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Levi Leatherberry
Levi Leatherberry (Independent Party, Libertarian Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Oregon's 4th Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.
Leatherberry completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Levi Leatherberry earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii in 2010 and a graduate degree at University College London in 2013.[1]
Elections
2022
See also: Oregon's 4th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Oregon District 4
Val Hoyle defeated Alek Skarlatos, Levi Leatherberry, Jim Howard, and Michael Beilstein in the general election for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Val Hoyle (D / Working Families Party) | 50.5 | 171,372 |
 | Alek Skarlatos (R) | 43.1 | 146,055 | |
 | Levi Leatherberry (Independent Party / L)  | 2.7 | 9,052 | |
| Jim Howard (Constitution Party) | 1.8 | 6,075 | ||
 | Michael Beilstein (Pacific Green Party / Progressive Party) | 1.8 | 6,033 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 490 | ||
| Total votes: 339,077 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Val Hoyle | 63.5 | 56,153 |
 | Doyle Canning | 16.1 | 14,245 | |
 | Sami Al-Abdrabbuh | 6.9 | 6,080 | |
 | John Selker | 5.4 | 4,738 | |
 | Andrew Kalloch | 4.9 | 4,322 | |
| G. Tommy Smith | 1.4 | 1,278 | ||
| Jake Matthews | 0.7 | 607 | ||
 | Steve William Laible | 0.3 | 292 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.8 | 663 | ||
| Total votes: 88,378 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Zachary Mulholland (D)
- Joshua Welch (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4
Alek Skarlatos advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 4 on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Alek Skarlatos | 98.3 | 58,655 |
| Other/Write-in votes | 1.7 | 1,021 | ||
| Total votes: 59,676 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Garrett Hoppe (R)
- Jeremy Van Tress (R)
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Levi Leatherberry completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Leatherberry's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Levi also has a masters degree in governance from University College London, and dabbles in robotics, 3d printing, artificial intelligence, and microbial fuel cells (mud microbes that make electricity) in his free time.
In the past, Levi has worked in many countries over a decade as a humanitarian solving social problems such as social entrepreneurship with rural women in Bangladesh with BRAC and Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, helping manage endangered national forests and rare species with USAID, providing care to Sudanese war refugees in Egypt, and working with stateless people who fall between the cracks in society in many nations.
Most recently, Levi worked in a leadership program for SEIU 503 to help promote the rights of homecare workers in Oregon in 2019-20. Which helps not only persons with disabilities but also is one of the largest jobs in Oregon – especially in rural communities.
Levi’s theme is that of service. At home, abroad, or in his community.- A New Path for America - Ideology and political identity make solving any problem hard. We need to treat every person and every problem as individuals.
- Representatives should represent - this means that they should represent the Top 10 things voters care about in their district - regardless of their personal agenda or political beliefs, as that's what their paid to do
- Fight the good Fight - This means we should fight for the public interest over party interests
Then rather than solve these problems we spend and spend hoping money will be the suave for political mismanagement. What we need are good leaders and good governance - both can be done better and by ordinary citizens becoming more involved by preventing money and special interests from overpowering the public interest.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Leatherberry's campaign website stated the following:
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Healthcare Long-Term: Big Promises vs Reality Prices are too high, insurance costs too much and hospitals charge an arm and a leg. The Left says single payer healthcare or Obamacare, the Right says private insurance marketplaces - both theoretically want to lower the cost of healthcare - but you need wide support for these bills. I will support bills to expand access to healthcare and lower costs and increase the quality of care across the board. In the meantime people suffer while these big plans wait - that's not good enough.
Drug companies need to be investigated for price gouging, the hospitals need to open their black-books that are connected to obscene charges to government programs such as Medicare and private insurance, private insurance markets need basic laws enforced, and the media and politicians need to be investigated by a committee for taking money from Big Pharma through insider trading and payoff schemes. Yes there will be opposition, yes some politicians may find ways to get out of trouble, but not all of them, even the smallest victories can save many Americans a lot of money. Basically, just enforce the laws already on the books that politicians get paid by special interests not to use.
Normally the left only talks about corporate inflation, and the right talks about government inflation – they are both threats to average Americans. Government Inflation – Grand corruption is the technical term for what is occurring with the Federal Budget, every year it goes way up and nothing but vital services to our working class get the ax. There is more than enough money to solve any social problem in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, our problem is one of extreme graft not real deficits, the sheer scale of corruption is hard to imagine for most people, even the government isn't sure how many trillions its 'lost'.
The House of Representatives has the power of the purse, the ability to reign in spending - that's why I am running for the house, this is the center of where money corrupts government, and I will fight it. I will support and initiate bills to reform our spending, this includes independent audits of all agencies, as well as public data on where the money goes.
Corporate Inflation – Unlike government inflation, corporate inflation is straight up illegal and doesn't require new legislation - just enforcement of existing price gouging laws in many states. I will make a committee and investigate companies who have record profit margins - not just record profits, but the margin which clearly indicates fake prices.
