I want a broader synthesis of our challenges and longer term responses and solutions. I want to add my tech-savvy voice from MIT with a management degree and a career as a software engineer to the discussion in Salem. I’m also a Hillsboro High School graduate whose family roots go 145 years deep into Oregon history and who, living three miles up a gravel road, knows rural Oregon life.

An important part of my life in software is relevant to legislating. Quoting my Meet Candidate page, the Agile software development process I used for many years starts with talking to all the stakeholders and understanding the presenting problem and its underlying issues, giving everyone a chance to make sure they are heard. Next, we prioritize the issues, estimate the level of effort to address each aspect, and re-prioritize accordingly. We typically have daily team meetings, weekly stakeholder meetings, and continuous online updates. I’d like to apply this process to developing legislation to help you. In fact, I’ll write a web app so we can do that in real time.

My Committees of Interest

Another important part of my life is music – singing and playing guitar to express feelings to an audience, with other musicians, or by myself. The technique is nice, but the passion is the point. While I’ve been a geek all my life and can be very Spock, I also take inspiration from Carlos Santana, whose music goes from a whisper to a scream and everything in between. If you are a Democrat and remember nothing else of what I say, remember this: don’t bring an intellectual knife to an emotional gunfight. That’s how DJT got elected, not once, but twice. If you or I are triggered we will not hear facts – facts like job growth in Democratic administrations outperformed the GOP by 50:1 from 1989-2025. I will be present emotionally for you. I’ll connect heart to heart. Then – and only then – will it be good to go geeky.

I’m running because I feel furious at a reactionary, authoritarian party that is threatening us for noncompliance with their illegal shenanigans. They’re sending anonymous employees to kill Americans, building concentration camps to promote ethnic purity, swindling us out of our taxpayer money, and spending billions for bombs, pennies for plows while committing war crimes. They’re a party that values blind malignant loyalty to Mammon and DJT over serving the people who have elected them. I’ve been sitting in the spectator seats long enough. It’s time to take the strength of my feelings and be constructive and mindful about them. It’s time to get into the game and help you fight the plutocrats.