How they divide us. How we can unite.
The national fights were not started in Albany, and they will not be settled here. What gets settled here is how we treat each other. I believe a better America starts in Albany.
Too many of us identify by our political party. Since political parties are, by their very nature, opportunistic and self-serving, there is no space left for community or discussion. It becomes victory at all costs. Then, when it's all or nothing, the path back to unity feels like self-betrayal. We must re-root ourselves in community, find purpose in now, and build a vision for a better future.
I am a registered independent, and that was on purpose.
What do we do next?
If you turn on your television, if you look at your phone, if you listen to the loudest voices in the room, you will be sold a very specific story from a very specific point of view. We are told, incessantly, that we are a fractured people. That the distance between our coasts is nothing compared to the distance between our hearts. We are told that the great American experiment, the most audacious political endeavor in the history of human civilization, is finally buckling under the weight of our own profound cynicism. We are told that your neighbor is not your fellow citizen, but your enemy.
I refuse to buy it. And I am asking you to refuse it, too.
Because the people selling you that division? They are profiting from your anger. It is a booming industry, this commodification of outrage. But it is built on a lie. It is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of what this country actually is.
Do not mistake the noise for the truth. The truth is much quieter, and it is much harder.
Look back at the tapestry of our history. Do you think the men freezing in the snows of Valley Forge agreed on every point of theology or commerce? Do you think the abolitionists and the suffragettes were met with polite applause? Do you think Abraham Lincoln looked out at a nation quite literally bleeding into its own soil and thought, Well, the differences are just too vast?
We didn't survive a civil war, defeat fascism on two fronts, and put footprints on the ashes of the moon by pointing fingers at each other in the dark. We did it by reaching out a hand. We did it by deciding that the things binding us together were infinitely more important than the petty grievances driving us apart.
We are not a collection of warring tribes. We are not a demographic to be sliced, diced, and sold back to ourselves by pollsters and pundits. We are a nation of ideas. And the most revolutionary, the most dangerous, the most beautiful of those ideas is carved into the very seal of our republic: E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one.
Out of many, one.
It is extraordinarily easy to shout. Any fool can strike a match and burn something down. But it takes immense courage to listen. It takes courage to look at your neighbor, especially the neighbor who votes differently, prays differently, or loves differently than you do, and see a fellow American rather than a caricature. It takes profound strength to offer grace in a culture that rewards cruelty.
Our democracy is a marathon. It requires sweat, and compromise, and the stubborn belief that we are in this boat together, whether the water is calm or the storm is raging.
We have allowed small minds to divide a great nation, and I say we are done with it. We are done apologizing for believing in the essential goodness of the American people. We are done letting the cynics write the story of our future. We are done.
Look around you. This is your country. These are your people. We are the heirs of titans of history, men and women who stared down kings and dictators, who bridged continents, who cured diseases, and who fought for freedoms they knew they themselves might never live to see. They did not hand us this republic so we could tear it apart over a disagreement. They handed it to us so we could make it better.
It is time we remember who we are. It is time we stand up, brush off the dust of our own petty arguments, look out at the horizon together, and ask the only question that has ever mattered in the American story:
What do we do next?
The math of division
You do not have to take my word for any of this. The division is measurable, the money is public record, and the parties wrote it all down themselves.
We learned contempt
Share holding a very unfavorable view of the other party
From one in six to a majority of both parties.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2022
The fight is a business
Total cost of U.S. federal elections, by cycle
Five times the spending in one generation, before inflation.
Source: OpenSecrets, cost of election
Read their platforms. We counted.
Mentions per 1,000 words in each party's own 2024 platform: the other side's name, against the words together, unite, or unity
Our own count of the platform texts at the American Presidency Project (Democratic platform here). Republican platform: Biden and Democrat(s), 19 mentions, against 5 uses of together, unite, or unity. Democratic platform: Trump 150, Republican(s) 42, MAGA 14, against 30. Check our work.
Abortion and reproductive rights
How they divide us
Nothing ends a conversation faster. The national machine likes it that way. It raises money for both sides every year, and it needs the fight more than it needs a resolution. It asks you to believe that someone who sees it differently is a monster. Most people I know carry something personal here, a story they do not owe anyone, and the shouting match tramples right over them.
