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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. It can be said that winning elections is the easy part, and for Democrats nationally and in Oregon, the hard part starts in a few months: the actual governing. Yes, it took a huge amount of work to turn in a historic election during the midterms, but as both parties have learned over time, it's what you do with those wins that truly matters. Today on the show, you'll hear from the top Democrat in Oregon, the speaker of the House, about how she and her caucus plan to carry momentum into next year's legislative session. Then, at the end of the show, you'll hear from a Register-Guard reporter about a weird story in which GoFundMe set up pages for nonprofits, including in Lane County, that no one ever asked it to create. Now a lawsuit is pending. Oregon Speaker of the House and Eugene's own Rep. Julie Fahey. Representative, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for coming in.
Julie Fahey: Yeah, thanks for having me today, Michael.
Dunne: Yeah, well, today let's start with a very open-ended question: your thoughts on the midterms?
Fahey: Well, I feel like there's a lot to say. It was a really big night on Tuesday for Democrats all around the country and here in Oregon. Obviously, as speaker of the House and in the state Legislature, my focus is more on Oregon than on the federal level, and I feel great about how things went in our state on Tuesday night.
Dunne: Maybe comparing and contrasting to some degree, but the messaging for local Democrats here in Oregon: Do you think a lot of those messages were also the successful messages of national Dems as well?
Fahey: Well, there's no question that the No. 1 issue on voters' minds here in Oregon and around the country is affordability. Federally, in congressional races all around the country and in the U.S. Senate, Americans were very tired of the chaos coming out of the Trump administration. They were unhappy with the Iran war and with tariffs driving up their costs, so that was a very clear message both locally and around the country. Our messaging in our campaigns, and the things we were hearing from voters and talking to voters about, was how we are going to rein in costs and bring those costs down.
Dunne: Obviously, Oregon is pretty reliably blue, and things seem to have worked out as expected. But how do you think the makeup of the Legislature and the executive branch bodes for governing going into next year?
Fahey: Well, one of the things I'm excited about is the governor being reelected. And if the current results hold, and we're talking on Thursday afternoon, Democrats are poised to pick up two seats in the Oregon House, moving from 37 to 39 out of 60 seats, and one seat in the Senate. So, good news for us, but it really doesn't change the challenges that Oregonians are facing or the challenges our state is facing, and it doesn't change the work we need to do next year in the legislative session. Whether we have 35 or 37 or 39 Democrats in the Legislature, the work we need to do around preserving access to Medicaid and health care across the state, improving our schools and making sure Oregon is a good place for businesses to start and grow is the same regardless of the size of the majority.
Dunne: Well, to that point, could you give us a preview of how you see the next legislative session? What are the goals, priorities, that whole gamut?
Fahey: Absolutely. Obviously I care a lot about the congressional races as well as the state races, but one of the things having a big impact on Oregon as a state is the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that came from the Republican Congress in H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill. That bill shifted the burden of the costs of those programs onto the states, and it's very difficult for states, Oregon or any other state, to absorb that kind of cost. So one of the top things we're going to need to do in the legislative session next year is try to backfill that gap. The funding gap will be about $400 million over a two-year budget cycle that we'll need to fill in our Medicaid program. It's going to be tough, but families going without health care is not something I'm willing to accept, so that will be one of the top problems we need to take on and solve next year. I'm hopeful about the new Democratic majorities in Congress. I already talked to some of our federal delegation yesterday about what can be done to reverse some of those harmful cuts in H.R. 1. But Donald Trump is still our president, and he will need to sign any bill Congress passes into law. So I'm also realistic about needing to get through the next two years, and health care is going to be a big topic of conversation next year.
Dunne: What about transportation? That was such a big issue last [session]. Give us your read on where we are and where we need to go in terms of transportation funding.
Fahey: It's a really good question. At this point, what I'm working to do is keep the lights on at ODOT, keep the roads plowed and keep the bridges repaired. We've talked a lot about transportation and about how the gas tax isn't keeping up with the need right now, because people are driving more fuel-efficient cars. This year the governor had a transportation work group that is trying to assess the options: If we don't have any new funding in our system, how can we balance the budget at ODOT and keep those roads plowed? If we do have a little more funding, where might that go? That group is having its last meeting sometime in the next few weeks and is going to issue recommendations to the Legislature. I'm looking forward to taking a look at those recommendations. Any legislation I support next year will need to keep affordability in mind, since that's the top concern for Oregonians right now, but also accountability of the agency and keeping our roads safe.
Dunne: OK. Obviously, you're in the same party, so you supported the reelection of Tina Kotek. From a nuts-and-bolts perspective, does it make it easier to predict how the work will flow, knowing you're not having to deal with a new executive administration?
