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Elaine Cogan, a longtime civic leader and lobbyist in Portland, died Dec. 18. She was 92 years old.
Cogan was a mover and shaker in Portland politics for years, known best perhaps for her consulting and communications work. She started a consulting business with her husband, Arnold Cogan, in the 1970s, and within the decade they’d become a power couple for political and communications consulting.
She coached numerous local politicians on leadership skills and how to make compelling speeches. Mike Lindberg, who served as a city commissioner in the late 1970s, says Cogan was everywhere, and tireless.
“I just don’t know if I’ve worked with anyone that had Elaine’s inexhaustible energy. She was just relentless,” Lindberg says. “It was sort of beyond the pale. She didn’t get captured in a point in time. She just kept learning, reading and listening to people.”
Cogan and her husband ran the consulting business for 40 years before handing over the reins to business partners in 2015.
Cogan also chaired various city and state boards and commissions. She was the first woman to chair the city of Portland’s economic development agency in 1972 and 1973, then called the Portland Development Commission (now called Prosper Portland), and from 1975 to 1979 led the state’s Commission on Liquor Control, a commission that made recommendations on the agency’s role, rules, and whether or not it should even exist.
Cogan for a time also served as the president of the League of Women Voters, was an active member of Neveh Shalom Synagogue, where for a time she served as its boards’ first female president., and was a columnist for both The Oregonian and the The Oregon Journal and hosted a weekly talk show on KGW. She co-wrote three books on leadership and planning, one of which was titled You Can Talk to (Almost) Anyone About (Almost) Anything.
“I just always wondered,” Lindberg says, “where did she get the hours in the day to do the things she did?”
Correction: A previous version of this story said that Cogan in the 1970s served as the chair of the state’s Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission. That’s incorrect. Cogan chaired a commission, called the Commission on Liquor Control, which made recommendations about rule changes at the state agency. WW regrets the error.