A stripper is running for Portland mayor, as far-left violence, homelessness, and rampant crime continue to consume the city.
Liv Østhus, whose stripper name is "Viva Las Vegas," is a top contender appearing on the November ballot and believes building an arts center is the key to revitalizing the drug-infested, crime-ridden downtown.
Among her ideas, Østhus proposes that the city should hire critics to review plays in order to draw attention to these artistic efforts.
Asked what managerial experience she brings to the table, she acknowledged, "I have none," but "the team I'm pulling together will be the people who guide me on that."
Being mayor, she says, isn't about implementing policies; if elected, she'd delegate most of the mayoral tasks to the city councilors. "I think it can fall to the City Council to do the legislation," she told Willamette Week. "I would hope to see a mayor that is a figurehead."
"I don't want to legislate," she added. "To me, the office of mayor represents more of a stage, more of a pulpit. I don't just want to talk about pragmatic stuff. Let's have a little more hope. Let's have a little more inspiration. And remember what is magical about Portland."
"I want a mayor who is a storyteller and an artist, not a veteran politician or a policy wonk," Østhus wrote in response to a candidate questionnaire. "I am a storyteller and an artist. At Mary's Club [Portland's oldest strip club], a dancer's job is to connect with, listen to, and ultimately inspire every person who walks through the door, regardless of political allegiance, color, or creed. I want exactly those skills in our next mayor."
Østhus, a 25-year veteran in the adult entertainment industry, is regarded as the most well-known stripper in the City of Roses, the strip club capital of America. A preacher's daughter, she says she's following in her father's footsteps by preaching on and off stage that "everyone is welcome here, no matter their weird fetishes or criminal pasts or hideous politics."
Asked how she could convince voters who might not want a stripper for a mayor, Østhus said she'd invite them to see her perform at Mary's or watch her Ted Talk on destigmatizing stripping: "Let me change their minds."
Although she's now a middle-aged mother, Østhus is not discouraged and draws inspiration from the octogenarians still stripping in Las Vegas.
As a longtime advocate for prostitution, which she considers a "feminist enterprise," Østhus says "sex work can be a godsend for entrepreneurial women."
Also an author, she's penned several books on "the art of stripping," which she promotes on her LinkTree, where she also accepts "$Tips$."
As mayor, she says she would prioritize combatting the so-called "climate crisis," which she insists is "first and foremost on most Portlanders' minds, ahead of houselessness and addiction." She also opposes jailing the homeless for refusing repeated offers of shelter. "People in tents are not nearly as dangerous as people with guns," she told voters.
Her mayoral campaign's mission statement says she prioritizes "Earth Stewardship," meaning "Protecting, honoring, and listening to Mama Earth." Østhus earned a degree in cultural anthropology and studied societal traditions in Bali as well as East Africa. Her fieldwork there taught her to "think critically about sexual mores."
Embracing her alter ego, she chose to be listed on the ballot as "Liv (Viva) Østhus."
Meanwhile, the mayoral hopeful's opponent, Carmen Rubio, has over a hundred traffic-related violations in Multnomah County, where Portland is the county seat.
During the mayoral debate on October 15, the moderators confronted Rubio, who's currently a Portland city commissioner, about her long (and amassing) list of offenses.
These are some of the top contenders on the November ballot running to replace Ted Wheeler as the next mayor of Portland, Ore. Full debate video: https://t.co/oBS1H0LBT6 pic.twitter.com/adavchyrAD
— Andy Ngo 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 21, 2024
"Ms. Rubio, let's talk about your 150 parking and traffic tickets, your failures to appear in court, [and] six driver's license suspensions — largely before you were elected to city council," said KGW News anchor David Molko.
"Then there was an incident last month where you scraped another vehicle while parking and walked away without leaving a note," he continued. "Our reporting also shows you were ticked as a sitting city commissioner for an expired vehicle registration, which a year later, according to records, still had not been updated."
He then pressed her on why she should be entrusted with a multi-billion-dollar city budget, considering she's frequently failed to pay her own traffic tickets.
"Given that history, what can you say to reassure voters who may have questions about whether they should trust you with an $8-plus-billion-dollar budget and whether you will be a champion for law and order?" the debate host asked.
Rubio replied: "No one is more sorry or embarrassed about those things than I am. I have since paid all the fees and fines years ago for most of those things, and they're all caught up."
