Nov. 3 is approaching. With less than a month until the 2026 midterm elections, many eyes around the state are trained on the polls for the governor’s race. Will Oregon switch to Republican leadership for the first time in decades?
Underlying this potential shift in power is the fight, not between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Democratic Party. Both locally and nationally, one of the biggest talking points of this election cycle is the power struggle between progressives and centrists.
Calls for candidates to condemn and distance themselves from socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker occupy national news coverage similar to the war in Iran, rising gas prices, growing food recalls and ICE expansion. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville has gone viral for his attacks on democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, including calling for candidates he backs to separate from the Democratic Party in June.
In recent weeks, online debate erupted over former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed supported the Undecided campaign, which targeted Harris’ presidential run due to her support of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
These fissures within the Democratic Party are also evident in Oregon. Gov. Tina Kotek was polling in a virtual tie with Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan, and many cite Kotek’s centrism as a reason for the lack of excitement among the Democratic base. Many of these sentiments are summed up in a June 3 open letter to Kotek in the Portland Mercury, where columnist Donovan Scribes writes, “In the subsequent years since Election Day ‘22, I’ve seen you meander to the ‘middle’ on many days, and sound more like your conservative Canby opponent, instead of the Portland progressive I voted for.”
The ideological tensions are not just present in the governor’s race. On Sept. 25, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson took to KGW News to denounce progressive city councilors over alleged support for police abolition. A few weeks earlier, an argument between councilors Loretta Smith and Angelita Morillo went viral after the two sparred over police accountability funding. The incident became known as “Daddy-Gate” in reference to Morillo accusing moderates of relying on Wilson, the council’s “daddy,” to break the deadlocked vote.
The controversy, which also roped in Councilor Candace Avalos, became a referendum on not just progressives and centrists, but how Black elected officials are treated and what that means for Black Portlanders as a whole — especially when you have Black elected officials on both sides of the issue.
Street Roots spoke with Multnomah County Democrats Chair Salomé Chimuku about the upcoming midterm elections and what they mean for Black Oregonians. Chimuku is a longtime political strategist and social justice organizer. She’s also a policy advisor for Multnomah County Commissioner Shannon Singleton. Chimuku’s term as chair ends in January 2027. She hasn’t decided whether she will run again.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity. Readers can watch the full version on the Black Oregon POV YouTube channel.
Street Roots: With the midterm elections coming up, what’s at stake for Black Oregonians?
Salomé Chimuku: We are in a space where we’re the unintentional center of conversation when it comes to elections. Whether it be African Americans or other folks in the diaspora, such as Black migrants and such, we all have one common story, which is that our ancestors fought for the right to vote. People died trying to vote. I think it’s really important for us to remember that. There was not always a time where we could vote and control what happens in our lives, and now we have that ability to vote, and we should use it. And we see that with the Voting Rights Act being continually attacked.
This midterm election, I think there is a really large push to put, in particular, Black people, back into a place that makes others feel comfortable. When they’re using certain terms, whether it be DEI, when they use things like equity and attack those notions, they’re really talking about Black people. In American history, we see that time and time again, when Black folk in the United States are making any sort of progress of any kind, there is a strong pendulum swing to take things back to when things were great again, or good for America, and that’s synonymous with, in my opinion, Black subjugation and oppression.
This midterm election, we really are coming into a space where we’re doing a lot more protecting, as opposed to expanding of rights and opportunities. The fact that we had to defend birthright citizenship should have not been a joke. It should have been a wake-up sign for a lot of people that there are fundamental rights that were never questioned before that are being questioned now. And even in the conversation around birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court brought up the fact that a lot of the notion around birthright citizenship was around formerly enslaved folks and their children, and whether or not they would be considered American citizens.
SR: Can you talk about the disproportionate effect ICE is having on Black immigrants?
SC: I think oftentimes when we think about immigration, we think about Latine folks and Asian folks. We talk about sheer numbers and volume. Latine folks are the largest group that are being detained and deported, but that’s if you’re looking at just the number. If you’re looking at percentage in relation to population, you’ll see that there’s a high, disproportionate amount of Black migrants being deported and detained by immigration.
Back in the spring, I hosted an event along with some other Black community members to talk about what immigration (enforcement) is doing to the Black diaspora. And at that point in time, half of the U.S. American citizens killed by ICE or during ICE detainments were African American. And not only that, but at that time, close to 19% of recorded deaths in ICE custody were Black migrants. Obviously, Black migrants do not make up 19% of our immigrant population.
