The Schmidt Show PDX

The election news has drowned out a story that could reach Portlanders before any of the ballot results do. At 12:01 a.m. on Monday, November 9, about 800 City of Portland workers could go on strike. They include analysts, coordinators, victim advocates, emergency management staff, and the people who run payroll for the rest of the city. Mike sits down with Kari Koch, president of the City of Port...

Two years ago, Liv Osthus, better known as Viva Las Vegas, put up a billboard telling Portland to “expose yourself to politics.” She then ran for mayor on the idea that the city’s top job should belong to its head storyteller. She’s a Lutheran preacher’s daughter, a longtime dancer at Mary’s Club, a single mom, and a fixture of Portland’s arts scene. She joins Mike to look back on that campaign an...

Two weeks ago, Portland Public Schools put a list on the table: 14 schools that could close, including Maplewood, Buckman, Irvington, Sabin, James John, and Peninsula. Parents packed the board meeting so tightly they were pushing through the doors. Behind the list is a district that has lost 6,000 students since 2019, expects to lose another 6,000 by 2032, and faces a $65 million budget hole in th...

On November 3, Multnomah County picks a new chair, and for the first time we’re doing it with ranked choice voting. The chair runs a roughly $4 billion government that handles the “people stuff”: homeless services, mental health and addiction care, jails, the health department, libraries, even the animal shelter. Whoever wins inherits a squeezed budget, a city-county homeless services agreement up...

We’re less than a month from Election Day, and the headlines are worrying. The president is attacking vote-by-mail. The DOJ is threatening election officials. People are talking about ICE at drop boxes, and some Oregon ballots are likely to be rejected because the mail is too slow. So I went straight to the person running Oregon’s elections: Secretary of State Tobias Read, who at 6’7” is also the...

The next time you fill up your car or board a plane at PDX, ask yourself where that fuel came from. For about 90% of Oregon, the answer is a six-mile stretch of Northwest Portland along the Willamette, tucked below Forest Park: the Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub. Hundreds of storage tanks, most built before modern seismic codes, sitting on dredged-up river soil that geologists expect to liquef...

Election Day is less than seven weeks away, and one of the most consequential races on your ballot is for a job most Portlanders couldn’t describe: Multnomah County Chair. The incumbent isn’t running again, so no matter who wins, the county is getting a new leader and a new direction. To help make sense of it, I sat down with someone who knows the job better than just about anyone. Deborah Kafoury...

SchmidtShow PDX — Season 3, Episode 9 Before she was a city councilor, she was Teacher Tiffany — sixteen years in Portland Public Schools, a union leader, a fourth-generation Japanese American, and the first Asian American woman ever elected to Portland city government. This week, Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane (District 3) joins the show to talk about her path from the classroom to City Hall, why...

It’s back to school season, which means it’s also back to the annual drama over Portland Public Schools — superintendent contracts, building closures, classroom consolidations. But this week, Mike zooms out to the bigger issue hiding underneath all of it: Oregon currently ranks 50th in the nation in fourth-grade reading proficiency. To talk about it, Mike welcomes a guest who’s impossible to ignor...

U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley joins Mike for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of the Senate, institutional trust, and what comes next — plus the debut of a new segment, “In the News,” with first-ever Schmidt Show correspondent Elinor Jones! In the News with Elinor Jones A look back at three cultural giants lost this week — Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime)...

Mike sits down with sitting Oregon Supreme Court Justice Bronson James — public defender and private practice lawyer turned Circuit Court, Court of Appeals, and now the state’s highest bench — for a rare, wide-ranging conversation with a sitting Justice. They start with comic-book tattoos and an actual ongoing Oregon Supreme Court Dungeons & Dragons campaign, then dig into the real stuff: what pri...

Guest: Annie Naranjo Rivera, State Director, Oregon Working Families Party Episode Summary 44% of registered Oregon voters — 1.4 million people — aren’t registered with either major party. This spring, the Working Families Party (WFP) went on a run in Democratic primaries, unseating a sitting state senator for the first time since 2018 and winning 37 of its 49 endorsed races. Mike sits down with O...

