Portland Democratic Socialist Albert Lee Challenges Incumbent Who’s Held Power in Congress for 24 Years
Interview by Andrew Perez and Kelly Wilkins
This interview was originally published by our partner Media For Us.
We spoke with democratic socialist Albert Lee about his grassroots congressional campaign to unseat incumbent Earl Blumenauer in Oregon’s third district. Lee is endorsed by Our Revolution, Brand New Congress, and Portland DSA and says that Blumenauer, who’s held the seat since 1996 and is a part of the 1%, does not represent his diverse working-class community or provide effective leadership.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Media For Us: Can you first tell us about your background and then what inspired you to run for office?
Albert Lee: Certainly. I’m a sixth generation American, and an immigrant. I was born in South Korea, where my African American army dad met my Korean mom during the Vietnam war. I grew up in working-class St. Louis, next door to Ferguson in North County. My Mom worked a couple of jobs to put my sister and me through Catholic school — because our public schools were truly separate and unequal. Growing up, we never really knew we were working-class, we never knew we were poor, because everyone around us was. That’s kind of how it works.
My Dad was away for most of my childhood. He was deployed to Germany, Korea, wherever, for the bulk of my childhood. But he did return home to us my sophomore year of high school, and unfortunately we faced some serious problems at home — dysfunction, which lead to domestic violence, which lead to our homelessness, which lead to us moving around a lot. I ended up going to five different high schools in three different states, and it really did change my entire world view. I grew up as a conservative. Military was kind of the basis of our political philosophy as a family, and everything was black and white, right and wrong, left and right. But after facing these kinds of issues, having to experience a lot of different things, meeting a lot of different people, you kind of realize there are so many different variations of grey and that not everything is an absolute. And during those really tough times in my high school years is when my whole way of thinking changed.
Now fast forward to 2015. 2015 is the first time that I ever contributed to a candidate, and that was Bernie Sanders. He was the first candidate that inspired and activated me and my wife, the first one we ever gave money to, the first one we ever knocked on doors for, made phone calls for, and it was because he wasn’t a politician to us. I think of politicians as liars, crooks, and thieves. What I saw in Bernie was someone who had been fighting for the little guy for over thirty years, not just changing with the winds but doing exactly what he said he would do. That is something that I do not see with the bulk of our representatives, including the one that I’m challenging here.
What inspired me to actually take on this challenge was Bernie. After the 2016 primary was taken from him, my wife and I were looking at each other and saying, ‘What’s next?’ So we followed what he said: we need to become engaged civically and politically. We got involved with the local democratic party. We got involved with the Democratic Socialists of America. I got involved with a lot of different civic organizations, including the Citizens Review Committee, which does police oversight with the city of Portland, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, The Giving Tree, which helps folks in low-income housing downtown, the Transit Equity Advisory Committee, and many others. And so I filled my time with trying to really be a part of the community, and it didn’t feel like work, it felt like really contributing and trying to help make our community better.
Two years ago I went to the town hall for our incumbent on health care and I really, at that time, looked at him as our progressive champion. I looked at him as being a Berner, if you will, and I really expected him to say, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna push Medicare for All. We’re gonna get this going.’ And I went to that two hour session at the Unitarian church, and I heard him say some stupid lines like, ‘Oh Medicare for some. Whatever. I don’t care what we call it. We’ll get something like that in twenty years.’ And I was like, ‘In twenty years?! What about now? What about today?’
I left saying, ‘What’s going on here?’ And the first thing I did was I went home and I went to my two favorite websites: Follow the Money, and OpenSecrets. And therein lies the answers. Our incumbent takes corporate contributions — a lot of them coming from the healthcare industry. The thing that surprised me was that a lot was coming from fossil fuel industries, because our incumbent talks about being one of the folks that has co-written the Green New Deal, which is a complete lie. He says that he’s a writer of the Green New Deal, but it wasn’t until this fall that he signed off on not taking any corporate contributions from fossil fuel companies and he still has millions of dollars in fossil fuel stocks.
