Analysis: Primary Election results
Labor tallies a raft of wins in local primary elections
By DON McINTOSH
Associate Editor
Organized labor stopped the “Bull
Run Takeover,” saved two Clackamas
County commissioners from right-wing
challengers, and sent long-time union
rep Rob Nosse to the Oregon House.
Those were some highlights, for labor,
of Oregon’s May 20 primary election.
Labor’s biggest ballot fight, in dollar
terms, was against the ballot initiative
to hand over the City of Portland’s wa-
ter and sewer bureaus to a newly cre-
ated board. Unions contributed
$119,000 of the nearly $400,000 raised
by the Stop the Bull Run Takeover com-
mittee, and AFSCME was far and away
the biggest donor — $82,000 between
the state council and three locals. And
that’s not counting over $8,000 spent in
legal fees to analyze the measure, said
Oregon AFSCME Executive Director
Ken Allen. AFSCME represents Water
Bureau workers, and they found a lot to
dislike about a charter amendment writ-
ten by a corporate lobbyist, sponsored
by a prominent Republican campaigner,
and bankrolled by a handful of big wa-
ter users. Also contributing were the
Fire Fighters ($10,000); UFCW Local
555, Teamsters Joint Council 37, and
IBEW Local 48 ($5,000 each); Profes-
sional and Technical Employees Local
17, formerly COPPEA ($4,000); Ore-
gon Nurses Association (ONA) and
Service Employees International Union
Local 49 ($2,500 each); and Laborers
Local 483, Portland Association of
Teachers, and Asbestos Workers Local
36 ($1,000 each). In the end the pro-
posed charter amendment went down to
defeat by a margin of 73 percent to 27
percent.
Democrat Jim Bernard has organ-
ized labor to thank for his re-election to
the Clackamas County Commission.
The conservative Oregon Transforma-
tion Project — with money from tim-
ber barons like Stimson Lumber CEO
Andrew Miller — targeted Bernard this
year, along with his fellow incumbent
Clackamas County Commissioner Paul
Savas, a moderate Republican. Oregon
Transformation Project is the same
group that helped elect virulently anti-
union John Ludlow and Tootie Smith to
the commission two years earlier. To
defend Bernard, 11 labor organizations
stepped forward with contributions to-
taling $31,500, and helped get the word
out to union members. Bernard won
with 50.4 precent of the vote, compared
to 49.1 percent for challenger Steve
Bates. Savas had an easier time: The
Oregon Transformation Project’s candi-
date, Karen Bowerman, a Lake Oswego
city councilor, placed a distant second
in a three-way race, with 35.2 percent
of the vote.
There was celebrating at the Oregon
AFL-CIO headquarters when long-time
union representative Rob Nosse won
the party primary for inner Southeast
Portland in House District 42. Nosse,
who works for the Oregon Nurses As-
sociation (ONA), is a graduate of the
Labor Candidates School and had
heavy support from labor organizations
throughout his campaign: over $88,000
in direct contributions, plus $66,000 in
ONA union representative Rob Nosse, celebrating May 20 at Oregon AFL-
CIO HQ, will be State Representative Rob Nosse in 2015, thanks to union
political muscle that put him over the top in the six-way Democratic primary
in Southeast Portland’s House District 42. The win means he’ll join the
district’s former state rep Diane Rosenbaum (left), now a state senator, in an
expanded “labor caucus.”
in-kind support, including the help of
ONA political organizer Jenn Baker,
door-to-door canvass support from
Working America, and free office space
from the Oregon AFL-CIO. Scores of
individual union staff members and
leaders also contributed to a robust
fundraising and volunteer campaign.
The result of that full-court press was
49 percent of the vote — in a six-way
race where the nearest competitor got
36 percent. And it was a doubly good
week for Nosse: The day before the
election, a federal judge overturned
Why is it that a worker
injured on the job is made
to feel like they are now
“the accused” who did
something wrong? Good
question! Don’t let them
add insult to your injury!
