A member of the Democratic Party, Blumenauer previously spent over 20 years as a public official in Portland, including serving on the Portland City Council from 1987 to 1996, when he succeeded Ron Wyden in the U.S. House of Representatives. Wyden was elected to the U.S. Senate after Bob Packwood resigned.
Blumenauer was born in Portland on August 16, 1948. In 1966, he graduated from Centennial High School on Portland's east side and then enrolled at Lewis & Clark College.[2] He majored in political science and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lewis & Clark in 1970.[3] Blumenauer completed his education in 1976 when he earned a Juris Doctor degree from the school's Northwestern School of Law (now Lewis & Clark Law School).[4] Before starting law school in 1970 and until 1977, he worked as an assistant to the president of Portland State University.[2][5]
In 1969–70, Blumenauer organized and led Oregon's "Go 19" campaign, an effort to lower the state voting age (while then unsuccessful, it supported the national trend that soon resulted in the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which lowered the voting age to 18). In 1972, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives, representing the 11th district in Multnomah County.[6] He was reelected in 1974 and 1976, and continued representing Portland and Multnomah County until the 1979 legislative session.[2] From 1975 to 1981 he served on the board of Portland Community College.[2] After his time in the Oregon legislature, he served on the Multnomah County Commission from 1979 to 1986.[2] He lost a race for Portland City CounciltoMargaret Strachan in 1981.[7] He left the county commission in March 1986 to run again for city council.[8]
Blumenauer was elected to the Portland City Council in May 1986.[9] His first term began in January 1987,[10] and he remained on the council until 1996.[5] From the start of his first term, he was named the city's Commissioner of Public Works,[5] which made him the council member in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (also known as the Transportation Commissioner).[11] During his time on the council, Blumenauer was appointed by Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt to the state's commission on higher education, on which he served in 1990 and 1991.[12] In 1992, Blumenauer was defeated by Vera Katz in an open race for mayor of Portland—to date, only the second time that Blumenauer has lost an election. At the time he was called "the man who probably knows the most about how Portland works", but he left local politics to run for Congress.[13] After winning election to Congress, he resigned from the city council in May 1996.[14] In 2010, Blumenauer received The Ralph Lowell Award for outstanding contributions to public television.[15][16]
Blumenauer was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1996 in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the election of Ron Wyden to the U.S. Senate.[13] He received 69% of the vote, defeating Republican Mark Brunelle.[17] He was elected to a full term that November, and was reelected 10 times without serious difficulty in what has long been Oregon's most Democratic district, never with less than 66% of the vote.
Blumenauer served as Oregon campaign chair for both John Kerry's and Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.[18]
In Congress, Blumenauer is noted for his advocacy for mass transit, such as Portland's MAX Light Rail and the Portland Streetcar,[19] and, as a strong supporter of legislation promoting bicycle commuting, cycles from his Washington residence to the Capitol and even to the White House for meetings.[20]
Blumenauer was active in pressuring the United States to take greater action during the Darfur conflict.[24]
In the political aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Blumenauer noted that he was among those who had pointed out the vulnerability of New Orleans and encouraged Congress to help that city and the gulf coast get better prepared:
2004: "Barely have we recovered from Hurricane Hugo and we are seeing Hurricane Ivan pose the threat that has long been feared by those in Louisiana, that this actually might represent the loss of the City of New Orleans. Located 15 feet below sea level, there is the potential of a 30-foot wall of water putting at risk $100 billion of infrastructure and industry and countless lives."[25]
2005: "I recently had the opportunity to view the devastation in Southeast Asia as a result of the tsunami. As appalled as I was by what I saw, I must confess that occasionally my thoughts drifted back to the United States. What would have happened if last September, Hurricane Ivan had veered 40 miles to the west, devastating the city of New Orleans? One likely scenario would have had a tsunami-like 30-foot wall of water hitting the city, causing thousands of deaths and $100 billion in damage...The experience of Southeast Asia should convince us all of the urgent need for congressional action to prevent wide-scale loss of life and economic destruction at home and abroad. Prevention and planning will pay off. Maybe the devastation will encourage us to act before disaster strikes."[26]
Blumenauer supports the World Trade Organization[27] and has voted for free trade agreements with Peru, Australia, Singapore, Chile,[28] Africa, and the Caribbean.[29] His support for these agreements has angered progressives, environmental and labor activists. In 2004, he voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement. On September 24, 2007, four labor and human rights activists were arrested in Blumenauer's office protesting his support for the Peru Free Trade Agreement.[30]
In February 2009, after a domesticated chimpanzeeinConnecticut severely mauled a woman, gaining national attention, Blumenauer sponsored the Captive Primate Safety Act to bar the sale or purchase of non-human primates for personal possession between states and from outside the country.[31] In June 2008, Blumenauer had sponsored legislation to ban interstate trafficking of great apes, which had passed in the House but been tabled by the Senate.[32]
Blumenauer speaks at the opening ceremony for his namesake bike and pedestrian bridge in Portland, Oregon
On July 24, 2014, Blumenauer introduced the Emergency Afghan Allies Extension Act of 2014 (H.R. 5195; 113th Congress), a bill that would authorize an additional 1,000 emergency Special Immigrant Visas that the United States Department of State could issue to Afghan translators who served with U.S. troops during the War in Afghanistan.[37][38] He argued that "a failure to provide these additional visas ensures the many brave translators the U.S. promised to protect in exchange for their services would be left in Afghanistan, hiding, their lives still threatened daily by the Taliban."[38]
Blumenauer skipped all of President Trump's State of the Union addresses, saying, "I refuse to be a witness to his continued antics."[39][40] In 2019 he was one of the first lawmakers to come out in support of the Green New Deal.[41]
In July 2019, Blumenauer voted against a House resolution introduced by Representative Brad Schneider opposing efforts to boycott the State of Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel for its continued occupation of Palestine.[42] The resolution passed 398–17.[43]
In 1996, Blumenauer's first year in Congress, he voted in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed that year. The law was found unconstitutional in 2013 and repealed.[58] Since then he has supported LGBTQ rights.[59]
On October 1, 2015, following the Umpqua Community College shooting, Blumenauer tweeted[60] his report[61] addressing the issue of gun violence in America, Enough is Enough: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Gun Safety, which he had published earlier that year.[62]
Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1996, write-ins received 531 votes. In 2000, write-ins received 576 votes. In 2002, write-ins received 1094 votes. In 2014, write-ins received 1,089 votes. In 2018, write-ins received 514 votes.
^ abcde"Earl Blumenauer". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Archived from the original on November 28, 2011. Retrieved November 19, 2008.
^"Membership". Congressional Arts Caucus. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved March 21, 2018.
^"Our Members". U.S. House of Representatives International Conservation Caucus. Archived from the original on August 1, 2018. Retrieved August 1, 2018.
^"Election Statistics, 1920 to Present". History, Art and Archives United States House of Representatives. United States House of Representatives Office of the Historian. Archived from the original on January 3, 2013. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
