Alice Speri at The Intercept on how the months of police brutality protests in Portland have increased the electoral chances of the current mayor's progressive challenger, Sarah Iannarone.
—Erika
Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler was all but sure of a second term in office when he won nearly half the votes in a crowded Democratic primary in May. But he fell just short of the 50 percent plus one vote needed to secure his seat, which forced him into a November runoff against his closest challenger, Sarah Iannarone, a progressive urban policy consultant who had earned less than half his votes. Then, days after the primary, a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, kneeling on his neck for eight minutes. Floyd’s killing set off a historic wave of protests against racism and police violence that rocked the nation for weeks — perhaps nowhere more than in Portland, where nightly protests continued uninterrupted for more than 100 days, reconfiguring the mayoral race and putting Wheeler’s once-solid reelection prospects at risk.
Since the protests started, hundreds of Portland residents have been arrested, including many who were protesting peacefully. Two people were killed in connection with the protests: a man who joined a rally by far-right supporters of President Donald Trump, and a self-declared anti-fascist and the prime suspect in the first man’s killing, who was gunned down by police days later. Residents are now bracing for more violence as a rally by the far-right group Proud Boys is planned for Saturday.
As Portland became a symbol and battleground for the divisions enflaming the country, Trump deployed federal agents there, aggressively peddling the narrative that Democratic leaders like Wheeler had allowed U.S. cities to descend into chaos. The mayor, in turn, seized on the federal deployment to brand himself as a leader willing to stand up against the abuses of the president — calling the federal agents an “occupying force” and at one point getting teargassed by them. That episode catapulted Wheeler into the national spotlight, but few in Portland were impressed with the show of solidarity with protesters.
“Local law enforcement had been engaged in very similar if not the exact same type of behavior against the residents of Portland,” said Bobbin Singh, executive director of civil rights group Oregon Justice Resource Center, who has called for Wheeler’s resignation. “The very same things federal law enforcement was doing, local law enforcement had done and has continued to do since federal law enforcement left.”
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