Safety and Justice Oregon General Election Results!

The candidates we support are proven advocates who fight to reduce incarceration and invest in crime survivors’ healing.

What our endorsements mean (and what they don’t)

How and why SJO selects candidates.

Safety and Justice Oregon endorses candidates in almost every election cycle. Our endorsed candidates are the right people to lead Oregon into the future we deserve.

Here’s what that means for us.

The people we endorse share our vision, advance our values, and reflect people that are overrepresented in the system.

We build champions, many of whom have not historically held positions of power in Oregon. With the knowledge that ours was founded as a whites-only state, we strive to support leaders who have lived experience with the issues we care most about, including systemic racism, generational trauma, and the failures of public health care services.

Our movement is vast and dimensional.

Like Oregon itself, our movement reflects diverse lived experiences. We are targeted by the criminal justice system, and we have unearned privilege. We have survived violence, we have caused harm, and we have been incarcerated. We have a range of political views and social perspectives.

We are not a monolith, nor are the people we endorse.
At times, the candidates we support have views that are different from ours. They might have taken stances we disagree with or made choices we oppose. But like the public safety and criminal justice systems we are working to build, we don’t believe in one-strike-and-you’re-out rules. Instead, we believe in seeing the whole person, including their vision, their passion, and their heart.

The values that guide our work are the same values that guide both our picks and our process. We select candidates who:

  • Shrink the system by prioritizing accountability, restoration, and treatment over punishment
  • Work for racial equity
  • Believe in second chances
  • Fight for healing after violence
  • Prioritize families and communities

Our endorsement process is rigorous, thoughtful, and involves all our board members and most of our staff.

Yes, our process is demanding, but it’s also rewarding. It allows us to get to know each candidate, and it allows each candidate to learn about us. It also makes our endorsements meaningful to us, our candidates, and our supporters. (On the flip side, this also means that we are not able to engage in all the races that we would like, unfortunately.)

We hope you’ll join us in supporting them for the November election.

Together, we can build a system that achieves meaningful accountability, a commitment to racial justice, and community safety everywhere that we work, live, and play.

To view our most recent slate of candidates, visit sjoregon.org/endorsements.