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Mark Gamba

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Mark Gamba
Image of Mark Gamba
Oregon House of Representatives District 41
Tenure

2023 - Present

Term ends

2027

Years in position

2

Predecessor
Prior offices
Mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon

Compensation

Base salary

$35,052/year

Per diem

$157/day

Elections and appointments
Last elected

November 5, 2024

Education

Associate

Colorado Mountain College, 1979

Personal
Birthplace
Fort Collins, Colo.
Profession
Photographer
Contact

Mark Gamba (Democratic Party) is a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, representing District 41. He assumed office on January 9, 2023. His current term ends on January 11, 2027.

Gamba (Democratic Party, Working Families Party) ran for re-election to the Oregon House of Representatives to represent District 41. He won in the general election on November 5, 2024. He advanced from the Democratic primary on May 21, 2024.

Biography

Mark Gamba was born in Fort Collins, Colorado. Gamba graduated from Glenwood Springs High School in 1977. He earned an associate degree in photography from Colorado Mountain College in 1979. Gamba was elected the mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon, on May 19, 2015. From 2012 to 2015, he served as Milwaukie City councilor.[1] Gamba's career experience also includes working as a commercial photographer, photojournalist, and small business owner. He has served as the vice chair of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the League of Oregon Cities, which describes itself as a "resource that helps Oregon city staff and elected leaders serve their cities well.”[2][3]

The following table lists bills this person sponsored as a legislator, according to BillTrack50 and sorted by action history. Bills are sorted by the date of their last action. The following list may not be comprehensive. To see all bills this legislator sponsored, click on the legislator's name in the title of the table.


Committee assignments

Note: This membership information was last updated in September 2023. Ballotpedia completes biannual updates of committee membership. If you would like to send us an update, email us at: editor@ballotpedia.org.

2023-2024

Gamba was assigned to the following committees:


Elections

2024

See also: Oregon House of Representatives elections, 2024

General election

General election for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Incumbent Mark Gamba defeated Elvis Clark in the general election for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on November 5, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba (D / Working Families Party)
 
79.9
 
32,386
Elvis Clark (R)
 
20.0
 
8,101
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.2
 
64

Total votes: 40,551
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Incumbent Mark Gamba advanced from the Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on May 21, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba
 
99.2
 
10,315
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.8
 
82

Total votes: 10,397
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Republican primary election

Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Elvis Clark advanced from the Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on May 21, 2024.

Candidate
%
Votes
Elvis Clark
 
98.4
 
1,650
 Other/Write-in votes
 
1.6
 
27

Total votes: 1,677
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Endorsements

Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Gamba in this election.

2022

See also: Oregon House of Representatives elections, 2022

General election

General election for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Mark Gamba defeated Robert Reynolds in the general election for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba (D / Independent Party / Working Families Party)
 
78.2
 
29,187
Image of Robert Reynolds
Robert Reynolds (R)
 
21.7
 
8,088
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.1
 
45

Total votes: 37,320
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Mark Gamba defeated Kaliko Castille and Christopher Draus in the Democratic primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on May 17, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba
 
69.4
 
10,270
Kaliko Castille
 
28.6
 
4,233
Christopher Draus
 
1.7
 
245
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.3
 
46

Total votes: 14,794
Candidate Connection = 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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Republican primary election

Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41

Robert Reynolds defeated Elvis Clark and Rene Gomez in the Republican primary for Oregon House of Representatives District 41 on May 17, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Robert Reynolds
Robert Reynolds
 
46.3
 
1,343
Elvis Clark
 
42.7
 
1,239
Rene Gomez
 
9.7
 
280
 Other/Write-in votes
 
1.3
 
38

Total votes: 2,900
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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2020

See also: Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2020

Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2020 (May 19 Democratic primary)

Oregon's 5th Congressional District election, 2020 (May 19 Republican primary)

General election

General election for U.S. House Oregon District 5

Incumbent Kurt Schrader defeated Amy Ryan Courser and Matthew Rix in the general election for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on November 3, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Kurt Schrader
Kurt Schrader (D)
 