How we can unite
My position aligns with my belief in individual liberty: the ability of a person to choose what they do with their own body. I do not celebrate abortion. But my belief in free will and individual liberty means I deeply respect the gravity of that decision, and my faith tells me that in those moments we desperately need more love, more support, and more community. Oregon's laws here are set by Oregon voters and the legislature, not by city hall. Whatever your conviction, there is a mom in crisis within a mile of you, and compassion for her belongs to no party.
Guns
How they divide us
This one gets turned into a loyalty test. Either you love guns or you fear them, and the national fight has no room for the hunter who wants safe schools or the mom who keeps a pistol locked in the nightstand. Around here, most of us know both of those people. Some of us are both of those people.
How we can unite
The Second Amendment is foundational to our nation and fundamental to the continued protection of democratic values and institutions. I believe we can live in a world that respects an individual's Second Amendment rights and a world where children can go to school without fear of gun violence. I remember that world. It wasn't that long ago.
Immigration
How they divide us
This fight runs on fear in both directions, and the fear is profitable. It wants you suspicious of the family two doors down that you have waved at for ten years. It turns coworkers, classmates, and teammates into categories.
How we can unite
Albany's real life is not a category. Our kids play on the same teams and our businesses run on each other's work. We treat every person in this city with dignity.
LGBTQ+ people
How they divide us
This one turns human beings into symbols and then fights over the symbols. In a town our size, every extended family and every congregation includes someone this argument is actually about, and they hear every word we say.
How we can unite
My rule is simple. Every person in Albany deserves respect and safety, and city services belong to everyone equally. Each person is valuable because of who they are, because of what they are, because of their own individual and unique life. That is true of your best friend, and it is true of your worst enemy. Nobody in this town should be anybody's proxy war.
Climate
How they divide us
This became a purity test in both directions. One side wants you to say the world is ending, the other wants you to say nothing is happening, and both treat a practical person as a traitor.
How we can unite
The climate is coming for all of us. Do you remember when a disaster would warrant a telethon? We don't do that anymore, and the reason is frequency and scale. In the 1980s this country averaged about three billion-dollar disasters a year. From 2020 through 2024 the average was twenty-three. The record year, 2023, had twenty-eight, and in 2024 twenty-seven of them cost $182.7 billion (NOAA's count). Unfortunately, we are only at the beginning of what will be a difficult remainder of the century. So we must rethink the way we live, the way we prepare, and remove the limits of what we think is possible, to create an adaptable and agile community that can not simply survive, but capitalize and thrive in the chaos to come. Water systems that hold up. Streets that survive the weather. A city ready for hot summers and hard storms.
Elections and our democracy
How they divide us
Nothing is more profitable than teaching Americans to doubt each other's ballots. The machine does not need to steal an election to win. It only needs you to believe one was stolen, because a person who stops trusting the count stops trusting everything downstream of it: the courts, the council, the neighbor with the other yard sign. And once that trust is gone, every loss feels like theft and every victory feels like rescue, and there is no space left for anything in between.
Trust follows victory
Trump voters saying the election was run well, same machinery, same ballots, different winner
When trust moves 72 points and the ballots didn't change, the doubt was never about the ballots.
Source: Pew Research Center, December 2024. Before that election, Gallup measured a record 56-point party gap in confidence.
How we can unite
Here is what almost nobody tells you when they are trying to make you doubt: Oregon runs one of the most trustworthy elections in the country, and it has for a generation. We were the first state in the nation to vote entirely by mail, back in 2000. Every active registered voter gets a paper ballot in the mail. Every signature is checked against the voter file before a ballot counts. And the count is open to the public.
The turnout tells the story. In 2020, 75.3% of eligible Oregonians voted, tied for third highest in the country. In 2022 we led the entire nation. Even in a quieter 2024, 71.9% of eligible Oregonians voted, well above the national average of 64.3% (University of Florida Election Lab). A system people truly distrust does not produce numbers like that.
That trust is not permanent. It is handed down, and it can be surrendered by a generation that assumes someone else will protect it. We guard it the way Oregon always has, in the open, with paper we can hold and a count anyone can check. Ballots counted right. Questions answered in daylight. A state that earns the trust back every single election.
The whole framework
Re-root in community. Find purpose in now. Build a vision for a better future. It works on every one of these fights, because none of them started in Albany and none of them will be settled here. What gets settled here is how we treat each other.