Portland City Council failed to pass consent to the Zenith–ISQ franchise transfer on second reading, 5–6, with all six left-bloc councilors voting no and a motion to reconsider pending for September 23. The Portland Police Association and Police Chief Bob Day called for Councilor Mitch Green's resignation over his 2020–21 posts about Portland police; Green declined, and a new PAC funded in part by the Portland Metro Chamber's United for Portland Action fund put up a billboard attacking him. St. Pete Polls put the Florida Senate special election at 45.2 percent to 44.8 percent, and a KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed the Minnesota Senate race essentially tied. A Times/Siena poll found 51 percent of likely voters view socialism unfavorably and 55 percent of Democrats view it favorably, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a 20-state bus tour urging midterm voters to reject socialism.
The Portland Police Association called for Councilor Mitch Green to resign over posts he made in 2020 and 2021 describing "pure hatred for Portland Police" and calling officers "absolute monsters," surfaced by a Portland political commentator and reported by The Oregonian. Police Chief Bob Day said in a statement that he no longer has confidence Green is evaluating the Police Bureau reasonably and objectively. Green declined to resign, saying in a statement that Portland police used force against protesters more than 6,000 times in 2020 and citing the police oversight ballot measure that more than 80 percent of Portland voters passed in November 2020.
Green is one of three DSA-endorsed councilors on the November 2026 ballot; he is up for reelection in District 4.
Portland City Council record · 2026-09-16 · on the failed Zenith–ISQ franchise transfer ordinance
The council failed to pass consent to transfer the Zenith Energy fuels franchise to ISQ Springer Holdings on second reading, 5 aye to 6 nay with Loretta Smith absent: Novick, Clark, Zimmerman, Pirtle-Guiney, and Ryan voted aye; Koyama Lane, Morillo, Green, Avalos, Kanal, and Dunphy voted nay. A Green–Morillo amendment that would have let affected residents ask the courts to enforce the franchise had failed 6–6 at the September 9 first reading. A motion to reconsider is pending after the council voted 8–4 to postpone it to the September 23 session.
A committee motion to refer the ordinance to council with a recommendation to pass carried 7–5 on August 6, with Dunphy and Smith joining the aye side.
A downtown billboard reading "Politician Mitch Green voted to use your taxes. Didn't pay his own taxes" is funded by a political action committee called Ditch Mitch, registered this week with the Oregon Secretary of State. The PAC's website says its biggest funder so far is the United for Portland Action fund, a PAC created and funded by the Portland Metro Chamber. Willamette Week reported that no contributions or expenditures had yet appeared in the state database, which it attributed to the seven-day reporting window.
The billboard refers to a $7,328 property tax bill Green failed to pay until The Oregonian pointed it out to him this summer.
The council voted unanimously Wednesday to urge city administrators not to sign nondisclosure agreements with prospective data center developers and to explore a moratorium on new data centers in the city limits. The resolution was introduced by Councilors Tiffany Koyama Lane and Mitch Green.
The adopted resolution also requests council notification for any data-center project with a current or projected power draw of 20 megawatts or greater.
The Mercury's news team and editors published a five-byline editorial arguing that the calls for Councilor Mitch Green's resignation from the police union, the police chief, and other elected officials are, in the board's words, an attempt to meddle in local elections. The editorial states: "This is not about one councilor. It is about how we hold onto a free and fair democracy locally, in the face of federal efforts to consolidate power and bully anyone who disagrees."
Portland Police Association President Aaron Schmautz called for Green's resignation on September 16, the day before the editorial ran.
El-Sayed met with Senate Democrats on Wednesday at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters, where DSCC chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said, "He's a great candidate. He's going to win, and we are all united." Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said he plans to travel to Michigan to campaign with El-Sayed. El-Sayed won the August primary over Rep. Haley Stevens, who had been recruited by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
A St. Pete Polls survey of 913 likely Florida voters conducted September 15–17 put Sen. Ashley Moody at 45.2 percent to Nixon's 44.8 percent, within the poll's 3.2-point margin of error — the second poll showing the special election effectively tied, after a Change Research survey conducted September 7–9 had the race at 47–47. The RealClearPolling average has Moody at 48.3 percent to Nixon's 43.3 percent.
No Democrat has won a statewide race in Florida since 2018; the special election is November 3, 2026.