Black migrants tend to get skipped, because while they are migrants, they still have Black skin, and that also means that they’re susceptible to the overcriminalization of Black people here in this country. You end up with these Black migrants having charges against them, which makes them easier to deport, even if those charges are pending, or if they were waived or dropped. And, it becomes very difficult, especially when we talk about Black migrants who are from countries where the language is not as accessible out here. For instance, my family’s originally from Angola. There’s not a lot of Portuguese-speaking people out here. They make an attempt in immigration court to get a Portuguese interpreter, but sometimes you may not get one. Or, like, earlier today, you get a Portuguese interpreter who’s actually Brazilian, and Brazilian Portuguese is different from Angolan Portuguese. Now you have someone trying to participate in their own proceedings because there isn’t another option, and those proceedings are going to occur with you or without you.
I think also what’s important in this midterm election is having elected officials who know that type of struggle, even if they don’t know it for themselves, and that lived experience.
When it comes to me and my voting, I have a hard time voting for anybody who hasn’t been broke before, to be fair. Because I feel like once you’ve been broke, and not just living paycheck to paycheck, but constantly in a deficit, and you’re trying to just stay alive, you become a kind of MacGyver on survival. We need more elected officials with that type of experience, because so many of us are going to find ourselves in that place of not having enough, let alone paycheck to paycheck.
We need elected leaders who can look at this globally and ask how we can make it so this family that might be experiencing all of these things doesn’t have to talk to 800 different people? Let’s stop giving them lists of phone numbers to call (to) have them navigate themselves out of this mess.
SR: What else are you hearing from constituents as far as issues that are top of mind, and what does a champion look like on some of these issues?
SC: I think that as we talk about these midterm elections and (the overwhelm with) all the issues, all of that is by design, in my opinion. The more that you can hit people with fatigue, the more that they’re always on the defense, the less they have to be on the offense. People are too busy trying to defend having a place to live, so they’re working two different jobs. They’re doing Uber on top of that. People are trying to afford their health care, so they’re stressing and trying to fill out all this paperwork. All the while, you don’t have the capacity anymore to do things like activism, to do things like really researching these local races. The people who do participate are the people who are not being constantly attacked, who have the time and capacity, and then we end up with things the way that they are.
One of the things that really concerns me is out here in Oregon, and especially out here in Multnomah County, we have this sense of being so progressive. Well, there are a number of people that I would consider Democrats in name only, and not even that. You have the Democrat title on your registration because you felt like it would be too hard for you to win as a Republican, which is probably what you actually are.
I am definitely looking for elected leaders who are doing the work. I would rather have someone who has a track record of getting policies passed that uplift some of our equity-priority communities over someone who is at every event and will answer my phone call in two seconds.
SR: As the chair of the Multnomah County Democrats, how do you navigate managing the big tent, and what do you make of the tension between progressives and centrists, considering you have a history of progressive policy advocacy?
SC: One thing that helps ground me as the chair of the Multnomah Dems is understanding that I, as the chair, outside of who I am as a person, represent an institution that has been around long before me that has caused extreme amounts of harm in communities, especially communities I even belong to. That’s not my fault, but it is my reality, and the thing I have to carry when I carry that voice.
I definitely know that one of the things that some of my Dems hate about me is that I’m not as recruitment interested as some of the other folks feel like we should be. I’m more service-oriented. Let’s be the party that people want to come up to. I don’t want to have to chase people to be like, ‘you should join the Dems even though we have done nothing to work on our internalized racism, our microaggressions, our transphobia, our ageist and ableist issues. You should still join us, though, because the other side is actively trying to kill you.’ That, that only lasts so long.
If Dems want to try to paint this picture that Republicans are like the slave owner, Massa himself, then the Democrats are Massa’s wife. She may not actually own the slaves, but she is complicit in what is happening here because she doesn’t do anything to stop this from happening.
The Democratic Party cannot continue to have this kidnapper situation with the Black community. The Black community does not have Stockholm Syndrome. We know that over there, we’re actively targets. But your silence, or your complicity, or your ability or willingness to negotiate out our rights to get a win for a moderate who probably will never vote for you anyway, makes us not want to even work with you either.
We’re gonna take care of ourselves. I’ve talked to a lot of Black folk and it didn’t matter to them, whether it be Trump or Kamala Harris, who ended up winning the presidency because they felt like they were going to be screwed no matter what.
I do like that there’s other activists I’ve talked to that are Black whose response to that is, who do you feel like fighting more? One person will at least work with you on something, the other ones will not. You’re gonna fight, yes, no matter what, but who would you rather fight against?
Let’s face it, the Democratic Party is still majority white. But it’s a majority white that relies heavily on Black votes. What would it look like if the Democratic Party accommodated or centered Black women, their biggest base, their most sturdiest base? We would have a different-looking Democratic Party.
I don’t feel threatened by progressives. I would say I’m ideologically a socialist and not even a democratic socialist, but a socialist. And I still participate in the Democratic Party because I want that perspective to be heard in one of the biggest political parties in the nation.
This article appears in October 14, 2026.