Skip to main contentHOW MUCH?
$471.48
WHO GOT IT?
Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran
WHO GAVE IT?
Former City Commissioner Amanda Fritz
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
In what will be one of the marquee matchups of the May primary election, Meieran, an emergency room doctor, is running for Multnomah County chair against two colleagues on the county board of commissioners: Lori Stegmann and Jessica Vega Pederson. A fourth contender, Shannon Singleton, is a former nonprofit executive now working for Gov. Kate Brown.
It’s an unusually strong field, and with county elections for the first time operating under campaign finance limits ($500 per donor), who gives to each candidate takes on added importance.
Fritz, a former psychiatric nurse who retired this year after three terms on the Portland City Council, served as the council’s conscience and its leading advocate for the homeless during her tenure, spending years on the relocation of the city-sanctioned camp Right 2 Dream Too. She says the choice among the four candidates for county chair is an easy one for her: Meieran’s demands for a more urgent response to the homelessness crisis on the streets convinced Fritz to empty her PAC account. “Commissioner Meieran sees homelessness through the lens of the public health emergency that it is, and she has specific plans for what to do about it,” Fritz says. “I think she’s by far the best candidate for the job.”