EXCLUSIVE — Nathan Vasquez used to be an intern at the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office. Now, he is the top officer and ready to reverse years of progressive policies that turned Portland, Oregon, into the poster child for civil disorder. 

Vasquez took office last month after ousting his boss, Mike Schmidt. He told the Washington Examiner that the days of the district attorney’s office not prosecuting people for rioting, disorderly conduct, or other low-level charges are over. 

Four-and-a-half years earlier, Vasquez, who was a deputy district attorney at the time, stood next to Schmidt, who announced just the opposite. 

What followed thrust Portland into the national spotlight, with hundreds of demonstrators, including some who identified as antifa, a coalition of anti-fascist activists, taking to the streets for 100 consecutive nights. Initially, the protests were in response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which set off a nationwide movement for racial justice and police accountability.

In Portland, the protests turned chaotic quickly, with cadres of black-clad anarchists with Molotov cocktails and other weapons in hand having near-nightly standoffs with law enforcement. Footage that aired on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC showed Portland on fire.

President Donald Trump, who was in his first term, slammed city and state officials for failing to keep the peace. Republican pundits used the city as an example of liberal policies run amok. 

Reversing course

Now that Vasquez is in charge, he has vowed to change course and said he would seek charges against any demonstrator who breaks the law, be it from the “left, right, or center.”

“We went through some very turbulent times, and out of that, public safety really suffered,” he said. “To be successful as a community, we need a baseline of public safety. My goal is to rebuild our public safety system to get us back to the healthy community that we had been for years and years.”

That begins with bridging the divide between the district attorney’s office and law enforcement, he said.

Vasquez has attended every “roll call” with the police and has made it an officewide mandate for other prosecutors to do the same. 

“I’ve been very clear and direct with law enforcement officers that we’re going in a new direction, and it’s going to be built around partnership,” he said. “I have been very deliberate. I have been visiting every single law enforcement office, going to their roll calls, going on ride-alongs, going out to search warrants, going to homicide scenes, and just making sure that they know my office, and myself in particular, is very dedicated to working as partners with them and for the overall goal of increasing public safety.”

Pushing for growth despite budget cuts

Vasquez, whose great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Guatemala as political refugees, has lived and worked in Multnomah County since 1999. He is married, has two children, and said his drive to become a lawyer came from his uncle David. Vasquez earned his law degree from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College and worked his way up in the district attorney’s office from intern to prosecutor to deputy district attorney and now to district attorney. He has prosecuted nearly every type of crime, from misdemeanor trespass to aggravated homicide. 

He has about 95 prosecutors working under him but wants to grow the pool to 120. 

“When I started 25 years ago, we had close to 100 prosecutors,” he said. “Here we are, 25 years later, and we have less. This city, since that time, has only grown dramatically. The challenges have grown exponentially, and this is one where we need the resources to accomplish the mission.”

To do that, he needs more money, but he knows it’s a tough ask. 

Portland, Multnomah’s county seat, is facing a $110 million shortfall for the coming fiscal year, and the county is facing a $21 million general fund shortfall for its fiscal 2026 budget cycle. Vasquez has been told to cut his budget by 3%, which is a lot but still less than some agencies that have been asked to slash theirs by 10%. 

Despite this, he is pushing to expand the capacity inside the county’s jails to house more people. 

“Multnomah has about 1,600 jail beds but only funds 1,100. There are basically 500 beds that are sitting empty, but to get those up and running and operational, you need jail staff, you need facilities, lights on, those types of things,” he said, adding he wants those beds for a “treatment readiness dorm.” The “dorms” are jail beds but will be used to get people who are struggling with substance abuse in a place where they can find treatment. 

The estimated cost is between $40 million and $50 million. He told the Washington Examiner he sees it as an “investment” in the community, not just a money grab. It’s unclear if decision-makers will see it the same way. 

Making enemies

In the short time Vasquez has been in office, he has made some enemies and taken heat for criticizing how the public defender’s office works. He argues that his prosecutors’ cases can’t move forward because the public defender’s office is mismanaged and there aren’t enough attorneys available. 

That means people charged with crimes are not being given a lawyer, and therefore, their cases are on hold. The unrepresented now rank in the thousands, with some of the people charged with committing new crimes while they remain unpunished for their old ones. Not only is it unfair to the public, which is unable to hold criminals accountable, but it’s also unfair to the defendants, who can’t resolve their cases or, in some mental health and substance abuse-related cases, can’t get the help they need, Vasquez said. 

“I don’t call this a defense attorney crisis,” he added. “I see this much differently. In particular, there are more defense attorneys than there are prosecutors, so there shouldn’t be a crisis. They have gotten a massive influx of funding from our state legislature, and yet this ‘crisis’ continues to get worse. This is a contract and management issue for the defense attorneys. This is not a shortage of attorneys.” 

Vasquez said the system operated better in 2019, when there was less money going into the defense attorney system and there were a lot more cases. Now, with more money, it has only gotten worse.

“This is purely a situation where there is a state agency that has gotten off track, and it’s something I have been vocal about and something I intend to continue to be vocal about because it’s hurting the community,” he added. “When cases don’t get attorneys, victims don’t get justice. That’s my concern.” 

Kevin Neely, executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project, said he and his group of former district attorneys and law enforcement professionals reached the same conclusion and praised Vasquez for raising the “red flag.”

“Based on our review of the available data, there should be no crisis,” he wrote. “Oregon’s exceptional investment in the public defense system coupled with a decline in cases should raise questions about why so many defendants continue to be unrepresented and, as a result, unprosecuted.”

Oregon spends more than $71 per person on indigent defense, almost four times the national average of $19.82, according to the Sixth Amendment Center, which collects national data on the matter. 

Carl Macpherson, executive director of Metropolitan Public Defender, one of two nonprofit indigent defense providers operating in Multnomah County, pushed back on Vasquez’s statements, calling them “wholly inaccurate” and nothing more than “political rhetoric.” 

Stacey Reding, executive director of Multnomah Defenders, blamed the slowness in assigning defense attorneys on high turnover rates in her office and slammed Vasquez for describing the “crisis” as a “work stoppage.” 

But Vasquez isn’t backing down. He said that for his prosecutors to go after criminals, the defense attorneys provided to them in the U.S. Constitution needed to get up to speed. He has also taken his concerns to the governor, hoping for change. 

“Our defense system can do better than it is currently,” Vasquez said. “And it needs to. We need changes. The hard part is, obviously, I don’t hire defense attorneys. I don’t control that part. That is out of my hands. What is in my control is to be very direct and vocal about how I see the situation.”