They're Coming for Your Kids 2

The Working Families Party, the DSA, and School Board Elections

We’ll pick up where we left off way back in January:

They're Coming for Your Kids

As a reminder: I focused on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and their “closeness” to the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT),¹ antisemitism in Portland Public Schools (PPS), and how the Same 60 People™ are aiding or openly encouraging all of this. I also referenced Jorge Bautista as an example of the sort of young activist/political figure they are trying to develop. He’s been busy.

I hope I‘ve conveyed how the DSA considers no office too small. They got their start running or supporting Oregon House candidates who were nominally Democrats (Farrah Chaichi and Mark Gamba for example). They also support and work with progressives like Khan Pham. The Portland City Council victory was their biggest yet, but they’ve successfully placed at least one school board member over in Beaverton - OHSU faculty member Tammy Carpenter and they’re working on at least one more.

Now they’ve turned their sights on the PPS School Board. The trouble is, with jerks like me constantly outing all of their candidates, things are starting to get a little too conspicuous. So what’s a local communist org to do? The answer is simple. Use an org with less stink on it; PAT and the Working Families Party (WFP). The DSA already practically controls PAT, and Working Families is a big source of income and support for them.

The Working Families Party

I mentioned the WFP last time because Councilor Candace Avalos has suggested “looking to the Working Families Party right now for leadership.²” They also backed Council Vice President Tiffany Koyama Lane in a big way in 2024.

Councilor Avalos is correct that several Democrats are dual-endorsed by the WFP. Let’s look at the all-star lineup they endorsed last year. In 2024 we’ve got Avalos herself (gasp), Dunphy, all the DSA members, Gamba, Pham, plus a handful of horrible ballot measures … Pretty much the same thing Portland For All recommended. See also the Latino Network, APANO, Basic Rights Oregon, PAT, etc. You can see the pattern and recognize the names.

In April of 2024, Willamette Week published “A Virtually Invisible Political Party Reels in a Whopper of a Donation,” detailing the $340,000 injection of funds to the Oregon Working Families Party that came down from national party headquarters in Brooklyn, NY.

The Working Families Party of Oregon generally keeps a low profile (with 8,387 registered members, it’s the state’s fifth-largest political party), but its political action committee periodically engages in unusual transactions. In 2022, for instance, the PAC recorded a $250,000 contribution from Gloria Page, which it immediately spent on advertising for then-Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tina Kotek. In effect, it acted to cleanse a potentially controversial contribution (not everybody loves Google, co-founded by Page’s son, Larry).

Since then, the party’s PAC has been moribund—it raised less than $8,500 in 2023 and had recorded just $311.66 in contributions this year before scoring the big check from its national affiliate on April 20.

For those keeping score at home, Larry Page is a billionaire. And… this next bit hurts me to repost, as a Jew. The Working Families Party…

…has in the recent past received hefty contributions from PACs funded by two billionaires who support criminal justice reform, i.e., Schmidt’s platform: George Soros’ Democracy PAC and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Accountable Justice Action Fund.

It is, often enough, an antisemitic dog whistle to point out something is “Soros-funded.” The idea of “Jewish money” controlling politics is one of the most prevalent antisemitic conspiracies. That said…

George Soros is a fucking asshole. He’s the Left’s equivalent of the Koch Brothers in one single sack of shit. You’ve got Democrats and Socialists screaming about billionaires and oligarchs but they can’t be bothered if it benefits them. Soros is a huge friend of communist and socialist causes and if he and Fergie Chambers both disappeared in a suspicious yacht accident I wouldn’t shed a tear. Besides the obvious money from Qatar and Iran pumped into the Tentifada movement, look to those two idiots for many of your “who’s paying for all this?” questions.

Anyway! Back to the Oregon WFP. We’ve connected them to at least 3 billionaires in just the last few minutes. Where did the money go? Well, about two weeks after that first story, WW followed up with “Working Families Party Contributions to Mike Schmidt Grow to $213,000.”