The Problem With Gas Prices - Everyone knows gas and diesel prices have hit America hard – what the media has neglected to mention is every reason but why. A big part of the gas price increase is international relations - not with Russia as it's often reported, but OPEC which controls roughly 80 percent of the world's oil and who boldly stated along with the CEO of Chevron that there wasn't a supply issue. So supply and demand were not the primary reasons for price increases. This is the problem with monopolies, if they want to recoup the costs for a few bad years by jacking up prices - they can. Long Term: Energy Independence – How do we lower monopolies’ control on the ability of Americans to drive, by investing in American local oil and gas production and writing into the investments a requirement to sell it locally at real prices examined by third parties. Also by lowering the barrier to entry for new companies to challenge the giants by giving subsidies to newcomers who can run things better and cleaner and not just the fossil fuel giants. Investing in Renewables – We need to invest more in new battery technologies which are a choke point for many renewables. Making them non-toxic and more reliable with higher power density. This is possible by investing in inventors and start-ups more heavily. By encouraging American entrepreneurship, instead of what has been happening giving billions to a handful of already slow big companies with slow big ideas.
Lowering Gas and Diesel Prices- Costs are really high right now, what big oil does is illegal, global price, stock market, and futures manipulation is not actually allowed, it happens because they are very rich as we all know. A big chunk of that money comes from the Federal government, which means the House has jurisdiction over many, many agreements - in those are clauses about this very behavior. Any representative could look into these books and bring up violations that mandate the withholding of large funds. I will look for these violations and bring them to light so that costs for oil and gas can fall back into alignment with production to avoid further penalties in the short term. Which could mean months or years of cheap gas, because that's its real price without corruption. Politicians have done this before, but likely to receive larger donations from Big Oil - as a bargaining tool, not a tool to help voters.
Why can’t we get affordable housing, every year the situation just gets worse – despite decades of democrats and republicans promising to help. It’s because big contractors, cement companies, real estate firms, and foreign investors all work together to make an environment where costs only go up. My opponents take money from these people while promising to fight for affordable housing – that is the biggest problem. Long Term: Building Affordable Housing – We need to investigate why housing is so expensive by examining the middlemen, the big contractors, the firms, the congress's previous investment in infrastructure which went to a tiny few and open it up to normal builders, not no-bid contracts and get real market prices for projects, not ones astronomically inflated.
Short Term: The Graft - Construction is one of the oldest and most corrupt industries for politicians. The big reason why housing is so unaffordable despite most construction materials and labor being cheaper in America than in many European countries is the graft. Roads and houses should be cheaper in Oregon than in France or Italy, but many times are not. The big difference is our political class takes a bigger chunk of the pie, and feels completely immune to laws - because they are never enforced by other politicians. If even a few politicians are caught, even if congress fights to protect them many will be cautious and move their money elsewhere, knowing it's illegal, and prices will fall for housing across the board in the short term, giving Americans some much needed relief. Prices will fall, because politicians don't just don't skim public projects, they skim profits in the private markets by being on the board for the giant real estate investment corporations buying up all our land and houses in all 50 states. They also control how loans work, and how much banks lend, which then follows strategic insider trading deals that affect the whole market - everything to benefit more graft. Politicians are even major investors in how foreign companies like China or Saudi Arabia buy up our land as they hire them for the political protection of their investments. The role of politicians behind the scenes in housing is so big that they are market makers, they define the market health and how it works - they are the driving force of unnaturally high costs because they are the ones tasked with stopping it and they actively make it worse. To solve this I will make a committee and investigate members of congress relationship with large housing contracts and foreign investors and go one by one through every member of congress and make the data public in accordance with House rules and report those that are criminal, then we will see why and how housing prices are really made. Greyhound Bussing Programs – Hundreds if not thousands of local governments in the Red States have a policy of shipping their unwanted homeless or petty criminals around America to 'sanctuary' cities for the homeless. That is cities with benefits programs so that the individuals won't come back. This one-way ticket has been a major cause of the homelessness crisis, as very few are from Oregon. Oregon taxpayers cannot pay for 50 states' worth of individuals, we need to stop this pipeline and encourage communities to take care of their citizens locally not by shipping them to the west coast on the taxpayer's dime. No matter what solution we make it cannot work if the sheer number of people is so great. This practice is immoral and has exasperated homelessness all over the coast. Eugene has pulled its weight 10 times over, and still, they keep sending people – since they are using taxpayer money we can track it down, and fine whoever has hidden bussing programs that devastate cities like ours.
