I picked up a newspaper the other day and read the same news story I've read again and again for the past several years: the Governor of Oregon, the Chair of the Multnomah County Commission and the Mayor of Portland were in disagreement on how to address the greatest humanitarian crisis in modern Oregon history in the state's most populated county.
I really like Nick Kristof, but he totally blew it in a way that Oregonians won’t forget. About the only way he would ever get traction would be to miraculously solve the homeless crisis!
“I don’t have perfect solutions. These are hard issues,” he told reporters Wednesday. “But I do have a willingness to tackle them, and I don’t think the political class here has been able to resolve them either.”
Instead, Kristof said, he understands what is happening to people at the grassroot level and has seen what has happened to people during the pandemic.
“I had a dear friend who was homeless who overdosed 17 times, and I was terrified for her and her young child,” he said. “And there are people like that all around the state.”
If elected, Kristof said, he would rely on his skillset honed as a journalist.
“I think maybe the most effective thing a governor can use to bring about change — and I think Tom McCall, in some way, reflected this as a former journalist — it’s an ability to articulate an agenda for the state,” he said. “To rally people behind it, to use the bully pulpit and the communication ability we tend to cultivate in journalism and then use that to bring people together and build a consensus to address some of these problems.”
Not arguing he would be a good governor. I would have voted for him. But trying to claim you are a resident of Oregon when you had voted just the year before using an address in NY is not a good look.
Could this be a job for Nick Kristof? I’m hoping he will run next term.
I really like Nick Kristof, but he totally blew it in a way that Oregonians won’t forget. About the only way he would ever get traction would be to miraculously solve the homeless crisis!
Nick Kristin interview:
“I don’t have perfect solutions. These are hard issues,” he told reporters Wednesday. “But I do have a willingness to tackle them, and I don’t think the political class here has been able to resolve them either.”
Instead, Kristof said, he understands what is happening to people at the grassroot level and has seen what has happened to people during the pandemic.
“I had a dear friend who was homeless who overdosed 17 times, and I was terrified for her and her young child,” he said. “And there are people like that all around the state.”
If elected, Kristof said, he would rely on his skillset honed as a journalist.
“I think maybe the most effective thing a governor can use to bring about change — and I think Tom McCall, in some way, reflected this as a former journalist — it’s an ability to articulate an agenda for the state,” he said. “To rally people behind it, to use the bully pulpit and the communication ability we tend to cultivate in journalism and then use that to bring people together and build a consensus to address some of these problems.”
Not arguing he would be a good governor. I would have voted for him. But trying to claim you are a resident of Oregon when you had voted just the year before using an address in NY is not a good look.