PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — In the past 40 years, there have been only two leaders in the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office. But that will change this year.

Current DA Rod Underhill will retire at the end of the year. Now, the two candidates who each worked in the DA’s office face off Tuesday, and each represents different ideologies about the criminal justice system.

Ethan Knight and Mike Schmidt took different paths to this moment. Knight works for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and has prosecuted high profile cases like Mohammad Mohammad, the man caught trying to set off a bomb at Portland’s Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Schmidt was appointed by Gov. Kate Brown to lead the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, looking at data and programs to improve the state’s justice system.

“I believe this community needs more than ever a steady hand,” Knight said. “I’ve handled a number of significant cases and virtually every type of crime in state and federal court.”

Schmidt takes a different tack. “I think we need major reform in our criminal justice system,” he said. “I’ve worked on things like how can we decrease our prison usage, because building more prisons means less money for things like education and healthcare.”

They differ greatly on Measure 11 and mandatory prison sentences.

“I don’t think mandatory sentencing makes sense,” Schmidt said. “It way over-swung the pendulum to the right, it took power away from judges to decide what the sentence should be.”

“I do believe cases like murder, rape, serious sex abuse cases, there sound be a clear defined prison sentence for those kinds of cases,” Knight said.

Knight disagrees with how the Oregon legislature and Brown dismantled the death penalty in the last session.

“There’s an honest debate about the death penalty,” Knight said. “We rarely use it in its current form. It doesn’t really exist anymore and that’s really a choice for the voters.”

Schmidt opposes the death penalty. “I fundamentally don’t believe the death penalty is good policy.”

Whoever wins will face some internal issues in the District Attorney’s Office. To make the office welcoming and inclusive, employees in August 2019 asked to have the pictures of the men who held the office over the last century removed from the lobby. All the men are white.

“What you need to do in trying to make sure you run the office as well as you can is to bring in diverse staff, diverse employees, so you have a more reflective office of what we have here in the county,” Schmidt said.

Knight said, “It’s a different time than it was 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago, and I think anyone who runs that office needs to be aware that that office speaks on behalf of the community.”

Deciding who to vote for by checking the endorsements is tough.

Schmidt is supported by the Multnomah County Sheriff Mike Reese and five members of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

Knight is endorsed by the Portland Police Officers Union, the current DA and the union that represents the lawyers in the DA’s office.