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Former state Rep. Akasha Lawrence Spence (D-Portland) will seek an appointment to the Oregon Senate being vacated this fall by Sen. Ginny Burdick (D-Portland).
Burdick confirmed to WW over the weekend that she’ll step down from the Senate District 18 seat after this year’s legislative sessions conclude. By Wednesday’s print edition, Lawrence Spence’s name had surfaced as a likely contender to serve the remainder of Burdick’s term, which runs through 2025.
Lawrence Spence, 32, runs a Portland real estate development company that helps small business owners purchase their properties. She served nearly all of 2020 in the Oregon House, after being appointed to a seat vacated by Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland) in a brief bid for secretary of state.
If appointed to this seat, she would become the fourth Black lawmaker currently serving in the Oregon Senate.
Lawrence Spence says her year in the Oregon House showed her how much inequity remains in the state.
“Until we have embedded in our processes the equity that is needed to move all Oregonians forward,” she says, “we will continue to see families negotiate between paying the rent and buying groceries.”
The seat will be appointed this fall by the Multnomah and Clackamas county commissions. Lawrence Spence already has the backing of Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.
“Rep. Lawrence Spence came in and championed a historic $62 million COVID relief fund for Oregon’s Black community, started a workgroup to craft the most comprehensive Cannabis Equity Bill in the nation, and helped make the connection to state tax revenue reform as a racial justice issue,” Hardesty said in a statement. “We need more racial justice-centered policymaking, so I enthusiastically support Rep. Lawrence Spence returning to the Legislature.”
In confirming her intentions to seek the Senate appointment, Lawrence Spence recalled the biblical story of Jonah, who ran from God’s calling only to be swallowed by a whale. Lawrence Spence said she, too, had fled her early political work in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“Despite all that running, I still ended up in the belly of the whale,” she says. “That work is not yet done. I believe that I have been called to do this work.”