The campaign behind Portland's failed police-hiring ballot measure has added a former Trump administration attorney to its legal team as it presses a federal lawsuit against local elections officials.
Safer Portland retained Abhishek Kambli, a former U.S. deputy associate attorney general, Willamette Week reported Wednesday, Aug. 26. Kambli served at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) from February 2025 to May 2026, where he said he litigated more than 20 cases for the Trump administration.
His portfolio included defending Trump's executive order barring transgender people from military service and orders targeting law firms that had represented Trump's political adversaries.
In March 2025, a federal judge criticized Kambli after the administration deported Venezuelan immigrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act despite a judicial order to halt deportations.
Kambli joined Holtzman Vogel, a Washington, D.C., firm with close ties to the Trump administration, in June 2026. In a June interview with the publication Original Jurisdiction, Kambli said he had "definitely supported Trump personally since 2016."
At Holtzman Vogel, Kambli has filed amicus briefs supporting the DOJ's bid for access to Michigan's unredacted voter rolls and, with attorneys from America First Legal, a firm co-founded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, backed Iowa's 2024 immigration enforcement law at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The lawsuit
Chief petitioners Bob Simril and Juanita Swartwood filed the federal lawsuit Aug. 20, in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
The suit names City Auditor Simone Rede, Elections Division Manager Deborah Scroggin, Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott and Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read as defendants.
The plaintiffs want a court-ordered independent review of all gathered signatures in time for the petition to potentially make the November 2026 ballot. The complaint alleges city staff threw out hundreds of signature sheets using "arbitrary" standards for mismatched signatures or overwritten dates.
The initiative, formally the Portland Enhanced Community Safety Initiative, would have rerouted 25% of Portland Clean Energy Fund (PCEF) tax revenues to hire roughly 400 police officers. Portland voters approved the Clean Energy Fund in 2018 as a 1% surcharge on large retailers.
Elections officials determined petitioners had collected only 34,130 valid signatures out of more than 63,000 submitted. That fell more than 6,000 short of the 40,437 required, the Portland Mercury reported Aug. 4.
Money and opposition
The Portland Police Association (PPA) contributed nearly $800,000 to the campaign's political action committee, Community Safety Coalition PAC, which spent $1.4 million total.
Willamette Week reported the PAC now has roughly $36,000 cash on hand but about $27,000 in outstanding payments, leaving approximately $9,000 available. Safer Portland spokeswoman Elise Haas did not respond to Willamette Week's question about who is paying the legal bills.
Haas told Willamette Week the attorneys' backgrounds are beside the point. "This lawsuit is about ensuring Portland voters are not disenfranchised," she said. "The work history and client lists of the lawyers involved are irrelevant to the merits of the case and the need for a fair and accurate count of signatures."
Jenny Lee, who leads the opposition group Hands Off PCEF, told OPB on Thursday, Aug. 20, the lawsuit "works against our democracy by sowing distrust in our election officials."
No hearing date has been scheduled in the federal case. Holtzman Vogel attorney Anil Karia, who also represents the PPA, is listed alongside Kambli on the case.
