It’s the job of our socialists in office (SIOs) and our movement to construct and take advantage of moments where we can beat back the capitalist forces and their faux-gressive candidates. Portland DSA and our SIOs helped create the conditions for Dr. Tammy Carpenter’s successful takedown of her Chamber of Commerce-backed opponent in May 2026. Here’s how we assembled the forces to win a tough election for state rep in Beaverton, Oregon (a suburb of Portland). Our work doing strike solidarity, organizing for a free Palestine, and supporting our socialists in office laid the groundwork for this win.
Palestine Solidarity
Shortly after October 7, 2023, DSA member and State Rep. Farrah Chaichi became one of the first public officials in Oregon to condemn the genocide of Palestinians. Rumors started to circulate that she would face a Zionist-friendly challenger.
In January 2024, Portland DSA worked with Intel employees to speak out against the ways Intel was supporting genocide. This resulted in a massive divestment of Intel from Israel later in the year, which the BDS Movement called “the largest BDS victory ever.” It began to prove that support for Palestine wasn’t simply a cause for the lefty super-activists in Portland but rather something that people in Chaichi’s suburban district cared about.
Rep. Chaichi’s opponent, a military drone salesman, suffered a brutal defeat in the May primary. Chaichi and all of the pro-Palestine incumbents in Washington County (one of three counties in the Portland metro area) won that spring, which was a crucial piece of proving that pro-Palestine people belong in Washington County leadership. Creating and defending this space for pro-Palestine politics laid the groundwork for later actions.
Strike Solidarity
Massive strikes rolled through the metro area between 2023 and early 2025. Portland DSA helped to shape the political nature of these strikes both through public solidarity and through communications about their meaning and stakes. Four thousand teachers struck in fall 2023. This nearly month-long strike galvanized public support and worked to shift the narrative from blaming public sector workers to the need for more state funding. Corporate actors tried desperately to quash this energy but failed. Then in January 2025 workers across the state went on strike against Providence Hospitals. This strike was unparalleled in scale in Oregon and made waves nationwide. ”Patients over Profits” and “Safe Staffing” were key demands that DSA helped to promote.
Our strike support helped build an environment primed for pro-worker messaging and for the public to believe that wins were possible, a necessary foreground to both our 2024 electoral wins and to creating the ground we would operate on in 2026.
Our Socialists in Office Pave the Way
Elected leaders have a credibility crisis. The public is deeply cynical that any elected official will actually pursue change. Our endorsed DSA City Councilors have worked to buck this cynicism; they are three of the 12 on council and one other DSA member coordinates with us. The community has reaped the rewards.
These socialists on city council:
- Stood up for workers in union disputes not just with the city or in already powerful unions but for new unionists as well, such as Starbucks Workers United and the New Seasons Labor Union
- Pulled money away from a bloated police budget to public parks
- Uncovered unspent funds for housing and made a plan to use them to fund Rent-Assistance, a first of its kind Social Housing Fund, and eviction defense
- Banned AI price fixing
- Launched a BDS Pledge for city councilors and elected officials and a local divestment investigation
- Stood strong against billionaire giveaways for a sports stadium.
What people in the Portland area have learned is that when socialists say something, they mean it, that socialists show up for working people. We are winning people away from cynicism. For an electoral project to take hold, people must believe that a better world is possible and that those who take up our banner will fight for it. Our Socialists in Office can help create fertile ground for other candidates.
Preparing for 2026
In the run-up to our endorsements for 2026, Portland DSA became much more serious about expanding our public profile. We put effort into cohering and promoting a socialist bloc at city hall and seriously upgrading our comms.
We also built chapter buy-in. Farrah Chaichi’s re-election campaign helped raise our profile in Washington County. Two members’ organizing around school issues in the Beaverton School District in the county, along with the revival of DSA’s Washington County branch (now referred to as Tualatin Valley branch), cultivated our presence in the area.
