Courtesy of Waz for Oregon
Oregon House District 38, home to Lewis & Clark and the surrounding community, has found itself in the middle of a competitive primary. John Wasielewski, 29, a middle school civics teacher in Lake Oswego, has entered the race against incumbent Democratic Rep. David Nguyen. At the beginning of the spring semester Wasielewski reached out to The Mossy Log to set up an interview with the hope of expanding his message to LC students and community. Over coffee, Wasielewski discussed topics ranging from education, affordability and civic engagement.
Challenging an incumbent in a safely Democratic district is an uphill battle, but Wasielewski says the race is less about party ideology and more about priorities. When asked what compelled him to enter the race against an incumbent of his own party, Wasielewski said he entered the race because he feels Nguyen’s focus is overly narrow. Where Nguyen is focused on business and the economy, Wasielewski said he is focused on issues like state funding for public resources.
“It’s not necessarily a problem with (Nguyen’s) policies. He has a singular focus, statewide business development, which is a fantastic goal, and it’s absolutely important. But unfortunately, the people who live in Southwest Portland and Lake Oswego have more than one concern. They’re not single-issue voters, right? The people in Southwest Portland care about a myriad of things, but the big three that keep coming up are schools, cost of living and community safety,” Wasielewski said.
While Nguyen’s campaign site does not directly state business development is its only priority, it does center economic growth as a key priority for the representative. However, Nguyen’s listed campaign priorities also include housing, healthcare and education — priorities Wasielewski shares due to his experience with teaching.
When asked about his journey into public service, Wasielewski indicated that he wanted to bring the values of his teaching career to local politics. Wasielewski said that his background in education has taught him a great deal of empathy, as well as broadened his view of community needs, giving him a unique perspective posed to strengthen his politics.
“Teaching helped me see into all these different home lives and different ways people were living their lives in different struggles. It helped build just a lot of compassion and empathy, because from the outside, you see the symptom of the problems that manifest in children. But there’s always a cause, and when you get really deeper, when you really build a relationship with kids, and you really see how things are working for them, and why they are, where they are. You can see that the symptom is a symptom of this larger thing that’s going on at home, or this larger struggle that is happening within their community, within their family, and just builds a lot of empathy and compassion,” he said.
Drawing from his professional background, education remains a key priority of Wasielewski’s, voicing concern over budget cuts and growing class sizes as detrimental to teachers.
“We cut 10% of our staff here in Lake Oswego (Public Schools). The next time we do that, the legislature is looking at cutting $753 million from the education budget here in the next 30 days. When they cut that much, the chances of me losing my job are fairly high. The chances of more teachers coming out of the classroom, and class sizes going up in Portland and Lake Oswego are gonna go up. Portland is cutting $50 million worth of its budget, which is around 300 teachers over the next year,” he said.
According to the Lake Oswego Review, a $10 million budget shortfall caused Lake Oswego School District to reduce 27 teaching positions and 64 support staff positions before the 2025-26 school year. No further reductions in force have occurred. Portland Public Schools (PPS) is facing a $50 million budget shortfall, and an early draft from state lawmakers proposing how to close that gap includes cutting 288 positions, including 180 fewer school staff and 108 fewer employees in the district’s central office. However, while there have been significant proposed cuts to education funding, it is unclear where the $753 million figure originated as no enacted or formally introduced budget proposal reviewed by The Mossy Log includes that exact cut to K-12 education.
More than just education, Wasielewski voiced concern over cuts across the board and Oregon’s presumed inability to fund government programs. He pointed to the $15 billion in federal funding cuts directed towards the state, indicating that a cut of this size would cause significant financial strain. Wasielewski elaborated that because Oregon is constitutionally required to balance its budget, lawmakers are now left with a difficult choice: steep cuts or major tax increases.
Rather than pursuing either extreme, Wasielewski argued the state needs a broader conversation about revenue reform. He said long-standing structural constraints, such as limits on property taxes and the notable absence of a sales tax have made it difficult for Oregon to sustainably fund schools, housing and social services across the board.
Wasielewski also questioned whether the state is using existing resources effectively. While Wasielewski noted that nearly $1 billion has already been directed toward homelessness and substance use services by the City of Portland, he said fragmented systems and data-sharing barriers between public, private and nonprofit providers have limited impact. Currently, the city’s plans for combatting homelessness mainly focus on unsheltered homelessness, with some $24.9 million being allocated to expanding up to 1,500 shelter beds across the city. Instead of concentrating large sums of money at one stage of the system, such as emergency shelters, Wasielewski argued Oregon should build a fully funded “pipeline” of services — from shelter and treatment to long-term housing — to help people move through the system more efficiently.
