Our 2026 General Election Endorsements Are Here

This November, the fight to protect our communities runs through every level of government: Congress, the legislature, county boards and city halls.

APANO Action Fund is the political home of the Asian community and our allies in Oregon. We’re the 501(c)4 sibling of APANO Communities United Fund, and that designation gives us the superpower our partners at APANO don’t have: we can tell you plainly and publicly, who we think should hold office.

We can knock doors for them, phone bank for them, and put our name behind them.

We don’t hand that out lightly.

Every candidate on this slate filled out our values-based questionnaire and sat for an interview with our endorsement committee, which is made up of APANO AF members, staff, board, partners and community members.

What we’re looking for is simple: does this person have the Asian community on their mind when they make decisions and will they pick up the phone when we call?

What’s at stake nationally

This is a midterm year, and control of Congress is on the ballot (even if Oregon won’t be the most competitive state). For our communities, the last year and a half has been about as bad as we feared. Federal immigration agents swept through Oregon last fall in what they called Operation Black Rose. They arrested people outside grocery stores, pulled people from their homes and even showed up in front of schools.

Washington County, Oregon’s most diverse county (with the highest population of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the state), accounted for a third of all ICE arrests in the state in the second half of 2025 – causing Hillsboro and Washington County to declare states of emergency.

These are our friends, family members, and neighbors. Many in the APANO community came to this country as immigrants or refugees, or are children of people who did. Our community knows what it means to be targeted for who you are.

Although APANO AF doesn’t get involved in federal elections right now, the midterm is the first real chance voters will have to push back against Trump’s authoritarian agenda. However, we know that Congress alone won’t save us. The people who decide whether local police cooperate with federal agents, whether a city spends its rainy-day fund on families who are afraid to go to work, and whether renters get protection from eviction are the people on this slate. That’s why we put so much of our energy into local races.

Why Portland City Council matters so much this year

Portland’s 12-member City Council is split down the middle: six progressives and six moderates. Many of the council’s biggest decisions this year, including how to fill the city’s budget hole, have come down to 6-6 votes.

Half of the council is on the ballot in November, and the city’s business lobby (and their allies) knows exactly what that means. The Portland Metro Chamber created and funded a PAC called United for Portland and money from it is already behind a series of billboards around the city urging voters not to re-elect Councilor Mitch Green. The Chamber’s goal is clear: to unseat Green, Tiffany Koyama Lane or Angelita Morillo and lock in a moderate majority.

We want the opposite.

When the council’s progressive members proposed a “Save our Services” plan this summer to restore 48 city jobs, including fire crews and 311 staff, we supported it, even though it would have pulled from the interest generated by the Portland Clean Energy Fund — because it is this kind of creative thinking that we want to see from our endorsed candidates.

When city leaders started negotiating public money for arena renovations, Tiffany Koyama Lane was offered a seat at the table but refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement that came with it. "Public money deserves public accountability," she said. She and Mitch Green both declined to sign, and the secret advisory committee was scrapped.

Tiffany then pushed for public listening sessions and a citywide survey that drew more than 18,000 responses. She also asked whether other arena operators might offer better terms before the city handed out a 20-year deal.

Mitch put it plainly: "I want the Blazers here. I want a renovated arena. But if this process looks like a backroom deal between billionaires and a few powerful people, it's going to fail."

In August, the council approved a term sheet committing $120 million up front and up to $275 million more for maintenance over 20 years. Tiffany, Mitch, and Angelita Morillo voted no and kept pushing for a better deal. That's the kind of leadership we need more of, and on a council split 6–6, one more vote makes all the difference.

Why Hillsboro and Beaverton matter too

Washington County has 29 data centers, more than any other county in Oregon. Last year, tech companies got nearly $90 million in enterprise zone property tax breaks in Washington County alone, while the county only collected about $20.5 million in property taxes from those facilities.