Fahey: That's a great point, Michael. Any kind of transition in leadership comes with people learning the ropes and new staff, at a very technical level. The Legislature's primary job is to balance the budget over a two-year period. That is the only thing we are constitutionally required to do next year during the session. There are lots of other challenges we need to address, and the governor will be issuing her recommended budget by Dec. 1 this year. If there had been a changeover in administration, whether within parties or between parties, that process is delayed, and it makes the budgeting process a little more challenging. So it's a very nuts-and-bolts piece of it. But I've worked with Tina Kotek for over a decade, we've worked well together in these roles as governor and speaker, and I'm looking forward to getting some things done with her next year.
Dunne: Obviously, here in Oregon and nationally, Democrats can't wave a magic wand and make prices go down. But are there some quick fixes the state, and perhaps Democrats nationally, are looking at? Are there a few levers to pull at the state level, perhaps even nationally, that might help initially? Sometimes I think the American electorate, maybe even the Oregon electorate, can be a bit impatient, especially when it comes to costs.
Fahey: Absolutely, and I think that's an important dynamic you're pointing out. I have worked for many years on the issue of housing costs. Before I was speaker, I was the chair of the housing committee, and building more housing to bring down costs takes a long time, so it requires some patience. But there are some things we have done that have had a more immediate impact on prices. I would point to the POWER Act we passed last year in the Oregon Legislature, which is now going to serve as a model for many of these other Democratic majorities around the country. It says that data centers, the users of large amounts of electricity, need to pay their fair share for the infrastructure they use, and they can't pass those rates on to residential customers. We passed that law last year, and then this summer, the very first decision out of our electricity rate-making body was that rates for data centers would increase by 29%, and rates for residential customers and small businesses would be cut. So there's no magic, but there are some policy things we can do at the legislative level that help rein in costs and bring down the cost of living.
Dunne: OK. One of the things that came out of the Wednesday morning quarterbacking, if you will, from the midterms is candidate quality. It seemed to be pretty much understood that the Democrats just put up candidates who were better in a lot of ways. You're someone who must develop talent in your caucus, so maybe talk a little bit about that, because one of the big things was that someone like, say, James Talarico wasn't minted out of whole cloth on day one. It took a long time. Talk about how you develop the leaders of tomorrow.
Fahey: Absolutely. First and foremost, I think about making sure our candidates and our elected leaders are focused on the things Oregonians want them to be focused on, and not on divisive cultural issues or other things that are distracting. People want us to improve our schools, bring down the cost of living and make health care more accessible and affordable. So it was really about making sure our candidates knew that, and that those were the issues they were talking about. I would also say that I ran for office for the first time in 2016. I had a tough primary election and a very tough general election, and I won those races in part because I knocked on the doors of so many voters in my district and had one-on-one conversations with them about what they were concerned about, what they wanted me to work on in the Legislature and what was going on in their lives. That's an important part of how you win campaigns, but it also helped shape the kind of legislator I became: really focused on the needs of my constituents and my communities. That's a message I deliver very strongly to all of the folks running for legislative seats around the state. We had new candidates around the state: Michael Welsh, who is poised to defeat longtime Salem politician Kevin Mannix in the Salem area; Hank Sanders, who is flipping a seat in the Hood River area; and right here locally, Kori Rodley, who ran for the Springfield legislative seat with John Lively retiring. All three of them were really committed to knocking on doors, learning what their communities needed and running their campaigns from that perspective.
Dunne: Is part of the job, or part of your goal, to try to get younger people to come into office or to learn politics, so that maybe someday they'll run?
Fahey: Yeah. I mentioned Hank Sanders, who probably not very many people in the listening area know about, but he ran in Hood River, and at 25 he will be the youngest member of the Oregon Legislature. So that is young. He will bring the perspective of someone who doesn't own a home and struggles with costs, in a way that maybe folks like me who are more settled don't. He'll bring the lived experience of those challenges to the Legislature, and I'm really excited to have him join the House.
Dunne: Last question. Obviously, Democrats won big in Oregon and nationally, but as we all know in politics, the pendulum can shift back. Maybe talk a little bit about advice for your own caucus, but also advice for any Democrat: "OK, we have this. It almost feels like a mandate. Let's not do these things to lose it."
Fahey: Yeah, I think it comes back to what we were talking about earlier: focusing on the things the people of Oregon actually want us to work on and the challenges they face in their everyday lives. That's part of how you maintain the trust people have put in the Democratic Party here in Oregon, but it's also about how you start rebuilding trust in institutions. For too long, people have felt like government isn't serving their needs and what they want, so we need to be laser-focused on making sure our priorities are aligned with what the people of Oregon want us to work on. To me, that's part of it. But it's also recognizing that as speaker, I'm not the head of the Democratic Party in the Oregon House. I lead the entire chamber, and that means our Republican colleagues, too. We have to be thinking about how we govern in a way that reflects the entirety of the state. My governing philosophy as speaker has always been that if you are willing to step up and do the work of improving the lives of Oregonians, there will be a seat at the governing table for you, regardless of whether you're a progressive representing a deep-blue seat in Portland, a more moderate Democrat or even a Republican representing Eastern Oregon. It's really important that all of those perspectives are reflected in our work.
