It appears that your Endorsement Task Force may look to make candidate endorsement recommendations at its February 24 meeting. I would encourage the Task Force to wait on its recommendations until after the candidate filing deadline - on March 15 - to give all candidates an equal opportunity at an endorsement. This suggestion won't benefit me, since I've already filed for re-election to the Portland School Board. But it would help others in my zone who might choose to file closer to the deadline. Thanks for your good work.

Hi Bobbie, Thanks for your comment. I've only just now seen it (and approved it for publication), but I thought it deserved a response. We appreciate your interest in this process, and hope that you will remain engaged with us as we go forward. The challenge we face in arranging our endorsement process is that we want to have time to fully consider our potential endorsees (two weeks from endorsement requests to a recommendation by the endorsement task force, and two weeks between the task force report and our actual endorsement vote), and we also want to complete the process in time for endorsed campaigns to put our name in their voters pamphlet statements. That makes it difficult to endorse campaigns for the May election that request our support after early February. We are disinclined, however, to change our process mid-stream, especially after having gone to the trouble of posting it online and in our newsletter, and announcing it at our monthly meetings, since the end of November. -- Gavin White Chair, Multnomah Democrats