It’s time for somebody to step up. We need something that’s more than lip service progressivism. We need folks that are actually gonna fight for the issues, and make sure we have a government that works for all of us. Thirteen representatives have come out of Portland’s third district: eleven men, and two women — all white, all a part of the 1%. I’m saying it’s time for a change. It’s time that we actually get someone who’s truly going to fight for the people, someone who actually knows what some of the struggles are. We’ve got an incumbent who’s been here for twenty-four years, and during that time we’ve had a homelessness crisis that has gone from critical to super critical, we’ve had a lack of affordable housing and living wages, and we have a climate emergency that’s just gotten lip service. And now that we’re facing the COVID-19 crisis, that puts a spotlight on the issues that we face.
MFU: You speak about three crises facing your district: homelessness, the climate crisis, and the inability to thrive. Can you discuss these crises and your solutions?
AL: Well, they’re all completely interrelated, right? I’ll start off with the homelessness crisis. We say homelessness on the website because that’s what a lot of people understand. It’s a houselessness crisis. We have people living on the streets, families living on the streets. The United Nations has said that housing is a human right. They’ve said that for forty years. Yet our government doesn’t act as if it is. If housing was truly a human right then we shouldn’t see tents on the street. We shouldn’t see people living under bridges and in doorways. We should be seeing the government provide the housing that’s needed.
It’s something that our incumbent hasn’t addressed in twenty-four years and only recently came out with a white paper about it, and co-opted our language that we need to have a housing first program. For those folks that don’t understand what a housing first program is, it’s a program where we provide housing for people without preconditions. We’re not saying you have to get off of drugs, or you have to do x, y, and z, jump through these hoops, in order to provide housing. We provide the housing now, and then you can take care of those basic needs and work on taking care of other issues that come up. Salt Lake City, New Orleans, Scandinavia, all these different areas have excellent housing first policies and programs that are working. In Salt Lake City, it costs $18,000 to house a person. It costs $80,000 to incarcerate somebody. And it’s ineffective anyways. I know that a lot of folks think of our homeless as either being lazy or having drug problems or having mental health issues, but the reality is, and this comes full circle to the inability to thrive, it takes one car accident, one medical bill, one eviction, and anyone can find themselves homeless. And when you get into that situation, then mental health issues arise, then you might start leaning on drinking or drugs. Those things are not the source problem of the homelessness. The source problem is just that people have been crushed, to the point that you are on the knife's edge of the cliff and it just takes a little wind and you’re off.
The housing first program goes hand-in-hand with the universal healthcare program. We need a universal single-payer Medicare for All system that takes care of the body, that takes care of mental health, that takes care of drug dependency issues, and that takes care of all of those things together. I think that if you combine a housing first program with a universal health care program, you will help eradicate the homelessness crisis that we have. And we need to ensure that housing truly is a human right.
I’ll move on to the next part, which is the inability to thrive. That’s the lack of affordable housing, and the lack of living wages. The minimum wage has been suppressed for forty years. It is an anchor for all other wages, and we suppress those wages. We’ve got to tackle and address both the housing situation, as well as living wages. My very first job was at Church's Chicken in 1990. I made $3.80 an hour. That was the minimum wage in Missouri at the time. If you take that $3.80 and put it into a real money calculator, the relative value of that $3.80 in today’s dollars is $13.10. The minimum wage in progressive Portland is $12.25. So I did better in 1990 than progressive Portland does, and almost twice as good as the current federal level. The federal level is at $7.25 an hour. No one, nowhere in the United States can live on $7.25 an hour.
When we talk about here in the third district, economists will tell you that you need to make about $28 an hour in order to be able to take care of yourself and your family on one job. If we tagged the minimum wage of the 1970’s just to inflation, the minimum wage would be $33 an hour, okay? So $28-$33, somewhere in there, that’s where the minimum wage should be. But it’s not because we’ve decided that the zero point one percent deserve more of the share of the profit and resources than the rest of us. We’ve got to see a real change there. We’ve got to see a way to redistribute that wealth back down to the workers who produce those profits. And that in turn will provide us the ability to thrive for all of us.