The traffic citations reportedly date back to 2001, and her driver's license was suspended six times between that year and 2016 for skipping court dates and failing to pay fines, which she let those unpaid debts go to collection agencies at least 100 times over two decades. Despite those suspensions, she still appeared to drive based on additional tickets issued. According to court records, on at least two occasions, Rubio's car was impounded and held until she settled the citations totaling thousands of dollars.
The Street Trust Action Fund, a transportation safety group, has since rescinded its endorsement of Rubio after news broke of her hitting a parked Tesla, leaving behind visible scrapes on the bumper and wheel rim, in the aforementioned parking lot incident. Footage from the Tesla's security system shows Rubio glancing back at the dinged car and surveying the damage before leaving the scene. When asked about the incident in a TV interview, she accused the Tesla owners of trying to "exploit" her upon learning she's a leading mayoral candidate. "Look, I'm human and I make mistakes too, so I'm just moving forward," she told KGW News.
The collision came after The Oregonian reported on Rubio's unparalleled number of traffic and parking law infractions.
"I can't tell you how humiliated I am and I'm really sorry," Rubio said on a recorded call with the Tesla owners. "I feel very embarrassed that during one of the worst weeks of my career, I was careless enough to be flustered and not paying as close attention as I should have been [...] Believe me, I will not be driving for the foreseeable future."
Rubio, who's campaigning on making the city's streets safer, has repeatedly downplayed her driving record, blaming strict parking enforcement near her old "heavily patrolled" office as the reason why she was ticked so often, even though dozens of them were handed out elsewhere. Many of the parking tickets — more than 50 — stemmed from her apparently refusing to pay for parking at all. She said that was when she was experiencing "tough times" and "things were hard."
At the time of one of her suspensions, the then 41-year-old was earning over $100,000 a year as the executive director of a non-profit.
"I've never hid[den] the fact that in my younger years. I put my family, financial, and career obligations first — and that I learned some hard lessons about when life catches up with you," Rubio, now 50, said in a statement reacting to the revelations.
Her campaign page says she's the "leader Portland needs," a "no-drama mayor" who will work "diligently, cooperatively, and pragmatically" on solutions to Portland's problems.
As an elected official, Rubio's current City Hall bio says "my commitment to you" is ensuring Portland has "leaders who are honest and transparent."
"Reimagining Public Safety" is one of Rubio's top priorities, per what she wrote on the city's site:
"There is no mistaking that 2020 was a call for change. It's clear that Portlanders are ready to see a new, community-centered way to do public safety. I am committed to working with stakeholders, community advocates, and my colleagues to reimagine a community safety system that is right for Portland. This must go hand-in-hand with action to dismantle the systemic racism that excludes Portlanders from participating fully in our community."
As an alternative to armed police officers, she suggests dispatching "public safety support specialists (PS3s)" instead to emergencies in the city.
"I'm honored to be serving on the most diverse council that Portland's ever had," wrote Rubio, the first Latina to sit on Portland City Council, "and I'm proud that all five of us have agreed to center equity and community in everything we do."
Serving as the commissioner in charge of the Office of Community Technology (OCT), she's specifically dedicated to achieving "digital equity" by "interrupt[ing] structural inequity and racism."
To "remove the systemic barriers that feed [...] erasure," Rubio wants to appoint "people of color," particularly "Black, Indigenous, Latinx" people, to government positions and award more minority workers with city contracts.
She also supports "extending the right to vote to all Portlanders, regardless of their national citizenship," i.e. allowing illegal aliens to vote in Portland's elections.
It's not surprising that a stripper and a serial offender are among those running to replace current mayor Ted Wheeler, as the city's politics continue to trend farther left.
Last election, when Wheeler won a second term, an Antifa-identifying challenger, Sarah Iannarone, unsuccessfully sought to unseat him, although she garnered a generous 40.76 percent of the vote.
During the height of the George Floyd uprisings in 2020, the Democrat mayor joined one of the protests-turned-riots in solidarity, positioning himself at the front of the protest line next to the barrier guarding the federal courthouse. There, he tried to address the rioters but was drowned out by boos berating him and the crowd chanting "F**k Ted Wheeler." He ended the night bathed in tear gas alongside the far-left activists. On his birthday, a mob of Black Lives Matter-Antifa militants lit a fire outside Wheeler's apartment building, forcing him to flee his home.
Last year, Wheeler announced he would not be seeking reelection in 2024.
For the first time this fall, Portlanders will cast their ballots via ranked-choice voting. According to polling, a third of Portland voters are unsure of how ranked-choice voting works. The other two-thirds say they understand the system at least "somewhat well."