Season 3 kicked off a month early with a conversation about the Oregon Prosperity Council’s report — the roadmap Governor Kotek commissioned to answer the question of what makes Oregon “prosperous.” Episode one featured Curtis Robinhold, one of the Council’s co-chairs, making the case for competitiveness. This episode brings the other side: Juan Carlos Ordoñez, Communications Director for the Oreg...

Episode Description One guest, one through-line, a lot of ground to cover. Mike sits down with Pastor Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran Church — a Portland native who’s spent his lifetime as an activist and more recently at the center of the city’s fights over gun safety, police accountability, and immigrant sanctuary. They trace Knutson’s path from a Franklin High School track rival of Steve Pre...

SchmidtShow PDX, Season 3, Episode 2 This week I sat down with Portland City Council President Jamie Dunphy — the “compromise president” who emerged after 13 deadlocked votes — to talk about running a fractured council, the real math behind the Moda Center deal, and what Portland might learn from New York. In this episode The reluctant presidency — What it means to hold “all the responsibility, no...

SchmidtShow PDX — Season 3, Episode 1 : Mike sits down with Curtis Robinhold to unpack the Oregon Prosperity Council’s just-released report: 66 listening sessions, 25 communities, 400+ pages, and a mandate to figure out why Oregon’s business climate isn’t competitive — and what to do about it. About Curtis Robinhold Curtis Robinhold is the Executive Director of the Port of Portland, where he’s ove...

Tonight I read Shane Dixon Kavanaugh’s piece titled “Portland mayor lambasts critics of Moda Center deal as county questions investment” . Worth the read - but here’s a quick synopsis: Mayor Wilson sent out a letter doubling down on the city’s $120 million pledge and going after the councilors and critics who’ve raised concerns about the deal. Less than two hours later, Multnomah County held its f...

Earlier this season, Portland Metro Chamber Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Jon Isaacs sat across from Mike and made his case: the DSA is bad for Portland, bad for business, and bad for the social programs progressives claim to care about. It was the most downloaded episode in Schmidt Show history. This is the rebuttal. City Councilor Angelita Morillo — First term District 3 representat...

What if clean information is as essential to democracy as clean air is to public health? That’s the question at the center of this episode — and it’s one that today’s guest has been thinking about longer than most. Ryan Haas spent more than 20 years in journalism, including 12 years at Oregon Public Broadcasting, where he served as Managing Editor of News. Last year, he left OPB after watching wha...

Show Notes This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.schmidtshowpdx.com/subscribe

The Schmidt Show PDX | Season 2, Episode 14 Some fights you don’t choose. They choose you. On March 19th, 2026, a New York Times investigation alleged that Cesar Chavez had sexually abused girls in the farm worker movement and assaulted Dolores Huerta, his own partner in the struggle. For Portland’s Latino community that had fought a multi year battle to rename a street in his honor — a community...

Portland has a new billionaire in the building — and he brought a $600 million ask with him. Tom Dundon closed his purchase of the Trail Blazers just weeks ago, and the early headlines haven’t been about basketball. They’ve been about cost-cutting, lobbying campaigns, and a demand to commit north of a billion dollars in public money to renovate an arena the public already owns. Two guys with a web...

In This Episode Buckle up - this is a conversation that will have you cheering, jeering or both! Portland is at an inflection point — economically, politically, and on the streets. This week on SchmidtShow PDX, we talk to two guests with very different vantage points on the city’s challenges: a seasoned political strategist now advocating for Portland’s business community, and a frontline service...

Audit This Have you been hearing claims that Portland is the most taxed city in the country?! We talk taxes with Marina Kaminsky from the North Star Civic foundation to try to get to the bottom of this complicated issue. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.schmidtshowpdx.com/subscribe

A NOTE About this episode: When it was originally taped Peter Klym was not a candidate running against Adrian Brown. A different candidate had filed, but then subsequently withdrew. When this episode was taped there was a reference to the candidate that subsequently withdrew - not Peter Klym. That reference has been edited out of the episode in order to minimize any potential confusion. Whether yo...