51.9
 
234,683
Image of Amy Ryan Courser
Amy Ryan Courser (R) Candidate Connection
 
45.2
 
204,372
Image of Matthew Rix
Matthew Rix (L)
 
2.8
 
12,640
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.2
 
771

Total votes: 452,466
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5

Incumbent Kurt Schrader defeated Mark Gamba and Blair Reynolds in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on May 19, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Kurt Schrader
Kurt Schrader
 
68.8
 
73,060
Image of Mark Gamba
Mark Gamba Candidate Connection
 
22.9
 
24,327
Image of Blair Reynolds
Blair Reynolds Candidate Connection
 
7.5
 
7,910
 Other/Write-in votes
 
0.8
 
841

Total votes: 106,138
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Watch the Candidate Conversation for this race!

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5

Amy Ryan Courser defeated G. Shane Dinkel, Joey Nations, and Angela Roman in the Republican primary for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on May 19, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
Image of Amy Ryan Courser
Amy Ryan Courser Candidate Connection
 
53.3
 
41,417
G. Shane Dinkel Candidate Connection
 
20.1
 
15,626
Image of Joey Nations
Joey Nations Candidate Connection
 
17.4
 
13,534
Image of Angela Roman
Angela Roman Candidate Connection
 
7.9
 
6,155
 Other/Write-in votes
 
1.3
 
1,003

Total votes: 77,735
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Libertarian convention

Libertarian convention for U.S. House Oregon District 5

Matthew Rix advanced from the Libertarian convention for U.S. House Oregon District 5 on July 6, 2020.

Candidate
Image of Matthew Rix
Matthew Rix (L)

Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Campaign themes

2024

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Mark Gamba did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

2022

Mark Gamba did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.

2020

Candidate Conversations

Candidate Conversations is a virtual debate format that allows voters to easily get to know their candidates through a short video Q&A. Click below to watch the conversation for this race.

Candidate Connection

Mark Gamba completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Gamba's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

I'm in my second term as Mayor of Milwaukie Oregon. I was born in Fort Collins Colorado, and raised in Glenwood Springs Colorado. I've lived in Oregon for 24 years. Most of my adult life I've been a small business owner, commercial photographer and photojournalist with clients like National Geographic and Adidas. I raised three beautiful, extraordinary children who are all living successful, happy lives. As a photojournalist I've been seeing the effects of Climate Change for years. I've also been witnessing the difficulties that average Americans experience in their day to day lives from lack of access to appropriate health care to the inability to find housing they can truly afford to rising costs of everything while their wages remained stagnant. I grew up believing that it was the government's job to make sure that the systems that effect people's lives were doing so for their betterment, not their detriment. In the last few decades I have begin to see that the systems are now designed to benefit the corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of everyone else. We need to repair the damage to our democracy that has allowed that.
  • Health Care is a human right. We need to create a universal health care system designed to give everyone world class health care. Currently the system is designed to maximize profits for the insurance, drug & hospital industries.
  • Climate Change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. We must mobilize and invest in stopping it like we did entering WWII. In doing so we can employ millions of people in good paying jobs with benefits.
  • We live at a time when the 3 richest people in America have more money than the bottom half (165,000,000) people combined. People working full time jobs should not be living in poverty.
Our economic policies do not benefit 99% of Americans, therefore they do not benefit America. Because of them we have utterly failed to address climate change for 35 years; we have millions of Americans who don't receive the health care they need or deserve; and we have millions of people spending more than half their income on housing. 48% of Americans make less than $30,000 a year and then we wonder why there are more and more people living on our streets. We incarcerate more of our population than any other country on earth. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We spend more on the military industrial complex then the next 10 largest militaries in the world combined, 6 of which are our allies. Our elections are corrupted by money. It is literally a contest to see who can raise the most money rather than a system for determining who is the best leader or who has the best ideas. Hence, we have a congress full of millionaires indebted to other millionaires and billionaires and we wonder why our system is designed to benefit them at the expense of everyone else. OUR GOVERNMENT IS UTTERLY FAILING AND GETTING WORSE ALL THE TIME. We must address the Climate Crisis by creating a Green New Deal which will put millions of people to work in good family wage jobs with good benefits. We must pass Medicare for All so we can get more people, better healthcare for less money. We must reverse citizens united and go the next step to publicly funded elections.
Mahatma Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther KIng Jr., Greta Thunberg... People who were/are unrelenting in their fight for what they knew to be right. People who were/are unflinchingly clear in speaking the truth to power. People who were willing to risk and sacrifice to cause the change they knew must occur.
There is no one book that covers it. My philosophy arises from hundreds of books, decades of documenting the world and deep conversations with people from all walks of life.
Empathy: the ability to truly understand what someone else is experiencing. Compassion, a deep caring for people and nature. Foresight, the ability to understand how policies and investments will play out in the real world. Humility, awareness that you cannot know everything and should therefor seek knowledge and advice and the willingness to trust true experts like scientists. Integrity, the quality of being honest and having strong moral principals. Deep, holistic wisdom. Passion, without this you will not put all of the rest to use. Leadership, the ability to inspire others to achieve the "impossible". Guts, the ability to stand up to powerful forces and unflinchingly fight for what is right.
I have proven to be a thoughtful and inspiring change maker at the city and even metro level. I will not be beholden to the corporations. I know what the critical priorities are and will be an unrelenting champion for them. I am creative and solutions oriented.
To clean up the mess that the last half century worth of Washington politics has created.
To stop climate change. To transform our health care system to one that gives everyone in America world class health care. Get money out of politics.
JFK assassination, I remember my mom crying while watching TV, I had never seen my mom cry before. I was almost 4 years old.
Delivering milk with the local milkman when I was around 10 years old. Not sure, I did that until my parents let me get my first paper route. Probably a year or two.
Drawdown - 100 solutions for stopping climate change for obvious reasons

