October 5, 2026
Earl Blumenauer spent 28 years in Congress building a national reputation as the legislature’s most persistent advocate for livable cities. He came home to Portland in January 2025 to find his own city midway through the most radical governance overhaul any large American city has attempted in decades—and to find that the reform impulse he long ago helped pioneer in Oregon has begun producing results its authors did not intend. In this conversation with TPR the former congressman, now a Presidential Fellow at Portland State University’s Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, is unsparing about what he is watching, in Portland and well beyond it.