Where the money really originated and whether WFP will spend the rest of its windfall on Schmidt remain a mystery. Vanessa Clifford, northwest regional director for WFP, declined to specify the source of the money, saying the WFP has many donors. “We have several priorities in Oregon, one of which is the Portland DA race,” she says, “and we continue to evaluate our investments on a day-to-day basis.”

The Oregonian answered that question with “Multnomah County DA Mike Schmidt campaign gets boost from progressive philanthropist George Soros.”

I don’t love that our Jewish billionaires are the ones funding useless progressive garbage and revolutionary communists but Jews do tend to be liberal or progressive so if we’re gonna fuck up, this is certainly the direction we will be aimed³. The progressives hate Zuckerberg now that he bent the knee to Trump, but remember he was also a backer of the “criminal justice reform” movement that gave us District Attorneys like Mike Schmidt and Chesa Boudin.

Thankfully Schmidt lost his race, but the WFP put up real money to try and keep him as DA. But not all of their money…

The WFP got $340,000 from national, and spent $213,000 on Schmidt, so where did the rest of the money go? It went to running DSA candidates for Portland City Council, of course. Especially “Teacher Tiffany” Koyama Lane.

Sarah Silkie, Mitch Green, Megan Moyer… and Mary King of WFP.

Billionaire dark money used to influence local elections. That sounds exactly like the WFP and the DSA.

The Oregon Working Families Party has endorsed, been attached to, or directly funded the majority of our worst recent election outcomes. They tried for an even worse sweep. Did they support Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson during her run? You betcha! And back when she was running in partisan races she ran on the WFP ticket. Working Families Party is nothing more than an outside money funnel to meddle with local elections, funded by the exact sorts of billionaire actors they would have you distrust.⁴

School Boards and Brand Management

So why does this matter for the upcoming May election?

Because the DSA is running candidates. Or, at least, PAT and the Working Families party are, and that amounts to the same thing. The DSA haven’t rolled out their full endorsement list yet and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re very careful about it.

Here’s PAT’s “Educators for Change” candidates - Stephanie Engelsman, Jorge Sanchez Bautista, Rachelle Chase-Miller, and Christy Splitt.

Let’s break ‘em down.

Stephanie Engelsman

That’s Council Vice President and DSA member Tiffany Koyama Lane, in a WFP hoodie, celebrating the endorsement of Stephanie Engelsman - no DSA Red in sight. These two are pushing for a “Yes” vote on the upcoming school bond measure, which I will get into at a later date.

Her endorsements are pretty bland but it’s a good opportunity to point out that the “animal rights” groups appear on pretty much all of the DSA endorsement lists. Essentially, you fill out one candidate questionnaire and it comes with a ton of odd, random seeming endorsements that mean nothing but pad out your list. There are some figures I like on the list, but “Steph” is a DSA candidate. It’ll be a hard no from me.⁵ Look for my full rankings and endorsements in the coming weeks.

Jorge Sanchez Bautista

Oh Jorge…

1. He’s 18 years old. What are we doing?

2. He’s not “endorsed” by the DSA at the moment. He’s only endorsed by like 20 of its members, plus every group who endorses them. Nothing to see here. Great minds, etc.

3. Go back and read through that endorsement list again. It’s a perfect storm of the worst people in Portland politics. Holy shit they gassed this kid up and now I’m the person who has to give him a taste of reality?

4. He’s now the interim board chair of OPAL? The group who managed to make environmental activism and riding transit about Palestine?⁶

I still don’t really want to go after this kid. He’s a teenager. He’s an idiot because we all were and he’s entitled to be. He has made bad friends and his ideas are stupid. Please elect him into a position where I have to regularly make fun of him.

Jorge is also Secretary of the New Portlanders Policy Commission. Now that sounds like an excellent job for an aspiring young immigration activist. Why don’t we just have him do that? His other jobs with Portland Parks and Recreation and Portland State University should have him busy enough. We don’t need him on the school board as a rubber stamp for his shitty new friends.

