He also might find a potent new funding base now that donors who backed former New York Times columnist Nick Kristof find themselves without a candidate. Her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, state Treasurer Tobias Read, brings his own strengths to the race. She has collected progressive victories like pelts, showing a flair for muscling through bold bills and cobbling together unlikely coalitions. In nine years, almost no one has guided the trundling pioneer wagon of Oregon governance as powerfully as Kotek. It’s a race she should be well positioned to dominate. She will step down as both a state representative and House speaker in order to focus on a new challenge: becoming Oregon’s next governor. When tomorrow arrives, Kotek will wheel the final items out of a Capitol office she’s occupied for nearly a decade (she jokes about the expired bottles of aspirin that have piled up). “I’m only a state rep for one more day,” she tells the shelter manager, catching herself before making pledges of action that have become second nature. “For me, that true north is public service to make things better for people.”īut before she can set a plan into motion, something dawns on Kotek. “It’s dangerous to do this work if you do not have a North Star,” Kotek says. Tina Kotek, left, tours the homeless shelter Arbor Lodge in North Portland with Sara Newcom on Jan. She is the longest-tenured speaker of the House in Oregon history, a housing obsessive and just the woman this Portland facility would want on its side. Storage containers would help stretch cramped conditions. What else does the shelter need, she wants to know. When the tour is complete, Kotek gets down to business. Related: Oregon Democratic candidate for governor Tina Kotek answers OPB’s questions Kotek confides to a staffer she had to pressure Multnomah County officials for these. She is most excited about what recently sprang up in the parking lot: a dozen tidy, single-bed sleeping pods - mobile bedrooms that offer their occupants a measure of precious privacy. A small dog, not so different from Kotek’s own, wanders past, and she cannot resist addressing it in the high pitch reserved for pets or babies. “Amazing,” she remarks of the shelter’s largely supportive neighbors. “Yessss!” Kotek exclaims after an employee points to one resident, sleeping on a nearby cot, who will soon move into an apartment after 15 years on the street. Kotek scans a scuffed floor dotted with cots, passes stained sofas, and tours a pantry passing out coffee and bagels through the same window where pharmacists once dispensed pills. Today, a warm January morning, it still looks like a gutted pharmacy. Kotek, D-Portland, served as speaker from 2013-2022 and resigned to focus on her campaign for governor. Tina Kotek on her last day in office as the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives, Jan. She stopped by with a pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, and, from her perch as one of Oregon’s most influential politicians, personally found $5 million that will soon transform the building into a more fitting space for her city’s rapidly growing homeless population. Kotek has watched this North Portland shelter in a former Rite-Aid since it opened months before.
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