Those property taxes are supposed to pay for schools, parks, and the services our families rely on. Instead, when the legislature voted this spring to pause the program, Hillsboro and Washington County approved 17 new tax break applications in a rush before the pause took effect. In one case, the deals mean a company won’t pay property taxes on parts of its expansion until 2051!

The Oregon Education Association, Tax Fairness Oregon, and our endorsed candidate Tammy Carpenter are now in court trying to block those deals. Across Oregon, school districts lost $275 million to property tax abatements in 2024.

In Hillsboro and Beaverton, business groups and establishment money are lining up behind candidates who have gone along with that arrangement. Our endorsed candidates are running on a simple idea: big corporations should pay their fair share, and that money should fund the things our communities need most.

Meet Our Endorsed Candidates

Oregon Legislature

Lamar Wise

Oregon State Representative, House District 48

Lamar Wise was appointed to House District in November to carry on the work of Rep. Hòa Nguyễn, a longtime friend of APANO AF after her passing. The district covers outer Southeast Portland around Powell Butte along with Happy Valley, Damascus, and Boring. Lamar got his start organizing students at the University of Oregon when he was struggling to cover his own basic expenses. He went on to serve as a student commissioner on the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, lead the Oregon Student Association, and serve as political director for Oregon AFSCME.

Lamar has also served on the Governor's Racial Justice Council and the boards of the ACLU of Oregon and Community Alliance of Tenants Action. In his first session, he worked to strengthen consumer protections, preserve affordable housing, and expand access to child care. He's running on housing stability, lowering everyday costs for working families, and strong public schools from early learning through college. "Equity is not a separate priority," he told us. "It is the lens through which I evaluate every policy." HD 48 is one of the more competitive seats in the metro area, and we're proud to help Lamar carry Hòa's work forward.

Tammy Carpenter

Oregon State Representative, House District 27

Tammy Carpenter grew up in a working-class military family that moved every 18 months and sometimes relied on extended family to stay housed. She spent two decades as a physician and has served on the Beaverton School Board since 2023. On the board, she helped expand free breakfast and lunch to every student in the district and was the only director to hold town halls on ICE raids and school closures.

Tammy's platform is simple: fully fund our schools, pass a universal health plan for Oregon, and stand with renters through statewide rent control and stronger tenant protections. She's frustrated that Oregon has a Democratic supermajority yet still can't fully fund basic services, and she's willing to ask wealthy corporations to pay their fair share. That's why she's one of the plaintiffs suing Hillsboro and Washington County over last-minute data center tax breaks, which pull money out of the State School Fund that pays for every classroom in Oregon. She's running for the open seat left by Rep. Ken Helm, and her volunteers have already knocked on more than 20,000 doors.

Deb Patterson

Oregon State Senator, Senate District 10

Sen. Deb Patterson represents South and West Salem, Monmouth, Independence, and part of Four Corners, and chairs the Senate Health Care Committee. She's a retired health administrator, a minister of 30 years, and the adoptive mom of two, one with special needs. Before the Legislature, she served on the Oregon Disabilities Commission, the Oregon Commission for Women, and the Oregon Hunger Task Force.

Deb's priorities come down to basic dignity: health care, housing, and food for everyone, quality education from early childhood through college and trade school, and respect for human rights. In Salem she has fought to protect permanently affordable housing, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, and add accessible units for people with disabilities. She's also working with labor to raise pay for caregivers and long-term care workers, who are mostly women and people of color. Deb first won this seat in 2020 by less than a percentage point, and it remains one of the most important races for keeping a strong majority in the Oregon Senate.

Multnomah County

This is the first year Multnomah County is using ranked choice voting, and there's no longer a May primary for county races. Everything is decided in November. Rank our endorsed candidates first, and keep ranking.

Shannon Singleton

Multnomah County Chair

Shannon Singleton is a social worker by training. She has represented North and Northeast Portland on the county board since winning a 2024 special election with 57% of the vote. Before that, she led JOIN and the Salvation Army Female Emergency Shelter, ran street outreach and clinical services for Cascadia, and served as Gov. Kate Brown's housing policy advisor and later as her director of equity and racial justice.