JUNE 6, 2014
Oregon’s ban on same-sex marriage,
meaning legal recognition for Nosse’
marriage, in Vancouver, British Colom-
bia, to James Laden. Since no Republi-
can filed in the overwhelmingly Demo-
cratic district, Nosse is assured of a win
in the November general election, and
he’ll become part of the informal “labor
caucus” of state legislators who come
from the union movement.
So will Barbara Smith Warner, a for-
mer official of the National Association
of Letter Carriers and later longtime
aide to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden. Smith
Warner was appointed state representa-
tive last year for Northeast Portland’s
House District 45, and won reelection
with 67.77 percent of the vote against
ONA member Tom Sincic.
Former state representative Jules
Kopel Bailey, backed broadly by labor,
won election to the Multnomah County
Commission with 73 percent of the vote
against Brian Wilson.
And a heap of labor-endorsed in-
cumbents sailed to easy victory, includ-
ing City of Portland Commissioners
Nick Fish and Dan Saltzman, Mult-
nomah County Commissioner Loretta
Smith; Washington County Chair Andy
Duyck and Commissioner Greg Mali-
nowski; Metro President Tom Hughes;
and Metro councilors Shirley Craddick,
Carlotta Collette, and Kathryn Harring-
ton, who ran unopposed. All those posi-
tions are non-partisan, and because the
winners got more than 50 percent, they
were elected outright without a runoff
in November.
Several candidate contests had labor
backing both sides:
• Deborah Kafoury won election to
Multnomah County Chair with 65.5
percent of the vote to 17.5 percent for
second-place finisher Jim Francesconi.
Francesconi was endorsed by AF-
SCME, SEIU, Operating Engineers,
and the Pacific Regional Council of
Carpenters; Kafoury was endorsed by
most other local labor organizations.
• Kathleen Taylor similarly defeated
Deborah Barnes in House District 41,
winning 70 percent of the vote to
Barnes’ 25 percent. Taylor was sup-
ported by the Oregon State Building
and Construction Trades Council, Iron
Workers Local 29, IBEW Local 48, and
Teamsters, while Barnes, a teacher and
president of the North Clackamas Edu-
cation Association, was endorsed by her
union and by UFCW Local 555, SEIU
Local 503, AFSCME, Clackamas
County Fire Fighters, Oregon Nurses
Association, and the Pacific Northwest
Regional Council of Carpenters.
Several labor endorsees were de-
feated: In Washington County, former
U.S. Congresswoman Elizabeth Furse,
who was endorsed by Northwest Ore-
gon Labor Council (NOLC), failed to
unseat incumbent County Commis-
sioner Bob Terry. And in Columbia
County, circuit judge Cathleen Calla-
han, backed by NOLC and UFCW,
placed second in a three-way race.
A union-endorsed three-year re-
placement levy to fund Columbia
County jail operations passed narrowly
with 51 percent of the vote. If it had
failed, the jail was forecasted to close
by June 30. And in Clackamas County,
a labor-endorsed local option levy to
support Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue
passed with 63 percent of the vote.
...City disinvests in Walmart
(From Page 1)
benefits, let alone to live on. She said
workers were treated with a fundamen-
tal lack of respect by managers, who
would constantly bully and ridicule her.
It got so demeaning, she said, that “I fi-
nally had to stand up to make a differ-
ence.” She and her mother took part in
an unfair labor practice strike last June
“to hold Walmart accountable.”
She was fired for speaking out.
“The company refuses to listen to
our concerns, and when we speak out,
Walmart retaliates,” she said.
[The National Labor Relations
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Board in January charged Walmart
with illegally firing some 60 workers in
more than a dozen states who where
participating in legally protected strikes
and protests.]
Novick said he looks forward to re-
viewing the advisory committee’s rec-
ommendations, as well as a proposal
for a permanent process to implement
the principles for socially responsible
investment.
The City still has four Walmart cor-
porate bonds valued at $27 million.
Two $5 million bonds mature Oct. 25,
2015. A $2 million bond and a $15 mil-
lion bond mature April 11, 2016.
PAGE 3