MFU: Your opponent Blumenauer has held this congressional seat since 1996. What are some of the challenges of running against an incumbent?
AL: I studied political science when I was an undergrad, and the first thing they tell you is, ‘Don’t run against an incumbent’, because from the very beginning you have a ninety percent fail rate. And that is true because they have the backing of the party, they have the name recognition, they have all of the things that are necessary in order to continue, and they have inertia working on their side, because people tend to be comfortable, right? Folks are comfortable with things as they are and there’s a fear of the unknown. And to be known you need to raise money in order to put your information out in front of people seven or eight times, for them to get familiarity with you. That’s kind of the biggest thing for us — the money — and especially because we vow not to take any corporate contributions. One hundred percent of our contributions come from the people. We have tied one hand behind our back because we want to do it the right way . We do not want to be beholden to corporations. We do not want to be beholden to the wealthy. We want to have a campaign and a representative who’s going to be a representative of all of us and not just those at the top.
MFU: And he’s refused to debate you. And we saw that with Bernie and Biden too, Biden saying he wasn’t going to participate in a final debate before Bernie suspended his campaign. Can you talk about what it’s like to be challenging an incumbent who’s refusing to debate you?
AL: Well it’s funny because these folks talk about how they love democracy, and one of the basic tenets of democracy is you have open forums, you have a choice. And here in our district we haven’t had a legitimate choice in twenty-four years. We’ve had some third party candidates. Last year I think there were three people listed as challengers in the democratic primary, but none of them raised money. I think in total they raised $200. Democracy requires choice, something we haven’t had here in a generation.
We have an incumbent who claims to believe in the basic tenets of democracy but is afraid to debate, and I know why. Number one, it legitimizes my campaign, right? It puts me on the same level as him. Number two, he’s afraid that I’m gonna actually run circles around him when it comes to actually talking about the policies and the measures. And number three, he has twenty-four years of ineffective leadership, ineffective representation, where he’s just been coasting, keeping the seat warm, not really doing anything.
A lot of people ask me about seniority. I turn around and ask them, ‘What has that seniority gotten us? You know, twelve years in the House’s Ways and Means Committee...have you seen anything from that?’ Nothing. We need true leadership, especially in these super safe liberal seats, super safe progressive seats. We should be rising up and getting the party to move back to the left. That's one of the biggest problems with the democratic party — it’s hard to differentiate this party from the republicans. And that’s how come we lose. If you want the genuine deal, vote republican. We need to have a serious differentiation of the party from the alternative and this is kind of the argument that I hear about the national level right now.
MFU: You’re running as an atheist. What compelled you to call attention to this aspect of yourself, and is that a difficult position to take given the role religion has played in politics?
AL: Yeah. I think religion needs to be separated from our government. I think that’s one of the big issues that we face. When people like to talk about their religious faith it’s always couched in this Judeo Christian basis, and quite honestly there’s a lot of folks that want to have this be a Christian nation, and I do not think that is the right way to go. I think we need to separate our religion from our politics. When you look at our founding fathers, that was one of the big things that they were talking about. They wanted to have a separation from those things. For me, running as an atheist is just about the genuineness of this campaign. I want to be true. I want to let you know who I am. It doesn’t mean I’m going to hate you because of your religion, you know? It’s just that I don’t think that it should play a part in the decisions that are made, and I think there’s an undertone when it comes to that in a lot of decisions that are made.
MFU: How do you think Portland’s officials are handling the Coronavirus situation on a local level, and if you were in Congress, how would you take this on on a national level?
AL: So far it looks like our local officials and our state officials are trying to do their best to keep a handle on it. We have lots of educational campaigns that are going out, telling folks to keep their hands washed, to stay indoors. Our governor has followed your governor, Gavin Newsom, to lock down the state. This is serious.
At the same time, we’re facing the same lack of supplies, safety supplies, face masks and the like, for our responders, for our doctors and our nurses. I talked to one of my friends whose got a family member who works up at the VA and they’re out of PPE, they’re out of personal protective equipment, they’re told to bring some from home. Well, there’s none to be brought. But I think on the local level they’re trying to do the best that they can.