If I’m not being paid to look the other way I can investigate why there is so much plastic in everything, why is so much of our food bad for us, why is the water becoming toxic including fish, also why are so many chemicals in products without research or studies. These are all things that benefit a few, and not the many. Long-term: Plastic – I will sponsor bills to increase the scale of recycling by providing support to plastics market evaluation by investing in the necessary infrastructure - if we can make it easier to recycle and slightly increase plastics market value, it would be much more profitable to recycle and could create a multi-billion dollar industry in both America and the worlds poorest communities where plastic is dumped. I will also help sponsor public research into the effects of nanoplastic and microplastic on human health and the environment and support bills that reduce its impact. Big Ag – Perhaps the largest recipient of taxpayer money, these multinational for-profits will be investigated for waste and fraud and the intentionally underfunded studies of the impact of pesticides which has profound effects on our world and health both inside and outside of cities. Fishing – Overfishing the seas has a dramatic impact on our health, many fish stocks are becoming depleted and are highly toxic due to pollution. The ocean has a natural cycle that sequesters more carbon than the worlds rainforests - we need to prevent this cycle from breaking and fishing has a big impact. Investigating how to limit fishing so that these slow moving catastrophes will be a top priority. Green Chemistry – There are many chemicals in circulation that may have an impact on human health, but have been put out into commercial goods with little or no testing or even understanding of their impact. Green chemistry is about increasing transparency and replacing as many toxic chemicals as possible with less harmful chemicals that meet the same chemical and physical attributes. Investing in Green Chemistry companies can lead to big decreases in hospitalizations, medical ailments, and environmental contamination. It can also be a job maker due to the size and scope of our current contamination of products as well as good for the community. Different paints, new polymers, and different kinds of anti-freeze or coolants are all puzzles for our entrepreneurs and creators.
Everyone knows a big part of the Environmental Policy of the United States is money. The fastest route to help the Environment, whether it's cleaner water, fresher air, or protecting our own health is to go after insider trading, where the big payoffs are. I will sponsor legislation to bring insider trading rules back into effect for congress. But rather than waiting for congress to pass these improvements, which they will fight, I will just wait for a good bill to come up, then target the weakest link between giant companies and politicians both of who are protected - traders. They are often for legal reasons third parties and treated as disposable and despite being former lawmakers many of them are not protected by congress. Insider trading happens in short spans of time, if you can delay trades by investigating them procedurally it will be very hard to make money doing insider trading during the times the market is open, and they won't always wait for politicians to invest and risk losing a lot of money. By simply slowing down this money superhighway you can help the environment as politicians require money to continue to 'work' or sabotage votes, and often it comes down to one vote, one payoff. Congress has this power, they just never use it because many themselves participate in insider trading.
Veterans have been used as a political shield to justify all manner of bad politics for decades, while actual veterans get ignored. Recently there was progress over the inclusion of military vets who have been exposed to toxic burn pits during their military service and the horrible health effects that come from it – but even this was till the last moment a political football. Long-Term: Veteran Care – We need to codify enforcement mechanisms into law that allow veterans to sue for the negligence of care by any provider state or private for not covering their injuries during or related to their service. The money is there and the hospitals are there but we cannot get vets into care because of mismanagement and a system of bad incentives. Because its military they cannot defend themselves from bad care in the same way private citizens can - this must change. I will sponsor legislation to make sure they have the same legal rights and legal resources. Suicide/PTSD and Psilocybin - We lose more soldiers to suicide than we do to war. We also have a tool at our disposal that is proven to be highly effective in combating this problem that we don't use due to the influence of Big Pharma as well as political ideology. Psilocybin helps PTSD and alleviating the long-term depression that is the natural result of war, we should use every tool at our disposal to fight it. I will sponsor federal legislation for the legalization of Psilocybin to help combat the high rate of suicides in the military. This is how we save veterans lives. Police Pay – We need to pay police officers better, this can improve the quality of police services as well as reduce police brutality-related incidents. You get what you pay for, it’s as simple as that. Police budgets – We need to look into how police departments make money, and if it’s mostly from ticketing or collecting individuals' property – then we need to identify and fund new revenue streams. Forcing police to increase quotas leads to bad experiences for officers and the public.
Short term: Anti-corruption – I will create a special congressional task force to better utilize Artificial Intelligence to help spot corruption in police ranks. This is an existing technology that can be cheaply re-coded to help people. I will work with any jurisdiction willing to implement these technologies to greatly increase the likelihood of finding officers making money on the side and from the street and decrease the extreme levels of corruption some police bureaus in big cities experience at a very low cost. Money is perhaps the easiest thing for a machine to learn to spot, and it can look over decades in an instant. The overlap between the most corrupt cops and those with the worst records for brutality or misconduct is likely to be high and can help clean up the ranks. This isn't new. Intelligence agencies already use these technologies on their agents, let's just use them on police too, and make powerful anti-corruption technologies benefit voters not just the military-industrial complex or politicians on intelligence committees who want to demote people they don't 'trust' because they don't take lobbyist money also. They can now even use this good tech to map resistance to their agenda in congress. Yes, in 2022 if you are not corrupt top politicians know via algorithms from their job - this makes them better at corruption - instead of wasting it to help politicians and bureaucrats, let's use this tech to help citizens get better police.
The minimum wage is good overall, but what is more important is that the same old trick isn’t used. What I’m referring to is asking for years for it to be increased, then only increasing it once inflation has devalued it so you’re getting paid the same or less. If we are going to do pay increases, the only way it’s meaningful and not just adjusted for inflation since the 1970s is to increase it by value. So we just increase it before periods of inflation so people can buy more with their money. This symbolic gesture is not helping Americans; it only adds to political infighting between tribes and distracts from the actual quality of life.[2] |
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| —Levi Leatherberry's campaign website (2022)[3] | ||||||||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on January 23, 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Levi Leatherberry for Congress, “The Good Fight,” accessed October 10, 2022
