PORTLAND, Oregon — The duo behind Portland's infamous "Schmidt Show" billboards, calling for an end to Measure 110 and lambasting public government officials, are closing up shop. They stress that Portland's issues are far from done — but change is the hands of voters this November.
Three years ago, Dan Lavey and Kevin Looper, political players on opposite sides of the aisle, banded together to launch People for Portland, a grassroots organization that lobbies city leaders to address issues such as homelessness, crime and cleaning up the city. Looper is a long-time Democratic consultant, and Lavey was a strategist for former Republican U.S. Senator Gordon Smith and Oregon business interests.
The group has amassed over 35,000 email and social media followers since launching in Sept. 2021. From seeking to end homeless camping with a new ballot initiative to bankrolling attack ads against former Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, it's been a whirlwind — and oft-controversial — ride.
Founders Lavey and Looper sat down with The Story's Pat Dooris to talk about how it started, how it's going and where the future might take us. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.
Grassroots roots
Pat Dooris: Tell me why you're shutting things down here.
Kevin Looper: It's clear we've changed the politics of Portland, which is what we set out to do when we started this. The prevailing winds out there were that all cops are bad, you shouldn't tell people where to sleep and hard drugs are not a problem. And ... we have pierced the ideology that says we shouldn't be doing something about each and every one of those things, and we believe we put Portland on a better path.
We don't believe we fixed it. But it is clear to us now that shame as a motivator for politicians in Portland; we've exhausted that resource. And now, if you can't change what the politicians are doing, you've got to actually change the politicians — and that's up to the people. That's not up to us. That's not appropriate for what People for Portland sought out to do and what it is legally.
So, the job that we set out to do to — to change the politics of Portland — is not the same thing as changing the reality of Portland. But we think we've turned a corner here, and we think the path ahead is now up to the people that we've gotten catalyzed to try to actually stand up for the city we love.
Dan Lavey: Well, we channeled the frustrations of a majority of Portlanders versus a loud minority that had been dominating the political debates — getting a camping ban passed, calling out the DA for his failures on public safety, advocating for more police — when people weren't doing that.
Those are all things that enjoyed majority support, and I think one of the most important legacies that we have here ... is the legacy of getting more people engaged and creating comfort in the crowd, for people to say out loud what they know to be true. I think we've spun copycat groups and other things, but most importantly, you've got candidates now running for office saying the same things we were saying two and three years ago, and you know, we felt vindicated at the end of last year when the governor's task force recommended many of the same things we've been saying: We need more cops; we need more shelters; we need less trash, drugs and graffiti.
And so, I think that's one of the reasons we've been successful is that we've channeled the voices of the majority and none of this would have worked if it had just been Kevin and I on a couple of social media channels.
The end of the road
Dooris: For either of you, what about the argument that there are still significant problems facing the city and the county? Why end things now?
Lavey: There are significant problems: All the homelessness, public safety, garbage, trash, mental health intervention, all those things remain big problems. But I think the crisis has passed, and we never set out to be a permanent lobbying organization, and so, we feel like we've kind of come to a point here where ... really to dramatically make change, to (Looper's) point, you're going to have to change the people making the decisions. And that's in the hands of the voters here over the next 35 days.
Looper: Yeah, I wanna say that (Lavey) and I are supposed to be hard-nosed political strategists, and I must admit a little naivete here when we started this. I really believed, after having helped to elect many of the people in office, that if we just showed them publicly that what they were doing was out of step with what 80%-plus Portlanders wanted on homelessness, on public safety, on trash, that they would get in line just out of self-interest. And that was wrong.
I didn't understand just how deep ideology was blocking them from understanding what needed to be done and how adept they would be just changing what they say, not what they do. I appreciate that we have now changed the dynamic, so they are now all falling all over themselves trying to present their plans on what to do about Portland. That's a good thing.
But they're still falling all over themselves, and they're not going to get up and fix stuff until we fix who we're sending there, and unfortunately, that's not what we set out to do with People for Portland ... and we needed to recognize that. And as (Lavey) said, we never wanted to become part of the permanent apparatus of the talking-head class. There's already too much talk. We wanted to drive action, and when the action train gets derailed, then you got to you got to build new tracks.
Looking ahead
Looper: We're not leaving the space of caring about Portland. We now have more people than ever who are willing to stand up, speak out and do something for Portland, and that needs to continue. And we believe it will now that we've got this momentum going, but now there needs to be more channeled into actually changing who's making the decisions here, because these people can't make their way out of a wet paper bag, and until we get people who want to actually do something specific rather than just be something in office, then we're going to have a lot more problems than just finding parking places for our elected officials.
Dooris: Will you folks be putting out a slate of candidates that you're endorsing or that you think the public should get behind?
Looper: We can't do that. We are a nonprofit who's focused on public policy. We put the focus on homelessness on trash, on public safety, as it should be. That job is done.
... Nobody's arguing back now, saying all cops are bad (and) we should defund the police. That moment's gone. We took care of that. But now, the path ahead does require different structures, different kinds of organization and some different candidates, clearly because Portland needs to be represented by people who are worthy of the people they represent.
Lavey: I think this election is a big choice for Portlanders between ideology and accountability, and I think nearly every office of the 12 city council races, the city commissioner races, the mayoral race — voters have that choice. Now, that wasn't always the case, where you had an actual choice. In most races, it was just a choice between two carbon-copy versions, or in some cases, one (person) running unopposed.
We've had several people that have been in office last in the last few years (where) they've essentially run unopposed. That shouldn't happen. There should be a robust debate, and we think we've helped contribute to that.
It's very funny, you know — three years ago, we were saying things that people thought were really controversial, like we should ban camping, or we should have more police; we shouldn't be 48 out of 50 in per capita size of our police force for a city our size; we need to clean up the trash and the garbage and the graffiti. And we were called all sorts of terrible names; we were called racist, all this sort of stuff. And then, two-and-a-half years later, a governor's task force endorses essentially all those same things.
... We need competence and we need pragmatism and we need less ideology and more accountability in our policymaking. And I think the voters are figuring out who those candidates are.
Looper: Yeah. The one thing that is funny when you look backwards, it's hard to remember just how heavy the lifting was when we first started this. When we first started this, all the things (Lavey) just outlined that we were saying really were controversial, and they got us a lot of backlash.
... But we did that heavy lifting. There's still so much more to be done. We claim no success in fixing Portland, only success in focusing people on the right problems and making sure that people understand that those of us who are worried about the direction of Portland are in the majority. We're not the ones who should sit still and be quiet.
But the work that needs to be done is a little bit different than what we started out to do now, and we don't want to be people just keep doing the same old thing when what's required is different.