Oregon’s renters won big last night.

For over a year Portland Tenants United has been raising the alarms on anti-renter Senator Rod Monroe. We held rallies at his church, protested outside his mansion-style home during his fundraiser-birthday party attended by landlord lobby royalty, and serenaded him at his Oregon Senate office in Salem with songs written specifically about his betrayal to his working class constituents. In the holiday season, we successfully raised enough money for Jobs With Justice to have Monroe declared “Scrooge of the Year”. On multiple occasions, we dropped banners over freeway overpasses and pedestrian bridges in his district. We went door-to-door to warn voters of his conflict of interest. We tipped off local media to the dirty money in his campaign coffers, and used social media to spread the word. At all of his town hall meetings during the campaign season (many of which Monroe himself declined to attend), PTU came also, to raise the issue of renters’ rights and highlight Senator Monroe’s inexcusable inaction to attendees.

PTU members staged a flashmob choreographed dance in the Capitol, as part of an action demanding that the Oregon Senate amend House Bill 2004 back to its original stronger form and pass the bill.

PTU staged a protest at the State Capitol in 2017, demanding the Senate amend HB 2004 back to its original, stronger form. Landlord–Senator Rod Monroe was instrumental in killing the bill while taking bribes hand-over-fist from the landlord and realtor lobby.

Monroe’s treachery on critically needed tenant protections during the last legislative session earned him a serious primary challenge. The landlord and real estate lobby doubled down, assuming that money could buy this election just like it bought Monroe’s loyalty during the session.

They were wrong.

Last night, renters in East Portland, Gresham, and Clackamas County delivered a well-deserved, decisive knockout blow to the political career of State Senator Rod Monroe of District 24. Shemia Fagan defeated Monroe in a landslide, despite the landlord lobby’s deep pockets and desperate, blatant attempts to deceive the people of his district into voting against their own interests. Together, Fagan and Kayse Jama, a veteran community organizer and tenants’ rights champion, outnumbered Monroe by four votes to one.

Monroe, a Democrat, had been an obstacle to the cause of tenant rights in Portland and in the state of Oregon for years. On the issue of housing, Monroe has hewn far to the right of his own party, siding with Republican legislators to kill a critical renter protection bill in the 2017 session. In typical two-faced fashion, while poor families continued to suffer from displacement all over the state (and especially in his own district, which is majority renter) that his own actions as a legislator have exacerbated, he propagated the bald-faced lie that he had in fact voted to “ban unfair rent increases” in his campaign statement in the Oregon voters’ pamphlet.

Closer to home, Monroe made an enemy of Portland Tenants United, first by ignoring our requests that he do the right thing and support House Bill 2004, and then by issuing a subpoena to our organization in a failed attempt to intimidate us into silence.