In under two years as commissioner, Shannon restarted the Walnut Park redevelopment in Northeast Portland after it had sat on the shelf since 1997, and she revived community-led safety work in Cully. She also brought forward an update to the county's sanctuary resolution with $250,000 behind it. When ICE activity put schools in her district on lockdown, she worked to keep families connected to county services remotely and to fund food and rent assistance. As chair, she wants to protect a safety net that's under attack from Washington and squeezed by shrinking budgets, while tying county programs to good-paying jobs.

Nathan Ong Norris, Bri Williams, and Serena Cruz

Multnomah County Commissioner, District 2

We've endorsed three candidates in this ranked choice race for the North and Northeast Portland seat Shannon Singleton is leaving. Please rank all three.

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Bri Williams was born and raised in Northeast Portland and is now raising her own family there. As a Black woman from the neighborhood, she's seen the effects of redlining, displacement, and gentrification firsthand. Bri holds a master's in social work and works for Multnomah County as a mental health consultant with Albina Head Start, after previously working for Preschool for All. She co-chairs the county Behavioral Health Department's equity committee and has served on the Ryan White Planning Council, which shapes services for people living with HIV. Her top priorities are housing stability, behavioral health, and accountable government that makes sure resources actually reach the communities that need them most.

Nathan Ong Norris is a third-generation, mixed-race Asian American who was born and raised in the Portland area and lives in Kenton. He holds a master's degree in emergency management and community resilience from Portland State, has worked as a hazardous waste technician and a theater technical director, and is a union member. "At the county, every single person is one of ours," Nathan told us. He's running to protect and expand Preschool for All and to champion the county's Office of Sustainability after three commissioners tried to cut it. He also wants to prepare our bridges, fuel storage, and water systems for the next major earthquake. As co-chair of Portland DSA's Resiliency Working Group, Nathan helped deliver 3,300 gallons of drinking water to Warm Springs Tribal Emergency Management and firewood to striking workers on the picket line.

Serena Cruz served this same district from 1999 to 2006 as the first Latina and youngest woman ever elected to the county board, and later ran the county's day-to-day operations as its chief operating officer. Her mother left a small town in Mexico to build a life here, and her father never got the education he deserved as a Mexican American boy. As a commissioner, Serena built Bridges to Housing, a coalition across Multnomah, Washington, and Clark counties backed by a Gates Foundation grant that gave families experiencing houselessness up to five years of stability. During the pandemic, as executive director of the Virginia Garcia Memorial Foundation, she pushed the state to prioritize farmworkers and Latine communities for vaccines when they made up 13% of COVID cases but only 6% of those vaccinated. She co-founded a company that built Oregon's first land-trust condominiums. Her priorities are houselessness, a Preschool for All that meets families' language and cultural needs, and family-wage jobs in neighborhoods left out of Portland's growth.

City of Portland

Portland uses ranked choice voting, with three councilors elected from each district. In Districts 3 and 4, rank our endorsed candidates first and second.

Tiffany Koyama Lane

Portland City Council, District 3

Tiffany Koyama Lane is Yonsei, a fourth-generation Japanese American, and the first and only Asian American woman ever to serve on Portland City Council. Before joining the council, she was a Portland Public Schools teacher and a lead organizer with the Portland Association of Teachers. In her first month in office, her colleagues unanimously elected her the new council's first vice president, and she helped write the rules for how Portland's new government works.

Since then, Tiffany has co-sponsored sanctuary city ordinances and passed protections for LGBTQ2IA+ Portlanders and families of all kinds. In a brutal budget year, she won $2 million for parks and community programs and dedicated $650,000 to a reimagined Vision Zero. She's willing to work across the aisle when it counts, including partnering with Councilor Zimmerman to steer transportation fee dollars toward sidewalks and traffic safety. She's a union member, an educator, and a mom of two young kids. "I will hold the door open for AAPI Portlanders, working-class people, and caregivers like me to serve," she told us.

