Earl Blumenauer

In November 2020, Blumenauer was named a candidate for Secretary of Transportation in the Biden Administration.

In July 2019, Blumenauer voted against a House resolution introduced by Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois opposing efforts to boycott the State of Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel for its continued occupation of Palestine. The resolution passed 398-17.

Beginning in 2017, he has skipped every State of the Union address by President Trump, stating "I refuse to be a witness to his continued antics." In 2019 he was one of the first lawmakers to come out in support of the Green New Deal.

On October 1, 2015, following the Umpqua Community College shooting, Blumenauer tweeted his report addressing the issue of gun violence in America titled 'Enough is Enough: A Comprehensive Plan to Improve Gun Safety' which he had published earlier in the year.

On July 24, 2014, Blumenauer introduced the Emergency Afghan Allies Extension Act of 2014 (H.R. 5195; 113th Congress), a bill that would authorize an additional 1,000 emergency Special Immigrant Visas that the United States Department of State could issue to Afghan translators who served with U.S. troops during the War in Afghanistan. Blumenauer argued that "a failure to provide these additional visas ensures the many brave translators the U.S. promised to protect in exchange for their services would be left in Afghanistan, hiding, their lives still threatened daily by the Taliban."

In February 2009, after an incident in Connecticut wherein a domesticated chimpanzee severely mauled a woman gained national attention, Blumenauer sponsored the Captive Primate Safety Act to bar the sale or purchase of non-human primates for personal possession between states and from outside of the country. The previous year, in June 2008, Blumenauer had sponsored legislation to ban interstate trafficking of great apes, which had passed in the House but been tabled by the Senate.

Blumenauer is a supporter of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and has voted for "free trade" agreements with Peru, Australia, Singapore, Chile as well as Africa and the Caribbean. Blumenauer's support for these free trade agreements has angered progressives, environmental and labor activists. In 2004, he voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). On September 24, 2007, four labor and human rights activists were arrested in Blumenauer's office protesting the congressman's support for the Peru Free Trade Agreement.

Among the bills that Blumenauer has sponsored that have become law are the Bunning-Bereuter-Blumenauer Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 and the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act of 2005. In addition, the Legal Timber Protection Act passed as part of the 2008 Farm Bill, while the Bicycle Commuter Act passed with the 2008 bailout bill.

Blumenauer was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1996 in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the election of then-U.S. Representative Ron Wyden to the U.S. Senate. He received 69% of the vote, defeating Republican Mark Brunelle. He was elected to a full term that November, and has been re-elected 10 more times without serious difficulty in what has long been the most Democratic district in Oregon, never dropping below 66 percent of the vote.

Blumenauer was elected to the Portland City Council in May 1986. His first term began in January 1987, and he remained on the council until 1996. From the start of his first council term, he was named the city's Commissioner of Public Works, which made him the city council member in charge of the Portland Bureau of Transportation (also known as the Transportation Commissioner). During his time on the city council Blumenauer was appointed by Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt to the state's commission on higher education, and he served on that board in 1990 and 1991. In 1992, Blumenauer was defeated by Vera Katz in an open race for mayor of Portland—to date, only the second time that Blumenauer has ever lost an election. At the time he was described as "the man who probably knows the most about how Portland works," but left local politics to run for Congress. After winning election to Congress, he resigned from the city council in May 1996, to take up his new office. In 2010, Earl Blumenauer received The Ralph Lowell Award for outstanding contributions to Public Television.

In 1969–70, Blumenauer organized and led Oregon's "Go 19" campaign, an effort to lower the state voting age (while then unsuccessful, it supported the national trend which soon resulted in the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution which lowered the voting age to 18). In 1972, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives as a Democrat representing the 11th district in Multnomah County. He won re-election in 1974 and 1976, and continued representing Portland and Multnomah County until the 1979 legislative session. From 1975 to 1981 he served on the board of Portland Community College. Following his time in the Oregon Legislature, he served on the Multnomah County Commission from 1979 to 1986. He lost a race for Portland City Council to Margaret Strachan in 1981. He left the county commission in March 1986 to run again for city council.

Earl Francis Blumenauer (/ˈ b l uː m ə n aʊ . ər / BLOOM -ə-nowər; born August 16, 1948) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Oregon's 3rd congressional district since 1996. A member of the Democratic Party, his district includes most of Portland east of the Willamette River. Blumenauer previously spent over 20 years as a public official in Portland, including serving on the Portland City Council from 1987 until 1996, when he succeeded Ron Wyden in the U.S. House of Representatives, who had been elected to the U.S. Senate following the resignation of Bob Packwood.