Successes and Lessons from the Fight to Defend Preschool for All

In 2020, Portland DSA led a large coalition of unions, community organizations and elected officials to win our largest victory to date: Preschool for All! This program will provide universal preschool for all children in Multnomah County by Fall 2030, with living wages for teachers, all paid for by a small tax on Portland’s highest earners. Preschool For All is now in its 5th year of a 10-year rollout, and continues to advance, developing significant infrastructure  and capacity expansion in early learning and care.

But before we even won at the ballot in 2020, the establishment was aggressively against us. In early 2020 they took us to court to stall our signature gathering. Despite that, and amid the Covid-19 crisis that year, we organized to collect an astonishing 32,000 signatures in under 5 weeks – nearly 10,000 more than were required! 

Unsurprisingly, powerful and wealthy business interests have continued to relentlessly attack PFA, using all sorts of dirty tricks in an effort to avoid paying the small tax that funds it. We and our allies are paying close attention, however, and our tightly focused class analysis has been instrumental in overcoming every attack. 

2025 Brings New Attacks

In an article published on June 18 by Willamette Week, Governor Tina Kotek was quoted as suggesting to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pedersen a restructure of the Preschool for All tax. In the Willamette Week article, Kotek is described as making the argument that the tax is causing Portland’s wealthy “job-creators” to flee the city. This assessment couldn’t be further from the truth.

Kotek’s argument was based on spurious data: in a chart created by economist Mary King and posted on Bluesky by DSA member and Portland City Councilor Mitch Green, the data clearly show that the percentage of high-income earners in Multnomah County is dramatically increasing. “Basically, everyone has adopted uncritically this idea that the people who are leaving this county are those exposed to the PFA tax, which just isn’t borne out by the data,” said Councilor Green. With facts like these in hand, coupled with the enormous popularity of the program, we were able to produce a surge of popular outrage that forced the Governor to withdraw. 

The Willamette Week wrote a follow-up article about our campaign to defend PFA, quoting chapter co-chair Olivia Katbi: ”Governor Kotek is declaring war on preschool. She is sacrificing the future of Oregon’s children so that her rich friends stop yelling at her. This is an unacceptable capitulation to the demands of Oregon’s rich and super-rich, whose feelings have been hurt by being required to contribute to the society that made it possible for them to get so very rich.

Kotek’s fear-mongering about the loss of the city’s tax base because of a tax which funds a universal program for every resident of the county is a great disappointment, but not unexpected. It shows how subservient our political class is to the moneyed elite, who pay high prices to get access to elected officials and their political power.

It also hinges on the tired myth that Portland is a city in decline, burnt out after so much conflict. The reality is that Portland is a vibrant, thriving city that the rich want to live in, along with the rest of us. This is true in part because of its social programs, not in spite of them. Working-class voters won this program and will defend it — and Portland DSA is proud to be a part of that fight.” 

Soon after Kotek’s attack, former Nike lobbyist and current Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim-Edwards tried again, proposing a ridiculous tax-indexing scheme that would have effectively killed PFA before it could realize its 2030 stated goals. We saw that one coming too, and turned out hundreds of parents, educators, and community members to testify at the County Commission about the impact of free, universal and well-paid preschool in Portland’s communities. Ultimately Brim-Edwards withdrew her proposal; another embarrassing waste of time and energy in the service of greedy people who will stop at nothing to avoid paying their share.
It is instructive to observe the difference between the two strategies that the establishment employed against PFA. While Kotek’s plan was simple bean-counting as a handout to the ungrateful rich, Brim-Edwards’ indexing scheme was more insidious, relying on the traditional Democratic Party technique of means-testing all social spending out of existence. Opponents of PFA understand that the program’s popularity comes from its universality, and seek to undermine it through the arbitrariness of means testing and by a slow erosion of administrative restructuring. The universality of PFA is why it works, and the fact that the program provides these benefits to everyone models a social environment in which social care is not deserved by the worthy, but a right freely given to all those who make up the social fabric. Universality is central to the socialist politics that underpin the organizing that DSA does in Portland. A society that works for everyone is not just the world we want to win, but it is how we win: not just a strategy but also a tactic.

What’s Next

Proposals to cut the tax and therefore the program will continue over the next several months, leading up to the next Board vote; probably in March of 2026. Big business lobbyists Oregon Business & Industry have just released a report calling for an economic sabotage campaign against Preschool for All, the Portland Clean Energy Fund and Metro Housing Supports – all popular programs created by popular ballot measures. The business class also want new limits on ballot measures proposing local taxes, because they know that they can’t defend their selfishness against the democratic process.

We will have to demand that our state reps and senators stand strong against further underhanded attacks from the Governor and right-wing legislators, and we will need to be ready to push back against the media hit-pieces that will continue to fester in outlets like the Oregonian and Willamette Week. The wealthy business elite will continue to bend the ears of malleable electeds such as Kotek and Brim-Edwards with tired homilies about the humble needs of job-creators and the generous nobility of the rich, and we will need to be clear with our audience that what that means is class war. After all, that’s the war we’re here to fight. And we intend to win it.

Conclusion

The battle for PFA isn’t over until funding is ironclad and every child in the Portland metro has a secured place. We know more attacks will come, but we will continue to use those attacks to bring more people into our movement. These campaigns give us the opportunity not only to fight for and win necessary social programs, but to show new members what organizing looks like, to demonstrate what we can win, and how we win, when we work together. 

Sign up on the mailing list at friendsofpfa.org and follow us online! If you’re a DSA member (and if not, why not?) you can join the discussion in our discord.

Header image of attendees at our Preschool For All Town Hall. Photos by Chris Hagen.