The Board of County Commissioners on Dec. 15 declared the commission seat representing District 3 in Southeast Portland vacant and called for an election for May 2023 to replace Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson, who was elected Multnomah County Chair on Nov. 8, 2022.
Candidates for the May primary have until March 7, 2023, to file to run for the office.
Vega Pederson’s designee, longtime Oregon legislator Diane Rosenbaum, will serve as the interim commissioner beginning Jan. 1, 2023. Rosenbaum will continue to serve until May if a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.
If no candidate wins more than 50%, the contest will be decided during the November 2023 general election. (Ranked choice voting will not yet be in effect.) The winner will serve the remainder of the District 3 term ending in December 2024.
Rosenbaum has a bachelor’s degree from Reed College and is a retired Central Office technician for Qwest. She represented Southeast Portland in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1998 to 2009. She replaced Kate Brown in the Oregon Senate after Brown became Secretary of State, and was reelected to the Senate in 2012. She served as Senate majority leader, but did not seek re-election in 2016.
“In picking Diane Rosenbaum for my designee six years ago, we had no idea this was going to happen,’’ Vega Pederson said at the Board meeting. “But she is well able to step into this role after her leadership in the Legislature.”