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Planned Parenthood of the Columbia-Willamette is expected to choose its new CEO at a board meeting tonight. Earlier this year, after contentious contract negotiations with the Service Employees International Union, the non-profit's CEO, David Greenberg left his $196,000 a-year-post.
As WW reported earlier this week, one of two finalists to replace Greenberg is Judy Peppler, who was until 2011 the CEO of the telecommunications company Qwest Oregon.
Until she left Oregon that year to enter a training program for executives transitioning into public education, Peppler was a registered Republican. She was also a fundraiser for GOP presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 and Oregon GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Dudley in 2010.
That past, and in particular an incident during the Dudley campaign, has some local Planned Parenthood supporters questioning whether she's the right person for the job.
Former legislator Jane Cease, is one of those skeptics. Cease says she took issue with remarks Peppler made at a 2010 luncheon at the Portland Art Museum given for Portland State University's Center for Women Politics and Policy.
Because the lunch had more than 600 attendees, Planned Parenthood Advocates demonstrated outside the Art Museum, blasting Dudley for being "faux-choice."
Cease says Peppler took issue with those protestors at the luncheon, stating that "she wished the people weren't outside picketing Chris Dudley because he was actually pro-choice," Cease tells WW. "Many of us were booing and hissing because we knew he was on record the other way."
WWeek 2015