PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Centrist district attorney candidate Nathan Vasquez has ousted the incumbent progressive prosecutor in Multnomah County, home to Portland, after running a campaign promising to be tough on crime.
Vasquez, one of District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s deputies, was backed by several police groups. He won Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary after results showed he received more than 50% of the vote. Although there was a write-in option, Vasquez and Schmidt were the only two candidates in the race.
Vasquez said Schmidt conceded the election when they spoke Wednesday afternoon. In a post on his campaign’s Facebook page, he thanked Schmidt for his service and said he was grateful for the support he received from voters.
Vasquez’s victory comes as progressive prosecutors and candidates in liberal bastions ranging from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle have faced setbacks as frustrations over public safety and homelessness have grown.
“Voters have made it clear that they are ready to move our province in a new and safer direction,” Vasquez said in his post Wednesday.
“I am committed to ending drug trafficking and open-air drug use while helping connect individuals to treatment, rebuilding the broken relationships between the DA’s office and the community to build, and to ensure that victims are my office’s first priority,” he added. .
Schmidt was elected in 2020 as social justice protests gripped Portland and the nation. He campaigned for reform of the criminal justice system, and during his time in office launched initiatives to overhaul wrongful convictions and prison sentences and focus prosecutions on violent crimes rather than low-level crimes.
During the campaign, Vasquez denounced some of Schmidt’s policies, such as his decision not to prosecute protesters arrested during the 2020 demonstrations for low-level, non-violent crimes, and his past support for Measure 110, a ballot measure passed in 2020 was approved by the voters. which decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs.
Amid one of the largest spikes in overdose deaths in the country, state lawmakers this year finally rolled back the first-in-the-nation law and reinstated criminal penalties for so-called “personal use” possession. Schmidt supported reinstating the sentences.
Vasquez has been a prosecutor at the Public Prosecution Service for more than twenty years.
Before taking office, Schmidt headed the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a government agency tasked with improving the legitimacy and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Previously, he was a deputy district attorney for Multnomah County.