A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll released this week showed Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Republican Michele Tafoya essentially tied in the Minnesota Senate race, with 12 percent of voters undecided and 4 percent supporting other candidates; the same poll a month earlier had Flanagan up 5 points. The poll was released days before Minnesota early voting begins. Flanagan led among moderate voters by 15 points, with 17 percent of that group undecided.
The prior KSTP/SurveyUSA poll was taken after the August 11 primary.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a six-week, 20-state bus tour, the "Free Enterprise Express," urging midterm voters to reject socialism, departing this weekend for stops in Pennsylvania and New York in support of Republican candidates in three competitive House districts. The Chamber plans to promote more than 30 candidates as part of what CEO Suzanne Clark called a multiyear "nine-figure" effort. The Chamber's September 18 announcement said the tour builds on a $100 million contribution, the largest donation in its 114-year history.
The Chamber's announcement describes more than 50 events across the 20 states before the November 3 election.
Harris's spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that the former vice president will campaign in Michigan with El-Sayed at an event highlighting Black maternal health, and will also meet with local elected officials and faith-based leaders. Harris endorsed El-Sayed in August after he won the primary against Rep. Haley Stevens.
Local reporting places the event on Tuesday, September 22, a roundtable on healthcare costs and Black maternal health.
Raman released her first general-election ad, a 30-second spot narrated by Bob Odenkirk and timed to air around Monday's Emmy Awards, in which she promises to "fight to keep Hollywood in Hollywood" and says Mayor Karen Bass has not acted with enough urgency on entertainment job losses. Bass's campaign said Raman "never introduced a single piece of legislation to help the film industry" and recused herself from four of seven film-permitting items in March 2026 because of her husband's industry work; the paper noted Raman participated in the other film votes that day. FilmLA reported 4,711 permitted shoot days in Greater Los Angeles in the second quarter of 2026, down 12.7 percent from a year earlier.
New Haven Independent · 2026-09-15 · on the DSA-endorsed win in New Haven's Ward 9 alder special election
Maria-Threese Serana, a Co-Op High School biology teacher endorsed by the Connecticut DSA chapter and the Ward 9 Democratic Ward Committee, won Tuesday's special election for New Haven's Ward 9 Board of Alders seat, taking 186 votes at the polls to Gavin Arnold's 16. She fills the remainder of the term vacated by Caroline Tanbee Smith in early August, running through the end of 2027, and becomes the second democratic socialist to serve on the Board of Alders, after former Ward 9 Alder Charles Decker.
Two of the original four candidates, Blaise Berglund and Conor Gilligan, dropped out in late August and endorsed Serana.
A Times/Siena national poll of likely voters found 51 percent held an unfavorable view of socialism and 31 percent a favorable one, while 44 percent said it did not matter to them either way if a Democratic candidate ran as a democratic socialist. The poll found 18 percent of voters considered themselves democratic socialists, and 55 percent of Democratic voters viewed socialism favorably, up from 50 percent in the May Times/Siena poll. The Times' reporters wrote that the movement "remains unpopular with much of America" despite its primary victories.
The poll surveyed 1,503 voters September 8–13, with a margin of error of ±2.9 points among the likely electorate; the May Times/Siena poll surveyed registered rather than likely voters.
Elaine Kamarck and Jordan Muchnick reported results from Brookings' Primaries Project, which coded 300 primary candidates in 33 competitive House districts and 10 Senate races. The authors found that more mainstream candidates in both parties outperformed their flanks — MAGA/Trump conservatives won 26.7 percent of their races and progressive Democrats 17.8 percent — and that of five DSA candidates in the sample, only William Lawrence of Michigan won his primary, after letting his DSA membership lapse in July 2026. The authors wrote that "the hype surrounding the Democratic Party's purported resurgence of left-wing strength may be greater than the underlying evidence suggests."
This is the sixth iteration of the Brookings Primaries Project, drawing its competitive-race universe from Cook Political Report Partisan Voting Index ratings between D+2 and R+2.
Jacobin published the second study from the Center for Working-Class Politics and Joan C. Williams, a survey experiment fielded April–June 2026 in which more than 40,000 respondents evaluated nearly 800,000 hypothetical candidate profiles. The report finds that a six-part formula leading with working-class economics added 10.9 points to Democrats' vote share among working-class voters and about 7.8 points among college-educated Democrats, and that a $17 minimum wage outperformed $15 by 2 points among the 45 economic policies tested. The study was produced by Jacobin with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
The study follows "The Left's Coalition Crisis," released earlier in summer 2026 by the Center for Working-Class Politics and the Equality Action Center.