter of a Cuban refugee, grew up in poverty, why lived experience belongs in decision-making spaces

    * What WFP actually is — not a Green Party-style third party; a “non-delusional third party” built on fusion voting

    * Fusion voting, explained — how Oregon’s version differs from New York’s (Zohran Mamdani’s WFP ballot line), and how candidates like Labor Commissioner Christina Stevenson appear cross-nominated as Democrat/WFP/Independent

    * The Governor’s Prosperity Council — why WFP opposes its recommendations, and a pointer back to the S3 episode with Juan Carlos Ordoñez (Oregon Center for Public Policy) for the counter-perspective

    * Myrna Munoz vs. Janeen Sollman — the primary upset Annie calls the most significant Oregon race in two decades, and the coalition (including first-time primary voters) that powered it

    * Why WFP didn’t endorse Gov. Kotek in the primary — first of all - she didn’t apply, however there are legitimate concerns coming out of her handling of preschool-for-all and the Prosperity Council. Ultimately its up to the members - what the Governor’s appearance at WFP’s August convention signals

    * Data centers — WFP’s position (not opposed outright, opposed to subsidies without community process, and to costs landing on ratepayers, farmland, and water)

    * Immigration enforcement and ICE activity — the economic and community impact in Washington County and Hillsboro

    * Healthcare — Medicaid/OHP access gaps in Tillamook County, hospital closures (Seaside Providence’s maternity ward), and the case for universal healthcare

    Get Involved

    * WFP Nominating Convention - Sign UP!

    * Saturday 8/15 | 8am-3pm - Workshops and panels

    * Saturday 8/15 | 6pm-8pm - Convention Weekend Dinner & Celebration

    * Sunday 8/16 | 9am-12pm - Nominating Convention

    * Join WFP — text MEMBER to 30403

    * Learn more at their website: Oregon WFP

    Related Episodes

    * S03 E01 — Curtis Robinhold on the Oregon Prosperity Council

    * S03 E04 — Juan Carlos Ordoñez (Oregon Center for Public Policy) on the Prosperity Council, from the other side

    Schmidt Show PDX is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



    This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.schmidtshowpdx.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 19 mins
  • Prosperity Redux

    Prosperity Redux
    Jul 29 2026
    Season 3 kicked off a month early with a conversation about the Oregon Prosperity Council’s report — the roadmap Governor Kotek commissioned to answer the question of what makes Oregon “prosperous.” Episode one featured Curtis Robinhold, one of the Council’s co-chairs, making the case for competitiveness. This episode brings the other side: Juan Carlos Ordoñez, Communications Director for the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), who has called the report a “bait and switch” — long on concern for middle-class Oregonians, short on anything that actually helps them.Two guests, two readings of the same 400-page report. That’s the point of the show.GuestJuan Carlos Ordoñez — Communications Director, Oregon Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan research organization (celebrating its 25th anniversary) focused on tax, budget, and economic policy through the lens of low- and moderate-income Oregonians. OCPP’s core issue areas: tax policy, worker power/collective bargaining, and economic security — including a guaranteed income floor for Oregon.Find OCPP’s research at OCPP.org, and their podcast, Policy for the People, wherever you get your shows.What we cover* Is Oregon’s income inequality actually low? Juan Carlos on why that stat, even if accurate, is cold comfort — “less bad than everywhere else” isn’t the same as good.* Why unions and the minimum wage matter to the inequality story — and why Oregon’s tax system, while mildly progressive, still isn’t progressive enough.* “Business climate” as a concept — its origins as a 1950s PR term coined by GE to describe low-tax, non-union states, and why Juan Carlos argues it’s an incoherent yardstick with no agreed definition.* The composition problem: the Prosperity Council was dominated by corporate and business interests, with only two labor representatives — who dissented from the tax recommendations.* Are People making $40,000 a year paying more taxes in Oregon?: Juan Carlos cites the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s full effective-rate analysis (income, property, and excise taxes combined) to argue the opposite is true — and that Washington’s sales-tax-heavy system is one of the most regressive in the country.* The “bait and switch” itself: the report cites real hardship data (including the United Way’s ALICE Index) but its near-term recommendations don’t target the middle class at all — they reinstate the QSBS venture capital tax break (94% of benefits go to people making over $1 million/year), weaken the estate tax (paid by only 5% of estates), and adjust the corporate activities tax and R&D credit.* Does taxing wealth drive people out of Oregon? The research on wealthy-household migration, and why “they’ll just leave” is weaker than it sounds.* Nike, Intel, and the single-sales-factor tax structure — how two companies effectively wrote their own tax deal in 2012, and why that complicates the “Oregon is bad for business” narrative.* A progressive alternative: what Juan Carlos would put in a prosperity plan if OCPP had written it — investment in early childhood and higher education, a stronger safety net, collective bargaining, and a more progressive tax system funded by asking more of corporations and high earners.* Corporate transparency: OCPP’s proposal to require large corporations to publicly disclose what they actually pay in Oregon taxes, to settle the “we’re overtaxed” debate with real numbers.* Healthcare and entrepreneurship — closing thoughts on how employer-tied health coverage shapes (and limits) who takes the risk of starting a business.Further reading* Juan Carlos Ordoñez’s op-ed on the Prosperity Council report in the Oregon Capital Chronicle* OCPP’s published research on Oregon’s tax and economic performance — OCPP.org* Joe Cortright’s writing on Oregon’s business climate and startup activity at City Observatory* The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy’s state-by-state effective tax rate analysis* The United Way’s ALICE Index on Oregon households falling short of a livable incomeWhere do you land — Curtis’s competitiveness case or Juan Carlos’s fairness case? Leave a comment and tell us who you think has it right, and who else we should have on the show.Schmidt Show PDX is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.schmidtshowpdx.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 16 mins
  • The Peace Bell of Portland

