The NW Examiner endorses Sharon Meieran for Multnomah County chair.
Our September cover story on Meieran centered on the fact that she is the only candidate who has dug deeply into the county’s dysfunction or developed a coherent plan to reverse course. For the eight years she served on the commission, she saw how the agencies and nonprofits benefiting from the easy flow of unaccountable funding protected that status quo. Meanwhile, two successive chairs blocked reform or even the creation of an adequate record-keeping system.
While quibbling over what constitutes a plan may not move voters, a story might be persuasive.
The five-member Multnomah County Board voted 3-2 to hire Nathaniel Vergow to run the county’s Homeless Services Department. For 10 years, Vergow headed the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which this year was found to have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to a federal lawsuit and dismantling of the program.
Yet, Multnomah County Commissioner and chair candidate Julia Brim-Edwards provided the pivotal third vote to bring Vergow here.
Vergow blames our homeless crisis on high rents. In an interview published by The Oregonian/Oregon Live, he did not mention addiction or mental health as factors. In framing the problem in this way, Vergow gave himself a permanent pass in that housing affordability is a distant hope and not under his control.
Julia Brim-Edwards cannot be expected to transform Multnomah County or its approach to homelessness. Still, she would be better than the other candidate in the race, Shannon Singleton, a longtime social service agency executive endorsed by the four Democratic Socialists of America members on the Portland City Council.
Put Meieran on top of your ballot and Brim-Edwards in second place.
Candidates Forum Oct. 20
A Multnomah County Chair Candidate Forum on Solutions to Unsheltered Homelessness will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 4:30-6 p.m., at First Baptist Church, 909 SW 11th Ave. In addition to the three candidates, former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber will serve on a panel of experts. The moderator will be Blair Best of KGW TV.
The event is organized by the Homeless Solutions Coalition. To register, visit Eventbrite registration link
The Examiner says” “Put Meieran on top of your ballot and Brim-Edwards in second place.”
In a ranked choice system, that is sound advice. All voters supporting Meieran should rank Julia Brim-Edwards second.
Why? In the event that Meieran is eliminated in the first round, ranking only Sharon means your vote no longer counts, and essentially helps DSA Council member-endorsed Shannon Singleton.
And the same applies to supporters of Julia Brim-Edwards. You should rank Sharon second to avoid inadvertently helping Singleton in the event that Julia is eliminated in the first round.
The bottom line is that ranking a second candidate after your first choice absolutely does not harm your first choice.
And not ranking a second preference means that you may help someone that you absolutely do not want to be the next County Chair.
"Vergow blames our homeless crisis on high rents. In an interview published by The Oregonian/Oregon Live, he did not mention addiction or mental health as factors. In framing the problem in this way, Vergow gave himself a permanent pass in that housing affordability is a distant hope and not under his control."
That is a charitable interpretation of Vergow's beliefs about the root cause of the area's homeless crisis. However, in Portland today one should not attribute to mere cynicism what can more properly be blamed on ideology. Vergow has spent over a decade inhabiting the ecosystem of nonprofits, activists, bureaucrats and elected officials who view homelessness as a social justice problem and the homeless as victims of society. The last thing they want to talk about is the possibility that the homeless might bear some responsibility for their plight.