Our chapter had developed a sense for both opportunity and danger after the May 2025 school board elections struck our candidates hard. Tammy Carpenter, a DSA member on the Beaverton School Board, had organized a pro-labor slate in the May 2025 elections. Only one of the pro-labor candidates won, out of three. Zionists outraged by Tammy’s advocacy and emboldened by the election results then cooked up an investigation into Tammy’s pro-Palestine and anti-genocide social media presence.
Portland DSA united around Palestine and Tammy with a large rally in June 2025, which helped to create chapter buy-in for Tammy’s campaign and to build her presence and legitimacy further in the community. Tammy had a purposeful connection to the chapter throughout her time on the school board.
By the time we were ready to endorse for state rep, in October 2025, we already knew Tammy would be a bold voice for justice and socialism and a credit to everyone who worked with her.
Tammy recruited DSA members to her Kitchen Cabinet and hired a DSA member as campaign manager. She had both organic connections and a strong group of advisors to help her formulate her campaign, her platform, and her connection to DSA. In early October she sought and got the Portland DSA endorsement. She also got DSA’s national endorsement. Unlike any other campaign we’ve run, we were the core team running the show, including campaign manager, field director, and overwhelmingly the Kitchen Cabinet from the beginning.
This race was always going to be difficult. The establishment had a real favorite in city councilor Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg, a Chamber of Commerce darling and one of the most fake faux-gressives out there. Ashley secured endorsements from nearly every Democratic incumbent early and her kick-off party was a veritable directory of insiders and lobbyists. We knew we needed an incredible field game and to focus on differentiating ourselves from the squishy language of progressives. We needed a socialist champion. Tammy Carpenter stepped into the ring.
Playing Our Hand
DSA and Tammy together built a strong field program with clear and bold messaging. We quickly garnered attention from potential endorsers as the most legitimate campaign, with a connection to voters. Endorsers, including public sector unions, SEIU, AFSCME, the teachers union (OEA), and nurses (ONA), understood that the campaign had DSA at its core. We kept strong messaging and democratic socialist ID throughout the campaign. We knocked over 10,000 doors in the early part of our campaign, eclipsing any other field effort in the state, and racked up 35,000 over the course of the campaign. It was a struggle to get our coalition partners, including the large unions who joined later, and even our media consultants to understand the importance of using the words “democratic socialism.” It’s clear that we would have benefited from a socialist media team, and that our constant and impressive field presence was crucial to showing that democratic socialism wasn’t a fringe idea but a key part of running this winning campaign.
As the campaign progressed it became clear that a major local issue was shaping public sentiment: data centers. Socialists in office and candidates across the state were weighing in against the centers and this naturally fit our basic mantra: Tax the Rich.
The idea of tax giveaways to Amazon and other large tech companies to build data centers grew a substantial grassroots resistance. The only working class champions of such ideas were the building trades, seeking jobs. Tammy championed a local petition for a moratorium on data centers and used socialist messaging about who should pay for public goods. Local TV news station KGW interviewed candidates who opposed data centers and then mysteriously canceled airing the show, which served to make people even more interested in hearing what Tammy had to say. (Read more about data centrism here.)
As the race reached its end, our opponents made blunder after blunder, supporting deeply unpopular policies. Tammy’s opponent even sent out texts describing DSA as “too extreme” and fear-mongering that we were going to take away people’s homes. Socialism was supposed to be the bogeyman that our opponents wielded against working class candidates. It now appears to have had the opposite effect. The Chamber of Commerce used some sneaky push polling that actually gave DSA credit for multiple other candidates running insurgent races. Tammy won with 53% of the vote.
Whatever happens next, it’s clear there is no excuse for hiding socialism in the closet. It’s actually a benefit to credibility and popularity to be a real out and loud socialist
We are sitting in an incredible position in the Portland metro area. We have grown our political program from nonexistent in 2022 to having socialist voting blocs in just two short cycles. Our City Councilors are likely to win their next match-ups, but we won’t rest on their laurels. We are building a movement that can take on political machines.
