Earl Blumenauer

Earl Francis Blumenauer (born August 16, 1948) is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the U.S. representative for OR's 3rd congressional district since 1996.

The district includes most of Portland east of the Willamette River.

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.

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).

He majored in political science and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lewis & Clark in 1970.

Before starting law school in 1970 and until 1977, he worked as an assistant to the president of Portland State University.

In 1972, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives, representing the 11th district in Multnomah County.

He was reelected in 1974 and 1976, and continued representing Portland and Multnomah County until the 1979 legislative session.

From 1975 to 1981 he served on the board of Portland Community College.

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).

After his time in the Oregon legislature, he served on the Multnomah County Commission from 1979 to 1986.

He lost a race for Portland City Council to Margaret Strachan in 1981.

He left the county commission in March 1986 to run again for city council.

Blumenauer was elected to the Portland City Council in May 1986.

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.

His first term began in January 1987, and he remained on the council until 1996.

From the start of his first term, he was named the city's Commissioner of Public Works, which made him the council member in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (also known as the Transportation Commissioner).

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.

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.

After winning election to Congress, he resigned from the city council in May 1996.

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.

He received 69% of the vote, defeating Republican Mark Brunelle.

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.

In Congress, Blumenauer is noted for his advocacy for mass transit, such as Portland's MAX Light Rail and the Portland Streetcar, 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.

Among the bills Blumenauer has sponsored that have become law are the Bunning-Bereuter-Blumenauer Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 and the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005.

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.

In addition, the Legal Timber Protection Act passed as part of the 2008 Farm Bill, while the Bicycle Commuter Act passed with the 2008 bailout bill.

Blumenauer was active in pressuring the United States to take greater action during the Darfur conflict.

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:

Blumenauer supports the World Trade Organization and has voted for free trade agreements with Peru, Australia, Singapore, Chile, Africa, and the Caribbean.

His support for these agreements has angered progressives, environmental and labor activists.

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.

In February 2009, after a domesticated chimpanzee in Connecticut 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.

Blumenauer received some media attention during the political debate over health care reform for sponsoring an amendment to the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 to change procedures to mandate that Medicare pay for end-of-life counseling.

In 2010, Blumenauer received The Ralph Lowell Award for outstanding contributions to public television.