Your thoughts about Portland are the reasons why we didn't buy a condo in Portland after I retired in 1995. We really liked Portland in the early 1990's. We thought about buying a condo as a part time home in Portland. My oldest son who had lived in Hood River and Bend warned me about the left wingers, socialists and enviralists. He suggested that I subscribe to the Oregonian for at least 3 months.
It took less than 1 month of reading the left wing Oregonian to forever change our minds. Portland is heading the way of Seattle in a rapid way!
To all living in Portland or around it. Cancel your Oregonian subscription. Send half of your monthly savings to the Boy Scouts and the other half to Free Republic! Don't finance their left wing agenda/diversity/political correctness agendas!
It's really a shame the G.O.P. isn't better organized in the Portland area. I know to people in other parts of the country it must seem like Portland is just one big weirdo camp, but really, there are a lot of normal people in Portland. I think a conservative candidate, if he took the right approach, could defeat Vera on this issue alone, if he pointed out how this kind of crap hurts Portland's image, and therefore its economic performance. There are a few areas (NW Portland, Hawthorne) of concentrated weirdness in Portland that are controlling the politics of the whole city.
I don't live in Portland; I live 30 miles away, however, so I do take an interest in this.