The Overstory - for beautifully illustrating our connection to trees and therefor nature
I am dislexic, which made my early school years a struggle and I still struggle with spelling, but has given me the advantage of being able to perceive the big picture and the inter-relatedness of all things. It has given me great creativity.
The ability to pass laws and make investments from the most powerful country in the world and the potential to be the most potent force for good in the world. We could single highhandedly steer the human race into a new paradigm: one in which we live in harmony with the natural systems and other beings of this planet. A system designed to maximize fulfillment, happiness and love for all people not just the obscene enrichment of the few. In the short term, instead of wasting nearly a trillion dollars a year on the military industrial complex we could be investing it in stopping climate change, educating everyone and restoring the damaged ecosystem worldwide.
Yes, particularly local government. Where you are confronted with the difficulties and realities of real people. It is easy, apparently, to make bad decisions that will destroy lives when you don't have see it or come in contact with it. People who were born wealthy and have never known anything else are incapable of imagining the real lives of the majority. Masters of commerce should be the last people we have in government. In a high functioning capitalist economy, government is meant to be the limiter that keeps the natural tendencies of runaway capitalism from destroying itself and all of us along with it.
Overcoming the greed of the one percent and stopping the worst effects of climate change. We literally have 10 years to do that and if we fail, in 100 years, nothing else will matter. Oddly it is also the perfect first step in solving the other thing that is destroying this democracy and economy. If we can pay millions of Americans good family wages to build out our smart grid and renewable energy sources and electrified transportation systems then we can lift those millions out of poverty or near poverty. If in funding this, we tax the corporations and the billionaires at the level that we taxed them at when our economy was at it's very strongest, then we also begin to diminish the astronomical income and therefor power disparity in this country. It will make the middle class more robust and therefore make our economy stronger. If at the same time we pass Medicare for All and people no longer suffer for lack of needed health care and our economy is saving millions of dollars that used to go into the pockets of Insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives then again the buying power of the vast majority of America will be increased. If we also require that ALL products be manufactured to last as long as possible and to be completely recyclable when they are at end of life, then we will need to buy less stuff, which means people could work fewer hours, which then solves the problems of what will happen when most of today's jobs are automated. People who are not living in desperation will also have the bandwidth to engage in their community and political system which again will make our democracy stronger.
Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, Transportation and Infrastructure and the newly formed Climate and Sustainability
NO!! That means they are constantly running for office, constantly dialing for dollars instead of doing their jobs. 4 year terms are far more appropriate.
We should have them. Three terms in the senate, four (four year) terms in the house.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - she is there to do the job of representing the needs of the people rather than the desires of the corporations.
Yes: I met a woman who had lost everything to health care costs and ended up homeless. She had been a very successful graphic artist, living in an expensive neighborhood in Portland, with a very good health insurance plan. She was in a car crash, received nerve damage in her neck that kept her from being able to work. She was told that she would need a series of 7 surgeries to get back to normal. The insurance covered the first 4 then told her that she was "cured" because she could feed and cloth herself again, it didn't matter to her that she couldn't work, the cut her off anyway. She sold the nice house, moved into a friend's basement, paid for the next two surgeries with the money from her house. Her friend tired of having her live there, and she ended up homeless. The surgeon took pity, and raised the money for the last surgery. When I met her she was just beginning to work again and had found a small apartment she could afford. Even with the best insurance plan you are not really covered for everything in this country.