Also, what is the end goal here? Angelita Morillo just wasn’t quite young enough, so now Jorge is barely a legal adult? When do my 15 year old clients get to run for office?

Make better friends Jorge! I know your family is from Mexico but please speak to Latino immigrants who escaped communism. It’s not cute. It’s not “everyone gets healthcare and apartment keys.”

Rashelle Chase-Miller

It’s a “no” from me but at least it’s a slightly harder choice. Her endorsements are more of a mixed bag. She was a member of the Wall of Moms and later a founding member of Mxm Bloc⁷ along with AJ McCreary. This all happened during the Dark Days, when Portland decided to performatively self-immolate.⁸

Rashelle was one of the original Don’t Rank Rene activists and she is connected to a lot of people I dislike very much. Now, let me pay her a compliment:

She is one of the only voices connected to Portland’s “Palestine” activism who I have seen working against antisemitism. The following screenshot is from years ago, but she has kept a lot of this energy publicly. It would surprise me to learn her views had changed.

I disagree with her on many issues, and I think she works with assholes and antisemites, but I have also seen her call that shit out, at obvious cost to her reputation in those groups. That matters. It’s heartbreaking, but it matters.

Christy Splitt

Bad endorsements (Chad Lykins?!) but she seems like a very nice person. Much more of a Khan Pham, Same 60 People™ candidate than a DSA type.

Weird fact: I think she was the Lincoln High School Constitution Team Coach when Angelita Morillo was attending, but Morillo didn’t endorse her. I’ve got nothing else on that, it’s just… curious.

She and Chase-Miller are the most likable but man… those endorsement lists. No.

The Voting Age and Other Districts

I think Jorge Sanchez Bautista’s race is a lost cause, but the others might be tight. If things don’t go the PAT/WFP/DSA’s way, I would pay attention to House Bill 3012. That’s the bill that would lower the voting age for school board elections to 16. It’s endorsed by practically everyone mentioned above. The DSA would like to eventually drop the voting age for all levels of government to 16. Probably time to start asking some questions about why?

Why do they want to drop the voting age so much, and why school boards?

I only touched on the PPS candidates, but there are other districts in the surrounding areas and this crew is monitoring/campaigning in all of them. It’s hard to overstate how organized and dedicated this movement is. I hope I’m worrying you.

I’ll go into more detail on the individual school board races soon but here is the full list of Working Families Party endorsements in Oregon. You could probably safely vote against all of them.

I’ll be watching the DSA over the next few weeks as they roll out their own endorsements. One dropped this week for Karin Stark in Beaverton.

portlanddsa

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“For working class dignity” the DSA will bring in as much out of state money as they need to, from anyone willing to pay, in order to trick you into voting “in your own interests.⁹”

They are coming for your kids because they are potential voters and dues paying members. They are future workers, comrade. Me? I think it’s pretty inappropriate to politically recruit minors but I’m old fashioned like that. I just thank G-d every day that my parents raised me to fear and distrust communism. For such a supposedly literate city, Portland is really bad at this.

I’ll break down who I think you should vote for, and what to do about that damn School Bond Measure next time.

1. The Vice President of PAT is a DSA member and many parts of their leadership are rotted through with DSA activists. They are different heads of the same hydra.

2. Again, they are 0.1% the size of the Democrats. It would be adorable if it weren’t so stupid to be looking to them as “the future of the Left.” Actually, never mind. They are the future of the Left. Go over there and leave the Democratic Party to those of us who actually want to win a fucking election in the next century.

3. It’s only gotten us pogrommed in the past. What could go wrong this time (he asked while sobbing into his Kosher for Passover snacks)?

4. Or kill and eat. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

5. Sorry to Olivia Clark and Julia Brim-Edwards.

6. I love the idea of a fare-less square filled with keffiyehs.

7. Remember when we used to stick x’s in everything because it helped trans women somehow… or some type of equity? Maybe it decolonized something? It was stupid. We were stupid. We will look back on these years and cringe.

8. No wonder Mitch Green liked those years.

9. Same as it ever was.