Dunne: OK, I lied. I have one more question, and then I'll let you go. Data centers were, boy, almost like a boogeyman to a degree, and we certainly saw that in the governor's race. Give us generally both your view and what you think the caucus is looking at in terms of potential moratoriums, or just where data centers fit. After all, Oregon has been a pretty data center-friendly state. Where do you see that going in the next two to three years?
Fahey: Yeah. As your listeners know all too well, data centers have been around the state, predominantly in Eastern and Central Oregon and up in Washington County. They have been straining our power grid and using our water and our valuable land here in Oregon. Those are really critical resources. We can't afford to pay more for those things, and they're finite resources. I mentioned that last year we passed the POWER Act, which helped make sure data centers pay their fair share for the electricity they use, and there's a lot more work to do. In 2027, I know the Legislature will be pursuing policies around data centers on a much wider range of topics, everything from water to power to their greenhouse gas emissions to transparency, where there are lots of conversations about nondisclosure agreements, to how we tax data centers in this state. Basically, if we are going to continue to have data centers here in Oregon, what are the guardrails and protections we need to put in place at the state level to make sure they are paying their fair share and that Oregonians are sharing in the benefit?
Dunne: She is the speaker of the Oregon House, Julie Fahey, and also a Eugenian. Speaker, it's so great to see you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Fahey: Thanks for having me.
Dunne: Now let's bring in a Register-Guard reporter to talk about this weird story of GoFundMe setting up pages for nonprofits without ever being asked. Alan Torres is a political reporter for The Register-Guard. Alan, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for coming in.
Alan Torres: Yeah, thanks for having me again.
Dunne: You had an interesting and complicated story recently. Talk about this issue with GoFundMe and local nonprofits. What's happening?
Torres: Sometime last year, I believe, GoFundMe created pages for hundreds of nonprofits around the country. They basically looked at federal filing data for these nonprofits and generated pages where people could ostensibly donate to them, and the nonprofits could claim their pages on GoFundMe to collect what people donated. Several nonprofits pushed back against this. The nonprofits accused GoFundMe of impersonating them and of profiting off their names and goodwill. Six Oregon nonprofits got together and sued GoFundMe over those pages, which have since been taken down, and the other day, arguments in that lawsuit were heard in court.
Dunne: OK, so to unpack this a little bit, there were several local nonprofits. Why don't you talk about some of the ones bringing suit, some of the ones we all may know about.
Torres: Yeah. The six in this lawsuit are from around Oregon. Two of them are here in Lane County: the Eugene Public Library Foundation and the McKenzie River Long Term Recovery Group, which is involved in helping people recover from the Holiday Farm Fire upriver.
Dunne: I see. How did this happen? As far as you can tell, is this nefarious? I know it'll all come out in the wash, but is the contention in the lawsuit that GoFundMe as an organization was trying to rip off nonprofits, or could it be hackers using GoFundMe to try to get money somehow? Is that what we're trying to figure out?
Torres: No. GoFundMe admits that it did this. It's not trying to blame anyone else. GoFundMe's argument is that it created these pages to help the nonprofits. GoFundMe is saying, "We have this popular fundraising platform that people use to look for causes to donate to, and we put your causes on our platform." And the nonprofits are saying, "We didn't give you permission to do that, and you are getting a cut of these donations."
Dunne: So if I'm hearing you right, GoFundMe, which admits this, is basically saying, "Yeah, you're a nonprofit. There are hundreds of you out in the community. We're just going to go do this without ever contacting you"?
Torres: Yeah. And again, GoFundMe has since taken the pages down. But yes, that is what it did. It set up these pages for these nonprofits, and the nonprofits say they weren't consulted or anything like that.
Dunne: OK, so from the nonprofits' perspective, I guess there could be an argument made: "Well, this is great news. GoFundMe, a very popular destination that lots of people know about, out of seemingly the goodness of its heart, set up these pages where you could get money." Are the nonprofits in the lawsuit talking about the potential for injury to them?
Torres: Yeah. For one thing, the nonprofits object to their names and logos being used by this organization in this way. The nonprofits' argument is a couple of things: People could donate to the pages before the nonprofits claimed them, and in order to claim the donations, the nonprofits had to agree to GoFundMe's terms. The nonprofits also object to the fact that GoFundMe gets a share of the revenue because of how online donations work.
Dunne: It'll be fascinating to see how this gets adjudicated. He is Alan Torres, political reporter for The Register-Guard. Alan, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Torres: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of "Oregon on the Record" are available as a podcast at klcc.org. Tomorrow on the show, we'll broadcast a special NPR program for Veterans Day, "Carlson's War: A Veteran's Story." I'm Michael Dunne, host of "Oregon on the Record." Thanks for listening.