Angelita Morillo

Portland City Council, District 3

Angelita Morillo is a Paraguayan immigrant raised by a single mom, a first-generation college student, and a lifelong renter who has experienced houselessness and housing discrimination. She's also the only council member who depends on transit and has never owned a car. Before the council, she was an anti-hunger policy advocate at Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon, where she helped run the Food for All Oregonians campaign to expand food assistance to undocumented immigrants.

In her first term, Angelita passed the nation's leading ban on corporate landlords using AI algorithms to fix rents, a practice that hit Black, Latino, and immigrant renters first. With Councilor Green, she created a revolving loan fund to buy buildings and permanently stabilize rents. She also created the city's Data Privacy Office to watch for federal overreach and a Detention Facility Impact Fee that charges landlords who rent space to ICE and funds support for impacted families. "When federal agents come for our neighbors," she said, "Portland will not be complicit."

Mitch Green

Portland City Council, District 4

Mitch Green is an economist, a veteran, and a former union member, and he's the only progressive voice representing District 4. Within his first 90 days, he passed a unanimous resolution to build social housing, where rent is tied to what people earn and tenants have a real say in how their buildings are run. A year later, he helped secure a first-ever $17.5 million investment to make it happen.

Mitch has passed more policy than anyone else in his district's delegation, and he's crossed caucus lines to get things done. He joined Councilors Clark, Smith, and Zimmerman to pass $200 million for sidewalks in Districts 1 and 4, and he led the council's 11–1 vote to investigate Zenith Energy. He's working to protect the Portland Clean Energy Fund from being diverted to Moda Center renovations and police budgets, and he supported the Detention Facility Impact Fee to protect immigrant neighbors from ICE. Mitch is also the top target of the Chamber-backed PAC trying to flip the council, which tells you he's doing his job.

Jamey Evenstar

Portland City Council, District 4

Jamey Evenstar has spent nearly a decade inside Portland city government making hard things happen. She wrote the city's tenant protections, developed the Rose Lane Project to get buses out of traffic, and created Building Belonging, the transportation bureau's tool to keep city projects from fueling gentrification. When Portland changed its form of government, she spent two years on the charter transition team. There, she led the first independent Salary Commission and guided city employees through the change.

Jamey is a mom of five, a renter, and a car-free transit rider. She wants to clarify who does what on houselessness across the city, county, and state so people get back into stable housing faster. She also wants to turn downtown into a real neighborhood with housing and local businesses, and to attach community benefit requirements to any public dollars the city hands out. She knows how the new government works from the inside, and she could be the seventh vote.

Simone Rede

Portland City Auditor

Simone Rede has served as Portland's elected auditor since 2023. The auditor is independent from the mayor and council, and the office's job is to keep government open and accountable: auditing city programs, running city elections, and handling complaints about waste and unfair treatment. Simone is a career government auditor who worked at Metro and the State of Oregon before being elected, and she has served on the board of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. She was once a foster parent to a young refugee from Guatemala. Her priorities are public involvement, oversight of homeless services spending, and making sure audits are guided by the communities city programs most often leave out. Voter-approved charter changes cut her first term short, and this is the first chance voters have to give the office a full four-year term.

Washington County

Nafisa Fai

Washington County Chair

Nafisa Fai came to the United States as a teenage refugee from Somalia, and in 2020 she became the first person of color ever elected to the Washington County Board of Commissioners. She's a mom, a small business owner, and a public health expert who worked for the Multnomah County Health Department and lobbied for upstream public health before joining the board. After six years as a commissioner, she's running for the open chair seat.

Nafisa wants the county to get its infrastructure right in low-income and working-class neighborhoods, where roads and sidewalks have been neglected the longest. She also wants to build more housing that ordinary workers can afford, not just luxury units. She's pushing to make cities pay their share for county services like tax collection and the jail, which the county has long provided for free. This year she proposed a moratorium on new data centers and fought to keep farmland out of the urban growth boundary when there are hundreds of acres of industrial land still unused. She finished first in the May primary and faces a November runoff. Washington County deserves a chair who treats every person with respect, and Nafisa does.

