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The first batch of votes to roll in on Tuesday night show County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson with a modest lead over fellow Commissioner Sharon Meieran in the race for Multnomah County chair.
Vega Pederson has 52.6% of the early vote, while Meieran has 47.6%.
A 6,000-vote margin is not insurmountable, but it does leave Meieran, an emergency room doctor, playing catch-up, especially since more liberal voters tend to vote late.
Whoever wins will take the place of departing County Chair Deborah Kafoury.
The chair has immense power across Portland because whoever sits at the helm has near-total authority over how the county spends its homeless dollars, a rapidly growing number thanks to a new tax on high-income earners and businesses that goes to housing people and keeping them housed.
Vega Pederson has long been a close political ally of Kafoury, touting a “housing first” approach to combatting homelessness and keeping a close grip on the Joint Office of Homeless Services, which is a city-county agency but is controlled almost entirely by the chair. (Vega Pederson was endorsed by Kafoury and fellow commissioner Susheela Jayapal.)
Meieran, on the other hand, has been a longtime critic of the county’s approach to addressing homelessness and has advocated for more alternative shelters, often to no avail. She’s sparred with Kafoury and Vega Pederson over the years, sometimes nastily.
In recent weeks, Meieran and Vega Pederson both pledged support for Mayor Ted Wheeler’s aspirational plans to build six massive sanctioned campsites and implement a ban on sidewalk camping. That was an important political play for both candidates: Nearly 8 in 10 Portlanders support the mayor’s plans despite pushback from housing experts and advocates who say it’s misguided and unkind.
In short: Both candidates pledged to offer both rhetorical and pocketbook support for the city’s efforts to get Portlanders off the street.