Additionally, Wasielewski voiced support for a slew of policies aimed at cost of living issues. On his website, Wasielewski advocates for efforts to decrease utility costs and increase affordable housing supply to expand home ownership. In the interview, Wasielewski emphasized his support for rent stabilization, which has been used in places across the country to stop or slow increases in the price of rent. He also shared his support of social housing models similar to those in European cities such as Vienna, where a 1% tax is used to subsidize housing under multiple programs. He sees both of these policies as necessary tools to help bring down high housing costs across the city and state.
“In terms of things that a state can do, this idea of social housing that Portland has been trying — and places like Vienna and some of the European cities have been trying — where the city or the state itself, functions as landlord, and it is ensuring a low market rate and extremely, deeply affordable housing. I haven’t made up my mind on this specifically. I do support the idea. I’d like to see it tried on a small scale,” Wasielewski said. “I do support some market-based approaches to building more houses.”
When asked what he would say to people in his district who have been historically resistant to development, Wazielewski said people should have a right to push back on development in their own backyard and that he himself would not want to see more construction in his neighborhood.
“I’ve always got to remind people that, yes, the state does set policy. But it’s developers that develop things. I support a statewide vision of helping us meet our housing goals. However, as someone who does not want a gigantic duplex or a giant villa next to my house, and lives in a single-story, single-family home, I firmly believe in people’s right to decide for themselves,” Wasielewski said.
This sentiment has permeated housing policy throughout the country as the inability of many cities to build more housing supply has contributed to rising costs. Recent research suggests that an increase in development is needed to improve housing supply and drive costs down. An October 2025 Goldman Sachs report found that 3-4 million additional homes beyond normal construction were needed to be built to address the shortage in the U.S. housing supply and boost affordability.
Wasielewski noted that housing affordability is interlinked with the needs and values of college students, commenting on what he sees as a need for local institutions to prioritize the future.
“We do need to have this pipeline from our local schools to local institutions that is weaving this net of what our future economy looks like. And Lewis & Clark, being a school so focused on environmental law and justice, is a vanguard of this, helping us build this future that we’re trying to build,” he said.
When asked why LC students should care about his campaign, Wasielewski returned to the issue of affordability.
“Things on campus are still gonna get more expensive. Tuition’s going to go up. As inflation goes up for society, and as the cost of living continues to get out of control and the labor that Lewis & Clark is having to provide, that cost is going up. That means tuition expenses are going to continue going up for students. And as these costs of living continue to go up, workers continue to demand liberal wages. Lewis & Clark is gonna have to raise tuition. It is going to be the same problem as states: raise tuition, cut staff,” Wasielewski said. “The ability for people to actually meaningfully engage with Lewis & Clark as a reasonable place to actually get an education is gonna become less and less.”
Wasielewski spoke to the value of representation, commenting that he hopes he can foster a democratic space for citizens to represent themselves and advocate for their own needs.
“Meaningful representation for me is people realizing that they don’t need to be represented, that they can make their voice heard, that they can articulate navigate for themselves, that they can get into the streets, they can get into some conversations, they can force some ways into rooms, sit down and make their voice heard directly, not wait to be represented,” he said.
On a similar note, Wasielewski communicated his desire to invite civic engagement to fill his anticipated state house seat with upcoming leaders.
“Hopefully, one of these high schools, Lake Bridge or Jackson Hill School, or Lake Oswego High, train(s) someone better that eventually kicks me out. That would be my goal. I’d love to get in there, make some change, and then be thrown unceremoniously to the curb.”
In closing, Wasielewski told students that he wanted them to readily advocate for others.
“I want the people at Lewis & Clark to know that many of them might have the privilege of looking away, and the privilege of not getting involved, and being okay. But there’s a lot of people in our society that don’t have that privilege, and that are increasingly becoming vulnerable, and it is our job as individuals to answer when the moment calls. And if we’re able to step up, to step up,” Wasielewski said.
For those eligible to vote in Oregon House District 38, primary voting will be held on May 16. For anyone interested in learning more about Wasielewski’s campaign additional resources can be found on his website.
About the Author