Evelyn Kocher

Beaverton City Council, Position 1

Evelyn Kocher moved to Beaverton as a child when her family fled political instability in her home country of Indonesia. She graduated from Beaverton High School, down the street from City Hall, and now calls the city home with her wife. She's a multiracial immigrant who has spent her career fighting for immigrant and LGBTQ+ rights. She has led the Oregon Student Association, served on the state's Higher Education Coordinating Commission and the ACLU of Oregon board, and worked at Latino Network.

Evelyn's top priority is protecting neighbors from ICE. Hillsboro set aside $200,000 for impacted families, eight times what Beaverton has committed, and she wants Beaverton to match it. She'd also have the city flag 911 calls about immigration enforcement and send officers to document those interactions. Communities of color make up nearly half of Beaverton but hold just two of seven council seats. Evelyn also wants more housing near the city's seven MAX stops, and a bus line connecting South Cooper Mountain to the rest of town. If she wins her November runoff, she would be the only renter on the council and the first openly trans person to hold local office in Beaverton.

Yi-Kang Hu

Mayor of Tigard

Yi-Kang Hu was born in Taiwan, immigrated to the United States as a child, and has lived in Tigard for more than 20 years with his husband, Abram. His public service started when he noticed missing sidewalks in his own neighborhood. That led him to the Tigard Planning Commission, which he chaired, then to the City Council and the council presidency. He was appointed mayor last fall during a difficult transition at City Hall, making him Tigard's first Asian American mayor, and he's proud to have brought stability and focus back to the city.

Yi-Kang is running for a full term on safe neighborhoods, safer streets with better sidewalks, crossings, and transit connections, and a stronger local economy with more housing options. "As an immigrant, person of color, and openly gay mayor, I know representation matters, but I also know it is not enough," he told us. "The real work is making sure people are heard."

Yousef Allouzi

Tigard City Council

Yousef Allouzi's story starts in a single-wide trailer in rural Texas. His stepfather was a janitor and his mother managed a fast-food restaurant, and the family raised chickens and rabbits to make ends meet. The son of an immigrant from Jordan, Yousef came to Oregon in 2002 to work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where he was a union member for ten years. He then earned degrees in economics and public policy from Oregon State, and today he works as a data analyst for the Oregon Judicial Department, helping young people in the juvenile system find permanent homes faster.

What pushed Yousef to run was a vote on the Tigard Budget Committee. The budget cut the library and eliminated a key social services position, and he voted no because those cuts fell hardest on families already struggling. He's running on affordability, protecting core services like the library, supporting small businesses, and protecting immigrant families. Tigard elects its top three council vote-getters, so make sure Yousef is one of your picks.

Hillsboro

These three candidates are running together for Hillsboro City Council, and they share a clear message: stop giving public money away to data centers and start investing it in the people who live here.

Diana Jackson

Hillsboro City Council, Ward 1, Position A

Diana Jackson is a single mom, a nine-year Hillsboro resident, and a member of the Hillsboro Planning Commission. She works for a nonprofit public defense law firm, where she sits on her union's executive board and bargaining committee with Oregon AFSCME Local 3668. When Diana moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Hillsboro in 2018, the rent was $1,300 a month. By the time she moved out this year, the same apartment cost $2,400, and rent now takes 76% of her take-home pay.

Diana is running to make Hillsboro affordable for the people who keep it running. She wants to protect the urban growth boundary and farmland, and to build an economy that doesn't depend on a single industry. She also wants real mental health and addiction treatment with wraparound services. A data center is going up near her kids' school. "They are the first places to feel the effects of spending cuts while we give tax breaks to data centers," she told us about Hillsboro's most diverse neighborhoods.