This really calls for federal action, and I’m really sorely disappointed in the federal response because this is an unprecedented situation. This is a situation that calls for the full support of our federal government for the people. We need to bail out the people. We need to have that emergency economic support right now, of $2,000 per person per month. And you know the best that the federal government could do is $1,200 at some point in May. That just doesn’t swing it. I know I rail against the corporations a lot, but at the same time I think that a lot of the financial organizations are trying to do something to help the people.
There are a lot of folks who are calling for a rent strike, general strike, and with an ineffective federal government I would agree with them that, yes, it is time for a general strike. I know that’s not something that we do here in this country...They do it a lot in France, but here people are not familiar with that sentiment. But something’s got to give. We need to have support for the people. And if I were in congress today, I would be fighting tooth and nail to provide that emergency economic support for folks today. It needs to be for the people, and not a bail out for the corporations.
We’ve had talk about Boeing saying you know if you want to buy into the company or whatever we’re gonna take a look at other options. Well then shit, if you’ve got other options go use your other options, right? We need to focus on the people. This government, this country, is supported by the people. It’s time for the government to support the people during this time of crisis.
MFU: You were speaking to the fact that working people do not feel represented by their representatives. We’ve been seeing this wave of progressive wins from Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats candidates, huge growth of numbers in the DSA. Can you speak to this new progressive wave and why people should run now?
AL: Yes, without a doubt. First of all, people need to run for office for all levels of government. I’m talking from the school board, all the way up to the Senate, to President. We have a government that’s supposed to be of, by, and for the people, yet for so many years we have been represented by the one percent. Here in our state, we have seven federal delegates — two Senators, five Representatives. One hundred percent of them are multimillionaires. That means 100% of them are part of the one percent. One hundred percent of them are over the age of 62. One hundred percent of them are white. One hundred percent of them are property owners, and six out of seven are men. Now, that is not representative of this state, where 44% of us are renters, less than 1.4% of us are millionaires (let alone multimillionaires), where a good 75% of us are below the age of 62, a good quarter of us are not white, and half of us are not men. I think it’s time that we have people stand up to represent us.
The reason why we have bailouts for the wealthy is because the wealthy are in power. The reason why we have bailouts for corporations is because they take money from corporations. It’s time for us as regular everyday Americans to stand up and say enough is enough. It’s time for us to say, ‘Hey, I believe in myself, I believe in my neighbors, to stand up and do this.’ We need to have people from all walks of life stand up. We have too many lawyers in office. It’s time that we have environmentalists in office. It’s time that we have scientists in office. It’s time that we have community organizers in office. It’s time that we have folks that know the struggle in office. The wealthy do not have a monopoly on ideas, let alone good ideas, and I think that it is time that we all stand up.
And look, not all of us are going to win. That’s just part of the game. And in order to make that sea change, in order to make it so that we get more progressive voices, so that we get more voices of the people out there, we just have to have more numbers thrown up against the wall. If I should fail, I don’t consider that a failure. I consider that an opening to say, ‘Next man up. Next woman up. Stand up. I’ve gotten us this far, you go past that and get to the goal.’ Because the goal is to have a government that works for all of us, and not just those at the very top.
MFU: Anything else you want to add about your campaign or any closing thoughts for people?
AL: Yes. So you know, it’s not me, it’s us. And I got to say that for all of these campaigns across the country. We’re not doing this out of some sense of entitlement. We’re not doing this because we want a title or position. We’re doing this for the people. Each and every one of the folks in Brand New Congress, Justice Democrats, and the myriad of other organizations out there, we’re just regular everyday folks that have said, ‘Enough is enough. It’s time for a government that’s gonna work for all of us.’ We need your support. We’re not taking the money of corporations. That means we need your backing. We need your support in order to make that sea change. I hope that we can earn and win your support and if you live in the third district I hope you can vote for this campaign. AlbertLee2020.com. Thank you.