Long-serving Democrat will take an advisory role at the university after he retires from Congress in January.
Oregon’s bowtied, bike-riding pol has a new gig lined up when he retires from Congress at the end of the year.
Earl Blumenauer will head to Portland State University where he’ll serve as a special adviser to the university president and a senior fellow at PSU’s Institute of Metropolitan Studies.
On Tuesday, Blumenauer, 76, appeared alongside PSU President Ann Cudd in a virtual press conference.
“PSU could not be more excited to work with Congressman Blumenauer to lean into our core motto, ‘Let knowledge serve the city,’” Cudd told reporters. “As Portland goes, so goes Portland State. We are inextricably linked. The city’s success is our success.”
PSU makes up 18% of downtown and hosts 20,000 people on campus every day, according to the university. Cudd said Blumenauer’s extensive experience and personal connections will help PSU address Portland’s top challenges including homelessness, addiction, infrastructure and climate change.
“We do have challenges ahead of us,” Blumenauer said. “But I think there are tremendous resources at Portland State, and I’m looking forward to working with the university and people in the community as we fashion solutions and bring people together.”
The move to PSU is a return of sorts for Blumenauer, 76, whose first job after college in 1970 was as an assistant to the PSU president, a role he held for seven years. Blumenauer went on to serve as a local elected leader, first on the Multnomah County Commission then the Portland City Council. And since 1996, he’s represented Oregon’s deep-blue 3rd Congressional District, a seat previously held by now-U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden.
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In his time on the national stage, Blumenauer became known for advocacy of mass transit and bicycle commuting. He championed end-of-life medical counseling, the Green New Deal and a 2014 bill that offered emergency immigrant visas to Afghan translators who assisted the U.S. military. He was no fan of Donald Trump, skipping all of the former president’s State of the Union speeches. Earlier this year, Blumenauer was one of the first elected Democrats to call on President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race due to concerns about the president’s age.
Asked Tuesday if he felt himself slowing down, Blumenauer replied, “I wouldn’t run for president.”
Cudd took over as PSU president in August 2023 having previously served for five years as a senior official at the University of Pittsburgh. As Cudd’s adviser, Blumenauer will draw on his extensive personal contacts in local circles, Cudd said. He’ll attempt to revive the Institute of Metropolitan Studies, according to the Oregonian. Based in PSU’s College of Urban and Public Affairs, the institute was commissioned in the 1990s by state leaders to conduct policy research and build connections between the university and the public. But since the pandemic, it has been overseen by interim directors and relatively inactive.
Blumenauer is scheduled to officially start at PSU on Jan. 3. As of Tuesday, the matter of what Blumenauer will be paid by PSU had yet to be finalized. As a member of Congress, he earned $174,000 per year. He quipped at the press conference that if he wanted to get rich, he’d have gone into lobbying.
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