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 finance summary


Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.


Mark Gamba campaign contribution history
YearOfficeStatusContributionsExpenditures
2024* Oregon House of Representatives District 41Won general$126,578 $129,857
2022Oregon House of Representatives District 41Won general$129,016 $115,498
2020U.S. House Oregon District 5Lost primary$264,080 $249,122
Grand total$519,674 $494,477
Sources: OpenSecretsFederal Elections Commission ***This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* Data from this year may not be complete

Scorecards

See also: State legislative scorecards and State legislative scorecards in Oregon

A scorecard evaluates a legislator’s voting record. Its purpose is to inform voters about the legislator’s political positions. Because scorecards have varying purposes and methodologies, each report should be considered on its own merits. For example, an advocacy group’s scorecard may assess a legislator’s voting record on one issue while a state newspaper’s scorecard may evaluate the voting record in its entirety.

Ballotpedia is in the process of developing an encyclopedic list of published scorecards. Some states have a limited number of available scorecards or scorecards produced only by select groups. It is Ballotpedia’s goal to incorporate all available scorecards regardless of ideology or number.

Click here for an overview of legislative scorecards in all 50 states.  To contribute to the list of Oregon scorecards, email suggestions to editor@ballotpedia.org.


2024


2023










See also


External links

Footnotes

  1. City of Milwaukie, “Mayor Mark Gamba,” accessed April 3, 2020
  2. Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on March 27, 2020
  3. League of Oregon Cities, “Who We Are,” accessed April 3, 2020

Political offices
Preceded by
Karin Power (D)
Oregon House of Representatives District 41
2023-Present
Succeeded by
-
Preceded by
-
Mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon
-2022
Succeeded by
-


Current members of the Oregon House of Representatives
Leadership
Speaker of the House:Julie Fahey
Majority Leader:Ben Bowman
Representatives
District 1
District 2
District 3
District 4
District 5
Pam Marsh (D)
District 6
District 7
District 8
District 9
District 10
District 11
Jami Cate (R)
District 12
District 13
District 14
District 15
District 16
District 17
Ed Diehl (R)
District 18
District 19
District 20
District 21
District 22
District 23
District 24
District 25
District 26
District 27
Ken Helm (D)
District 28
District 29
District 30
District 31
District 32
District 33
District 34
District 35
District 36
Hai Pham (D)
District 37
District 38
District 39
District 40
District 41
District 42
Rob Nosse (D)
District 43
District 44
District 45
Thuy Tran (D)
District 46
District 47
District 48
District 49
District 50
District 51
District 52
District 53
District 54
District 55
District 56
District 57
District 58
District 59
District 60
Democratic Party (37)
Republican Party (23)