Reynolds' evasions trigger District 17 challenge

Neighbor files to call attention to senator's handling of needle handout bill

Autumn Sharp became a candidate—to her surprise as much as anyone’s—when neighbors called for someone to send a message to District 17 State Sen. Lisa Reynolds.

Autumn Sharp went to Couch Park Friday morning to talk to some friends and promptly became a candidate for the Oregon Senator District 17 seat held by Lisa Reynolds. The friends who talked her into challenging Reynolds were with Friends of Couch Park, which had worked for regulation of drug paraphernalia handouts of the kind that had occurred regularly in the neighborhood.

Reynolds had originally supported the measure, Senate Bill 1573, but she stunned the Couch Park group and another local organization, Stadiumhood Neighbors, by killing the bill in the committee she chaired. Reynolds blamed neighbors for being unwilling to compromise, but leaders of the groups said she never gave them a chance to consider the changes, changes they would have accepted had been able to.

Reynolds wasn’t eager to explain herself to her West Portland constituents. She went out of her way to evade KPTV’s Pete Ferryman, who attempted to get the senator tell her side on air.

“It didn’t feel like Senator Reynolds worked with us,” Friends of Couch Park Chair Kara Colley told KPTV. “It mostly felt like we were ignored for a year and a half.”

Northwest District Association President Todd Zarnitz sent Reynolds a letter requesting a meeting regarding “a deep sense of frustration within the neighborhood regarding how this bill was handled. The community feels that you unilaterally prevented the bill from advancing out of committee without consulting your constituents or providing an adequate explanation.

“This discrepancy between public statements and the community’s experience has caused significant confusion and broken trust.”

Reynolds’ promise to work with the neighbors in the next legislative session, did not quell the resentment. The Democratic incumbent’s lack of a challenger in the May primary troubled Friends of Couch Park. Would anyone step forward, if only to highlight her handling of this issue?

Sharp soon broke the silence with a yes, and others quickly ponied up her $85 filing fee. Before the day ended, she had registered the necessary papers.

Asked why she was running, she told the NW Examiner, “To put fear in the heart of someone who needs to do the job in the right way.”

‘I know I won’t win, but lying makes me really mad, and if I lied to the public and then hid in my office, I’d get fired,” she wrote that evening. “I want to at least make her cake walk a little less cakey this spring.”

The bill itself is not that controversial. It does not ban needle handouts; merely prohibits them in proximity of schools. But partisanship is at play. Gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan co-sponsored the bill, which was supported by every Republican senator—while every Democrat opposed it—after an extraordinary move bringing it out of committee. The question is, which party will get the credit if and when it’s eventually adopted.

“Lying makes me angry,” said Autumn Sharp, in her first—and fully unscripted—campaign statement.