Sunrise PDX Mayoral Endorsement: Don't Vote for Ted Wheeler

As a nation, we are all grappling with the frightening scale of the many crises we face: COVID-19, climate catastrophe, economic depression, and the global resurgence of fascist movements. As a movement, we are finding the traditional American political tools wholly and dangerously inadequate. We are looking critically at established systems and building people power to exercise political influence within the electoral sphere and beyond into mutual aid and direct action. 

With that said, Sunrise Movement PDX needs to acknowledge and be accountable to our position in a contentious race that has deeply impacted our community: the Mayoral race.

In early 2019, Sunrise PDX began our first-ever round of electoral endorsements, choosing candidates that aligned with our values up and down the ballot. Like all the work we do, this was an entirely volunteer-led process— a process that has been incredibly informative for us. We have made mistakes and recognized the ways in which our process was inequitable and inaccessible. In the last six months, we have spent collective effort reflecting how our hub perpetuates white supremacy culture and have created a Justice, Equity, and Anti-Oppression plan for every team (see below).

In March, we hosted a Climate Mayoral Debate, which included Ted Wheeler, Teressa Raiford, Sarah Iannarone, Ozzie Gonzalez, and Piper Crowell. Shortly afterward, our hub conducted a majority vote to determine our mayoral endorsement, in which there was clear support for both Teressa Raiford and Sarah Iannarone. However, due to the nature of majority voting, our hub solely endorsed Sarah Iannarone. Although our branding didn’t reflect it, our hub members have been actively volunteering for both campaigns since the mayoral debate. In May, Iannarone then went on to win in a runoff vote to face incumbent Ted Wheeler. 

Things changed dramatically over the summer. In late May, the people of Portland began taking to the streets to demand the defunding and abolition of the Portland Police Bureau and humane treatment of our BIPOC community members by our public-serving institutions. Many of our hub members joined them night after night, on and off the ground. We were met with indiscriminate violence, brutality, and callous disregard for our rights by Ted Wheeler’s PPB as well as federal agents. At the municipal level, nothing substantially changed. Spurred by the intensity and danger of this political moment, many activists and BIPOC community leaders began to advocate for electing Teressa Raiford, founder of the non-profit Don’t Shoot PDX, to the Mayor’s seat. Around this time, as #WriteInTeressaRaiford began picking up steam, we decided to revisit our mayoral endorsement for the general election.

We acknowledge that as a hub, Sunrise Movement PDX needs to do a better job reckoning with our city’s history and the ways in which we perpetuate a culture of white supremacy. An example of this was exhibited in our urgency in our initial mayoral endorsement process. The majority vote for our Mayoral endorsement was inequitable in that it marginalized the votes of those in the minority and, because as a primarily working-class/low-income hub, many of us were unable to respond in the time frame of the online vote. Internally, we are continually reflecting on and working to address the ways in which we perpetuate traits of white supremacy culture. We recently completed a 10-hour envisioning session, where we examined ways in which we uphold and fail to uphold Justice, Equity, and Anti-Oppression (JEAO) in our hub. We came out of Envisioning with a JEAO plan that outlines action items for our hub to complete. Our Trainings team is hosting a hub-wide anti-racism training. Our Coordination team is prioritizing the meeting of our caucus groups and creating an equitable decision-making process. Our Hub Culture team is creating an accountability and conflict resolution process grounded in restorative justice. Our Partnerships team is striving to continuously improve how we show up for Black organizers in Portland.

Sunrise principle #8 states “We embrace experimentation and learn together.” We recently introduced a new consensus model to conduct a more equitable endorsement process. After a coordinated effort of three meetings totaling seven hours of dialogue, two proposal editing periods, and a final anonymous hub wide consensus vote, we could not reach internal consensus as a hub to endorse Teressa Raiford, Sarah Iannarone, or both for the November 3rd election. 

Both Raiford and Iannarone are running on Green New Deal platforms, with concrete plans to reimagine community safety, invest in affordable housing, and centralize climate change related issues. As individuals, we are young people of all walks of life, who have different ideas of which path to take to reach a universal destination of a Green New Deal and a Livable Future for All. In this specific race, although our consensus-based democratic process revealed an internal division that could not be resolved, we have complete faith that our members are showing up to fight for the future they believe in. 

What Sunrise PDX can wholeheartedly stand behind is that Ted Wheeler is a disastrous and dangerous leader for Portland constituents. While he postures as the ‘anti-Trump Mayor’ on national news, the Portland Police Bureau (of which he is commissioner) enacts unending physical and psychological terror against the city’s residents. He protects fascist rallies while gassing innocent families in their homes. His major donors all come from his background as a Timber Baron, and he has shown pompous disregard for campaign finance law time and time again.  Ted Wheeler’s inability to hold himself accountable to his actions as Mayor is a weapon of white supremacy.

For all the above reasons, SunrisePDX will not be making a hub-wide endorsement for mayor. We instead will trust our individual members to act in the way they see fit, whether that be phonebanking, textbanking, or engaging in civil disobedience. While as an organization we could not reach internal consensus on an endorsement, this does not mean that our members aren’t engaging with this race— quite the opposite. Our members are individually dedicating their time and energy to the Write-In Raiford campaign, the Sarah Iannarone campaign, and various local candidate races and ballot measures, while also physically mobilizing for Black and Indigenous rights to life. We encourage every individual in Portland to mobilize to create the livable future they need to see, at the ballot box and beyond.

Note: It is worth mentioning that our sibling hub, SunriseReed, had an overwhelming majority vote to endorse Teressa Raiford. We respect and acknowledge their decision and consensus.