    The Peace Bell of Portland
    Jul 23 2026
    Episode DescriptionOne guest, one through-line, a lot of ground to cover. Mike sits down with Pastor Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran Church — a Portland native who’s spent his lifetime as an activist and more recently at the center of the city’s fights over gun safety, police accountability, and immigrant sanctuary. They trace Knutson’s path from a Franklin High School track rival of Steve Prefontaine to a hospital chaplain on the AIDS ward in the early 1980s, and connect that history to Augustana’s role today: from the Peace Bell with a melted down 60 lb clapper made from surrendered firearms, to the church’s decade-plus sanctuary relationship with Francisco Aguirre, to the slow rollout of Portland’s police oversight board six years after voters approved it. The conversation closes with a lightning round: Hymnal Ranking, Augustana-style.In This EpisodeMike and Pastor Knutson start with the man himself: Portland roots, Franklin High School (where he ran track against Steve Prefontaine, captained the football team, and served as student body president), a stint teaching for Job Corps in Astoria, a 1980 run for state representative that he lost at 28, seminary, and a hospital chaplaincy internship on the AIDS ward in the early 1980s — the experience he credits with shaping how he thinks about ministry.From there they turn to Augustana itself, which has grown from roughly 200 members to nearly 900 representing 23 countries of birth, and to Portland’s famously “strained relationship with formal religion.” For Knutson, that tension dissolves once faith is reframed as practice rather than doctrine:“Faith is the values from my faith that drive me to work for the common good, to measure our society by how the most vulnerable are doing.”That framing carries into a conversation about the church as a living building — modeled in part on Bethel Lutheran/Bethel New Life in Chicago — that houses community organizations alongside the state’s longest-running jazz gig, and about the “energy points across the city” Knutson sees in Portland’s current wave of nonviolent organizing.The conversation then moves into policy, starting with Measure 114. Four years after voters passed it, the law is still awaiting a ruling from the Oregon Supreme Court — expected any day — and Augustana is planning a press conference the moment the decision drops. Knutson walks through the coalition that got it passed, from rural Oregon counties to Portland high schoolers.From guns to policing: Portland’s Police Accountability Board passed with 82% voter approval in 2020 and, six years later, is only now hiring its first executive director. Knutson and Mike dig into the Albina Ministerial Alliance’s long involvement in the fight and push back on proposals to redirect Portland Street Response or Portland Clean Energy Fund dollars toward sworn-officer benchmarks. Mike puts it plainly:“A number of police officers is not an outcome. That’s an input. Safety is the outcome.”Knutson also recounts a real-time encounter he came across — a Black retired parole officer surrounded by police with guns drawn — as an illustration of what accountability work is actually responding to.The back half of the interview centers on Francisco Aguirre and Augustana’s sanctuary story: the 81 days Aguirre spent living under the church altar in 2014, the extortion and death of his son Moses in El Salvador, a recent action by the Governor that Knutson credits to grassroots pressure, and the community turnout Knutson says kept Aguirre out of ICE custody just this past week. Throughout, Knutson returns to a theme:“We’re not Jesus. You can’t fix everything. You can’t heal everything, but you can do something.”He closes out the substantive conversation with a list of ways to plug in — Sanctuary Sunday, Lift Every Voice Oregon, the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice, the Albina Ministerial Alliance — before Mike brings out the game segment: “Hang the Hymnal,” where Pastor Knutson ranks ten hymns blind, one at a time, with no do-overs.Organizations Mentioned* Augustana Lutheran Church* Albina Ministerial Alliance* Lift Every Voice Oregon* Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice* Portland Street Response* Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon* Catholic Charities* Latino Network* PCUNWhere to Find Augustana Lutheran ChurchSunday services: 2710 NE 14th Ave, Portland — jazz preludes included.Schmidt Show PDX is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.schmidtshowpdx.com/subscribe
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 8 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet