Skip to main content
One of the candidates faces a slightly unusual situation in the May 16 election for the District 3 seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.
That race features three candidates: community activist Ana del Rocío; Albert Kaufman, the owner of a small marketing agency; and Portland Public Schools board member Julia Brim-Edwards.
The three are vying to serve the remainder of the term former Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson won in 2020. Vega Pederson was subsequently elected county chair in November 2022. (Her designated successor, former state Sen. Diane Rosenbaum [D-Portland] is occupying the District 3 seat now but not seeking election.)
Vega Pederson had to resign her District 3 seat when she won the chair’s race because of a provision in the Oregon Constitution that prohibits any elected official from holding “more than one lucrative office at the same time.”
Last month, WW endorsed Brim-Edwards for the District 3 spot. That led some readers to ask whether she would be eligible to continue serving on the PPS board if she were to win the county race.
The answer: She can and hopes to do so.
That’s because service on school boards is voluntary, i.e., it is not a “lucrative office.” School board members win election to the Legislature relatively often.
One recent example: state Rep. Ricki Ruiz (D-Gresham), who won election to the Oregon House in 2020 while an elected member of the board of the Reynolds School District. Ruiz served in both capacities until February 2022 when he left the Reynolds board.
Brim-Edwards won election to her third term on the PPS board in 2021 for a term that runs through June 2025. In one of the interesting subtexts of the county race, three of her current colleagues on the PPS board have endorsed del Rocío and three have endorsed Brim-Edwards. Brim-Edwards says she nonetheless plans to finish her term at PPS if she wins the county seat.
“I have some priority items that I want to see through the next two years,” Brim-Edwards says.