Featuring our endorsements for the November 5 election, and lots more! by Wm. Steven Humphrey Hello fellow voters, and welcome to the Portland Mercury’s Election and Endorsement Issue! (Pick up your print copy at more than 500 locations around the city.) And let me tell you right from the get-go, I am fucking exhausted!  Don’t get me wrong—Mercury folks are nothing if not political junkies who live and breathe reporting on (and giving sassy-ass side-eye to) our local government. And normally, while researching and writing our election endorsements isn’t a trip to the cotton candy factory… it’s doable. However, this election season? It’s a whoooooole new (fucking exhausting) ballgame!  Thanks to charter reform, Portland has flipped the way our government operates on its head (in a very good way), dumping our creaky, undemocratic commission form of governance, and replacing it with a brand spankin’ new 12-person council representing four districts, WHILE ALSO slapping on ranked choice voting to boot! And did candidates show up for it? OH DEAR GOD, DID THEY. By the filing deadline, we got a whopping 118 (!!) candidates running for the offices of council, mayor, and auditor. That’s super good news for democracy, and very nearly put the itty-bitty Mercury staff IN OUR GRAVES. But did we accomplish the task of spending the past year contacting and questioning all 118 candidates, studying their responses, doing our own research, whittling that list down to six candidates in each race who we personally interviewed and then ranked to give you the absolute best (and most reliable!) election endorsements in the city of Portland? GOT-DAMNED RIGHT WE DID. Because that’s what we do here, that’s how much we care about this city, and that’s how much it means to us that our future leaders treat you with the respect you deserve. So that said… If you use our endorsements to fill out your ballot, would you please show your respect to us and our year of diligent work by contributing $5 to keep the Mercury alive, kicking, and writing even more endorsements in the future? Trust me, your small contribution goes directly into the pot that funds our editorial work, and nowhere else. Well, that’s not true… it could also go to our funeral services incurred by working ourselves to death—but that’s still editorial, right? So toss us a tip… we earned it. Oh! And while you’re browsing this issue, don’t miss our other great articles—such as a dive into Portland’s small donor program, what to expect from voters and our new City Council, a terrifically interesting story on how we originally got our janky commission form of government (thanks to a hurricane), a damn near exhaustive list of Rene Gonzalez’s many sins, plus a lot of fun stuff including an election-themed Trash Report, a hilarious ranked choice practice sheet, AND the triumphant return of Portland’s most beloved asshole, FRANK CASSANO. (Please don’t applaud, he’ll just shit on you.) So in closing, I hope you enjoy our endorsements and find them useful. Be sure to keep supporting your local journalists… yes, even the ones that don’t work for the Mercury because they have to endure their insufferable bosses who ignore their excellent reporting and endorse Rene Gonzalez anyway. And for god’s sake, VOTE! Democracy doesn’t work if you ignore it. And with that sage bit of wisdom, I am going to fucking bed and sleeping until the next election rolls around. DO NOT WAKE ME UP. Yer always pal, Wm. Steven Humphrey Editor-in-Chief Portland Mercury (he/him)