Corporate-friendly incumbents in Hillsboro got cleaned out this November by a progressive slate that ran on working-class values — because the old guard offered families nothing but tax breaks for Intel and hangars for private jets.

The "Seeds of Change" candidates — Diana Jackson, Karim Delgado, and Dorian Russell — swept all three Hillsboro City Council races, flipping a city government that has spent years handing out property tax waivers to major corporations while working people struggle with housing costs. The message is simple and it's national: when the establishment party serves donors, voters will take whatever populist alternative is on the ballot.

Jackson won North Hillsboro with 44.83% of the vote, unseating incumbent Cristian Salgado, who managed just 16.09%. Delgado took South Hillsboro with 54%, defeating school board member Ivette Pantoja. Russell won West Hillsboro with over 50% against two opponents. All three ran explicitly against the city's corporate-friendly history.

"Loosely calling ourselves the 'Seeds of Change' candidates, we shook hands on our campaigns mutually supporting one another in the fight for affordability and working class values," the bloc said in a joint statement. "Together, the slate found solidarity across differences and a wave of community support more powerful than corporate interests and big donors."

Hillsboro's enterprise-zone program waives property taxes for three to five years for qualified capital projects — a straightforward transfer of the tax burden from corporations like Intel, Tokyo Electron America, and Epson onto working homeowners. The Oregonian framed this history neutrally as the city being "corporate-friendly." Voters framed it as a problem.

"Government can work for you, it just chooses not to," Delgado said in a statement. "Our work to change that started on election night."

Delgado, a bar owner and Democratic Socialists of America member, made headlines last year for physically blocking federal immigration agents with his car. Russell runs a nonprofit serving homeless youth. Jackson, a legal assistant at a nonprofit, was the lone member of the Planning Commission to abstain from a vote approving private jet hangars at Hillsboro Airport — a proposal pushed by a New York company that was later rescinded but is expected to return.

The same affordability crisis driving Hillsboro's shakeup is paralyzing local governments elsewhere. In Anchorage, the Assembly has backed itself into what member Erin Baldwin Day called "a corner, with respect to the volume of work that is before us" — nearly 30 public hearings before year-end on everything from the municipal budget to zoning changes meant to increase housing density. The Missing Middle Housing Opportunity overlay has been debated for more than two years, with competing versions, last-minute rewrites, and recurring delays. Member Yarrow Silvers noted the public has an expectation that their government will actually act. Member Jared Goecker was blunter: "The constant screwing around with our schedules lately has just been really frustrating."

The Anchorage Daily News reported the dysfunction straight. The Oregonian, for its part, buried the operative dynamic: Republican-aligned candidates who offer working people nothing but corporate subsidies will keep losing — and not just to other Republicans.

The question for the GOP is whether it learns the lesson or keeps wondering where its voters went.