Portland Weird

Bringing Portland’s Weird Heart to the U.S. Senate

In a state famous for its independent streak, few candidates embody Oregon’s individual spirit quite like Russ McAlmond. Raised in the Rose City, Russ has spent nearly his entire life living, working, and raising a family right here in the Portland area. He knows downtown Portland like the back of his hand and worked in many buildings in the city.

After the Marines he started his working life in local warehouses and was a member of the Teamsters Union Local 26 loading grocery trucks. He ended up working with US Bank in downtown as a Vice President and owning his own registered investment advisory firm called Evergreen Capital Management. He had a corner office that looked out over the city and Willamette River. That is a weird combination of workplaces for anyone - except in Portland. 

But Russ doesn’t see “weird” as a bumper-sticker punchline. He knows it’s deeper than that. Portland Weird isn’t about purple hair or food-cart fusion. It’s about giving every single person the freedom to be their unapologetic, idiosyncratic self. We are all unique and that should be celebrated. 

The street musician who plays theremin at Saturday Market. The software engineer who spends weekends brewing experimental mead in her garage. The retired welder who builds twenty-foot-tall kinetic sculptures out of scrap metal and hope. And even the bankers in Oregon are weird. 

That’s the real Portland Weird, and Russ McAlmond has lived it every day.“Being ‘Portland Weird’ applies to all of us,” Russ says. “Most especially me. I’m a guy who once wore a kilt (yes he has one) and my wife almost divorced me. I’m weird. You’re weird. The farmer in Klamath Falls who talks to his cows is weird. The fisherman in Astoria who carves totem poles out of driftwood is weird. That’s what makes Oregon magic, and that’s what makes America magic.”

This from a guy talking about "magic" and lives next to Merlin, Oregon. 

Russ is running for U.S. Senate because he’s tired of watching Washington, D.C. sort Americans into demographic boxes: red team, blue team, urban, rural, this identity, that identity.

He’s tired of policies that treat people as avatars of groups instead of the gloriously unique individuals they are.“When the federal government hands out benefits, writes tax code, or drafts regulations, it should see 330 million distinct human beings,” Russ declares. “Not 12 focus-group segments. Not ‘communities’ to be elevated or protected. Individuals. Every single one equal under the law, every single one free to be as weird as they please.”

That’s the core of Russ’s platform: Radical Equality for Every Unique Individual.

It means:

Tax policy that treats you as you, not as a member of some favored or disfavored cohort. 

Healthcare freedom that lets you choose the plan that fits your weird life, not the one a bureaucracy decided your “group” needs. 

Education dollars that follow your kid, whether they’re a future rocket scientist or a banjo prodigy homeschooled on a houseboat. 

Criminal-justice reform that sees defendants as individual people with individual stories, not statistics to be managed. 

Environmental regulations that respect the logger in Tillamook, the solar-tech inventor in Bend, and the urban bike commuter in equal measure, because every Oregonian’s livelihood matters.

Russ isn’t running to represent “progressive Portland” or “rural Oregon” or any other faction. He’s running to represent you, the one reading this right now, with your own peculiar dreams, your own private struggles, your own magnificent weirdness.

In a Senate chamber filled with politicians who speak in poll-tested platitudes about “communities” and “identities,” Russ McAlmond will be the guy in the kilt (maybe not literally) reminding everyone that government exists to protect the rights of individual human beings, period.

So if you believe government should keep its hands off your life and let you be as wonderfully, defiantly weird as God or the Universe intended, Russ McAlmond is your candidate.

Because in the end, Portland Weird isn’t just a city slogan.
It’s the American promise.
And Russ is taking it to Washington.
Russ McAlmond for U.S. Senate: Equality for Every Unique Individual.

Keep Oregon Weird. Keep America Free.