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Senator Mark Hass is running for Oregon Secretary of State.  He seeks to fill the seat vacated by the death of Dennis Richardson.  He talks with Don Merrill about why he thinks the housing crisis and the homelessness crisis are not as connected as people believe, how he'll ...

Don Merrill talked with Secretaries of State of nearly a dozen states to see how they felt about their individual voting processes in advance of the 2016 election.  He discusses their comments with C. Norman Turrill, president of League of Women Voters of Oregon.

Robert Neimeyer is a Republican who wants to fill the seat that was vacated by former Governor Kitzhaber. He's critical of what he calls "stupidity" on the part of Democrats both locally and federally, and he had some strong ideas about how to bring balance to government. ...

Stephen Johnson is a home care specialist and a democrat who is running for Oregon Governor. He talked with Don Merrill about his support for guns in Oregon schools, why the state can't afford to pass up jobs that have been previously called a bad fit for the state's "chara...

Steve Phillips is the author of the new book, "Brown is the New White", a critical discussion on changes that are coming to the American body politic in advance of the population shift from majority white to "other than white" by 2044. He talks with Don Merrill about Berni...

Cliff Thomason is a gubenatorial candidate from Oregon's Independent Party. He strongly believes in Oregon agriculture and agricultural based solutions for some of Oregon's financial problems. Among them, he thinks the hemp and marijuana industries need access to legitima...

NOTE:  On January 16, 2016, David Taylor sent out an email announcing the suspension of his campaign. David Taylor is an independent seeking the seat in House District 30. But his story is far from ordinary. He says he and his brother were kidnapped as a children. He is of...

Mike Nearman and I talked two years ago, just before he won his seat in House District 23 from Representative Jim Thompson.  He's running for reelection and since then, Nearman has held fast to conservative principles of reduced taxes, dedication to the repeal of the Afford...

David Gomberg is an Oregon democratic legislator running for reelection in House District 10, a slice of Oregon from Tillamook to Yachats and inland 50 miles.  His passions are community, his business and his family.  Don Merrill talked with David Gomberg about earthquake p...

Paul Sowards is a bell ringer for the Salvation Army in Wilsonville, Oregon. He says the organization has saved his life as well as let him reach out to people in his own unique way. But for a secular community like Portland, the Salvation Army is viewed skeptically for ...

Friday, November 27, marked 5 years since the FBI set up Somali American teenager Mohammed Mohamud in a sting operation at the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square. Portland Copwatch among other organizations, were part of a moving protes...

Tune in every weekday at five for more local, national and international news produced by volunteer reporters in our Portland studios.

Mic Crenshaw is many things; a hip hop artist, a music ambassador, an activist and a co-manager at radio station KBOO in Portland. But one thing he is not is someone who holds his tongue about the music scene as it is affected by race or race as it is affected by society. D...

Rosemary Gladstar founded the California School of Herbal Studies in 1978. Later, she and her family established Sage Mountain Retreat Center and Native Plant Reserve in Vermont. She's also an author and she's written a new book, "Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide". For h...

Novelist Sue Grafton has just finished the 24th novel in her alphabet themed series of detective novels that she began in the mid 1980s.  Her heroine, Kinsey Milhorne, has only aged eight years in 30 years of storytelling, which the author says makes her "more advanced' tha...

Coloradan Karin Lazarus had a brainstorm in 2009, start a bakery with pastries that are infused with marijuana.  In 2013, NY Magazine called her, "the Queen of the Munchies" and said she's "brought a pastry chef’s savvy to the world of pot brownies"  Her new cookbook, calle...

Richard Rothstein is a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute.  He has written extensively on the effect of inequitable education on black and minority children in the US.  His latest piece for the EPI, focuses on the complicity of the Federal government in c...

Psychoanalyst and research Robert Garfield has focused on men and the friendships they form for many years.  In his new book, "Breaking the Male Code", Mr. Garfield explores the rules that keep men spinning in a culture that doesn't always know what it wants them to be.  Th...

The Oregon Supreme Court recently overturned the efforts of the Oregon Legislature to correct some of the funding problems as they affect PERS.  I interviewed more than a half-dozen legislators in 2014 about what they thought about the PERS funding issue and how they would ...

Author Alice Eve Cohen has told two stories of personal upheaval that have visited her family in the last six years; "What I Thought I Knew" in 2009, and her most recent memoir, "The Year My Mother Came Back".  She talks with Don Merrill about what those two different stori...