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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
In a largely routine assignment of chairs and members to interim Senate committees that Senate President Rob Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) released Oct. 10, one name stood out: Sen. Mark Meek (D-Gladstone) is no longer chair or even a member of the Senate Committee on Finance and Revenue.
Meek, whose Senate District 20 covers Gladstone, parts of Oregon City, and Jennings Lodge, is a moderate whose 2022 race was the closest Senate contest in the metro area. In that race, he narrowly defeated former longtime Republican lawmaker Bill Kennemer by just eight-tenths of 1%.
That result in a purple district showed Meek he had a narrow ideological band in which to operate. During the 2025 session, he harshly criticized his fellow Democrats’ initial transportation funding bill, which would have raised about $14 billion in taxes and fees over the next decade.
Meek’s fiery rhetoric and his vow to vote against that bill led Wagner to boot him off the Joint Transportation Committee and take Meek’s seat himself in order to move the bill to the Senate floor (it never got a vote there).
After the regular session ended, Meek took the unusual step of going public with a demand that Wagner step down as Senate president, the most powerful position in the Legislature. Wagner ignored that request.
In September, Meek then voted for a much slimmer version of the transportation funding bill in a special session. He says he strongly supports that bill, which passed, and will have nothing to do with Republicans’ effort to refer it to voters. But Meek’s “yes” vote on the package did nothing to mend his break with the Senate president, as Wagner’s decision Friday showed. In Salem, gavels mean power, and the chairmanship of the Finance and Revenue Committee, which Wagner gave to Sen. Anthony Broadman (D-Bend), is considered a plum assignment.
It is uncommon in the go-along-to-get-along world of Oregon Democratic politics for a lawmaker to publicly challenge the presiding officer of his or her legislative chamber.
When it has happened, however, it’s paradoxically been something of a career booster. In 2019, then-state Sen. Shemia Fagan (D-Happy Valley) urged colleagues to replace Senate President Peter Courtney (D-Salem). Fagan’s plea fell short, but the courage she showed helped elevate her to the secretary of state’s office in 2020 (Willamette Week’s reporting on her moonlighting for a troubled cannabis firm cost her that position in 2023). Similarly, then-state Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Happy Valley) pushed in 2021 to replace then-House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland). And while that challenge failed, it boosted Bynum’s stature and may have indirectly helped her win Oregon’s 5th Congressional District in 2024.
There’s no guarantee that civil disobedience will benefit Meek’s career in the same way, although Wagner did award him a consolation prize: the chairmanship of the newly created Senate Interim Committee on Commerce and General Government.
Meek confirmed Wagner had called him with news that he was losing his prized gavel, but Meek declined to comment further on their relationship.
Connor Radnovich, Wagner’s spokesman, says the Senate president has no comment on taking Meek’s gavel, which is consistent with Senate practice.
