By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Throughout the summer, candidates for elected office in Portland and the surrounding region have been making their case to voters and talking about the issues that affect their lives. Meanwhile, a handful of individuals – on the ballot and off it – have been working to make local government elections about another set of issues entirely. 
In Portland, 118 people are candidates for 12 seats on the restructured City Council while 19 more are running for mayor. In April, 18 of those candidates signed on to a letter advocating for a ceasefire in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza. In late September, City Council District Four candidate Andra Vltavin sent an edited version of this resolution to an email list that included the majority city council candidates – a list that has been at the center of an investigation by the Oregon Secretary of State’s office into a donation-swapping system intended to manipulate Portland’s public election funding mechanisms. 
“As we approach the one-year mark of Israel’s response to the events on October 7th, 2023,” Vltavin’s email begins, “Palestine is back in the forefront of the global consciousness.”
The attached resolution, which asks candidates to commit to “a permanent ceasefire resolution and arms embargo, call for entry of all humanitarian aid required to end the human suffering in Gaza, and advocate for reparations for the Palestinian people” within three months of taking office, was initially signed by mayoral candidates Durrell Javon Kinsey Bey, Liv Osthus and Shei’Meka As-Salaam, City Council District 1 candidates Cayle Tern, David Linn and Thomas Shervey, District 2 candidates Antonio Jamal PettyJohnBlue, Chris Olson, Jennifer Park and John Middleton, District 3 candidates Ahlam Osman, Angelita Morillo, Chris Flanary, Kelly Janes, Luke Zak, Theo Hathaway Saner and Tiffany Koyama Lane and District 4 candidates Vltavin, Chris Henry and Mitch Green.
Not everyone was onboard.
“I was pretty upset, pretty distressed by it,” Stan Penkin, a candidate for City Council District 4, told The Jewish Review. “It’s one thing to want a ceasefire. I think we all want to see peace there. But the letter was so divisive.”
Penkin and one of his opponents, Bob Weinstein, came together to issue a response. 
“As Jews, we are both devastated by the loss of innocent lives and want to see a ceasefire, a return of the hostages and peace in the region. We also do not appreciate the inflammatory nature of the letter which only serves to divide candidates before the election and does not bode well for a collaborative new City Council,” the pair said. 
Weinstein and Penkin also called out the choice to focus on foreign policy issues in city elections and to apply that focus purely to the Jewish state. 
“If City Council wants to focus on international politics, it could expend valuable time on the atrocities in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen or other hot spots in the world, but the letter writers have chosen to focus only on Israel,” they said.
In an email that was obtained by Willamette Week, Sam Sachs, a candidate for City Council District 2, said, “As a Jew whose grandparents immigrated to Portland in the 1940′s I am honestly disgusted and offended that you would choose to send this out now at this time and that you refer to the massacre that occurred on October 7th as ‘events.’”
Morillo, one of the signatories to the initial letter, responded that she did not support an updated resolution, writing “we have a responsibility to acknowledge Jewish pain on that day without negating that a genocide is happening. We can hold both, but I don’t think this letter adequately addresses that nuance as it’s written now.” Her email, as well as messages from Green, Koyama Lane, and Osthus endorsing her position, were also obtained by Willamette Week and they were removed from the list of signatories, along with Timur Ender, a more recent signatory and a candidate for City Council District 1.
Jewish Federation of Greater Portland President and CEO Marc Blattner was not so equivocal in his reference to the letter. 
“No mention of October 7. No mention of the Israelis killed or those sexually assaulted. No mention of the hostages. No understanding that Israeli families in Portland have been impacted, including a woman whose brother is still being held hostage,” he wrote in his weekly email newsletter. “I respect everyone’s personal thoughts/views on a ceasefire, the Hamas-Israel war, etc. The Jewish Federation, however, stands steadfast that our local elected officials should focus on issues facing our city and issues they have jurisdiction over.”
Weinstein, the District 4 candidate who co-authored the response statement with Penkin, put his summation bluntly. 
“I viewed it as a distraction and not an appropriate distraction,” he told The Jewish Review.
Meanwhile, outside groups had already taken a run at injecting issues around Israel – and their own spin on them – into the race.
The Portland Association of Teachers sent out an initial endorsement questionnaire that focused on local issues, but followed it up with a supplemental questionnaire that asked: “Do you believe Portland elected officials have done their due diligence in responding to the ongoing genocide in Palestine? Has Portland ‘done enough’ for Palestine? Or does work remain to be done?”
Weinstein recalled the issue did not come up in his endorsement interview with PAT, but he was asked about the Portland Police Bureau’s use of force against “non-violent protestors,” specifically referencing anti-Israel demonstrators that had taken to Portland streets and taken over the library at Portland State University earlier this year. 
“I was pretty surprised,” about PAT’s line of questioning, he said. “I did not get endorsed.”
Vadim Mozyrsky, a candidate Multnomah County Board of Commissioners District 1, got the same supplemental questionnaire. He didn’t say whether he found the question surprising, but he was decidedly not pleased to get it.
“Rather than asking people questions relating to what kids need or for that matter, what teachers might need in order to help kids study, they asked, in order to endorse candidates for office, what they thought about the Middle East,” he said. 
Mozyrsky also received endorsement questionnaires from Street Roots, the weekly newspaper and homeless advocacy group, and the Portland Metro People’s Coalition, a coalition of activist groups and political organizations advocating around progressive issues, asking about issues in the Middle East. Street Roots used one of its five questions to ask, after referencing the County’s ceasefire resolution, “How can the county continue to support community members, including county staff, who are impacted by the war” in Gaza, while PMPC asked candidates to endorse a platform of issues, including a demand by coalition member Jewish Voice for Peace for local governments to divest from “Israel Bonds and companies that profit from the occupation.” 
Mozyrsky pointed out that no mention was made of Hamas’ attacks on Israel or of the hostages still being held in Gaza. 
“[They’re] not discussing the other side of the coin there but talking about Israel’s campaign and how they can support people impacted by it. I’m seeing this more and more,” he said. “Obviously I’m Jewish, but my family came here as refugees from the USSR. Back then, in the paperwork, it would actually say that you were ethnically Jewish, so that when people, authorities or otherwise, looked at your paperwork, they would know that they could discriminate against you.”
Mozyrsky had just received the inquiry from PMPC when he spoke with The Jewish Review. He declined to answer the questionnaire from Street Roots – “I Just feel that’s abhorrent.”
“Asking people to show support for Gaza, it’s free speech in some ways,” he said. “But when it becomes a litmus test for people getting into office, you have to wonder who was actually coordinating this and for what reasons?"