Karim Delgado

Hillsboro City Council, Ward 2, Position A

Karim Delgado is a first-generation Cuban American who enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17, after 9/11. He later embedded with U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan as a civilian videographer. He's also a former teacher and the owner of The 649, a Hillsboro bar that pays a guaranteed living wage, covers 80% of health and dental premiums, and matches retirement contributions. During the pandemic, he turned the bar into a free soup kitchen. His front yard hosts a free community fridge and pantry, he and his wife have housed refugee families, and he once put himself between a Hillsboro father of three and ICE agents.

Karim is running on three things. First, no corporate handouts: he says Hillsboro has exempted about $7.2 billion in data center property value from taxes while the school district absorbed a $20 million cut. Second, protecting immigrant neighbors, including a formal limit on city resources used for immigration enforcement and a legal defense fund. Third, making sure every public subsidy is out in the open before the vote. "If a 10-person bar can do this," he says of his workers' benefits, "there is no excuse for corporations collecting billions in city tax exemptions to do any less."

Dorian Russell

Hillsboro City Council, Ward 3, Position A

Dorian Russell was raised in the Hillsboro ward they're running to represent, the city's most diverse and lowest-income district. As a teenager, Dorian sometimes went to the Shute Park pool to shower when the water at home was shut off. They got hot meals at HomePlate Youth Services, the youth houselessness nonprofit they now lead as executive director, serving more than 1,000 young people a year. Dorian earned degrees in environmental science and policy from American University, came home, and has chaired the Hillsboro Library Board and served on the Northwest Regional Education Service District board. They also won Willamette Week's Skidmore Prize.

When ICE hit their ward hard last fall, Dorian pushed the library to offer free Spanish-language notary services so parents could arrange custody documents in case they were detained, even after the city first said no. They're running to expand family-wage jobs and eviction prevention, lead local resistance to ICE, and protect Hillsboro's farmland. "Negative economic, health, and educational outcomes are not caused by individual failure," Dorian told us, "but failed public policy and barriers to resources."

Clackamas County

Allie Ball

Milwaukie City Council, Position 2

Allie Ball has called Milwaukie home for 16 years, growing up in the Hector Campbell neighborhood. She graduated from La Salle Prep and was a Girl Scout in Milwaukie for ten years. She studied political science at the University of Oregon, then worked with the ACLU of Oregon and the Women's Foundation of Oregon. Allie is an elected precinct committee person and was appointed this year to Milwaukie's Public Safety Advisory Committee.

Allie believes local government should be a resource, not another barrier. Her priorities are an open city budget, housing that lets young people, seniors, and working families stay in Milwaukie, and support for small businesses. She also wants safer sidewalks, better lighting at bus stops, and more green space as summers get hotter. As a young Black woman, she knows how much it matters for people who've been left out of government to see themselves reflected in it.

Marchelle Paholsky

Happy Valley City Council, Position 1

Marchelle Paholsky is an Army veteran who spent 30 years as an executive in the energy industry, managing multimillion-dollar budgets. She now chairs the Happy Valley Planning Commission and serves on the city's Parks and Recreation Board, so she already works closely with the council on the land use decisions shaping one of Oregon's fastest-growing cities. More than a quarter of Happy Valley residents are Asian, and Marchelle told us there's real work to do so those voices are heard at City Hall. She wants to start by listening, and to help community members serve on city advisory committees or run for office themselves. She's running for responsible growth that protects green space, keeps roads safe, and makes every neighbor feel connected.

How You Can Help

Ballots start arriving the week of October 14. If you're not registered, or you've moved, you have until October 13 to register or update your address at oregonvotes.gov. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped off by Tuesday, November 3.

If you live in Portland or Multnomah County, remember that you're ranking this year. Rank our endorsed candidates first, then keep going. Ranking more candidates never hurts your top choice.

These races will be won by people talking to their neighbors. Whether you can knock doors for a couple of hours, make calls from home, or just share this post with your group chat, it matters.

Sign up to volunteer with APANO AF and help us elect leaders who will stand up for all of us.

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