BikePortland.org’s Jonathan Maus met up with new city council candidate Jim Middaugh yesterday, to check out his bike cred—and see how he’d stack up as a city commissioner. Maus’ conclusion?

What impressed me about Middaugh is his breadth of experience on a range of issues that are complementary, but not solely focused on bikes. In fact, for most of our chat we didn’t even mention bikes or the bike culture at all.

With Middaugh, it seems we have the opportunity to elect a city commissioner that can broaden bike issues far beyond the “Four E’s” of engineering, enforcement, encouragement and education.

If we really want to take bikes to the next level here in Portland, we’ve got to talk about them in a larger context than just bike lanes and Bridge Pedal; and it seems Middaugh is precisely the type of guy that can help us do that.

There’s a lot more, and great photos, here.

Meanwhile, Middaugh is scrambling to gather up 1,000 $5 contributions and signatures by January 31—which is just two weeks away. You can find him gathering contributions on Sunday night at Lucky Lab in SE (915 SE Hawthorne), with U.S. Representative Peter Defazio, from 5:30 to 7:30.