Marissa Madrigal remembers the first time a television camera was thrust in her face. She remembers a reporter coming to her house. She remembers the day the spotlight was shone on her and a hefty responsibility thrust on her shoulders. She never thought she would see this day, but she embraced it.
In September, Multnomah County Chair Jeff Cogen announced he was resigning his position after being dogged since the summer by revelations that he had an extramarital affair with a county employee. He also made another announcement. Under county rules, the county chair designates their replacement in the event they don’t fulfill their term. Madrigal, Cogen’s longtime chief of staff, would be succeeding him, Cogen announced.
Madrigal had worked closely with Cogen since 2006, when she helped manage his campaign for a seat on the Multnomah County Commission. She joined his staff after he was elected and kept her position as Cogen’s chief of staff when he became county chair in 2010. Working at the county, Madrigal earned a reputation as an able staffer, someone who didn’t seek the spotlight and whose behind-the-scene-presence shaped county policy.
Multnomah County is the state’s largest county government with a $1.5 billion budget and 5,600 employees serving 748,000 residents. It runs health clinics, senior services, courts, bridges and elections, along with other functions. People working at the county recall the scandal as a tumultuous time that threatened to tarnish its image and overshadow its work. They also recall Madrigal bringing grace to an ungraceful situation.
Madrigal is someone who has intertwined her life mission with that of the county. She is someone who makes phone calls directly on behalf of struggling people. She is a non-politician thrust into the role of a politician. A county chair of firsts, she holds the deep belief that politics can be a powerful force to change the lives of people, especially the most powerless. Although the scandal challenged her thinking about politics and politicians, she emerged from it with some of her most core convictions cemented.
“Can you spare a van? Can you spare a condo?” shouts a woman outside of the Union Gospel Mission as a crowd of people participating in the Day of Homelessness Awareness march stream past.
Madrigal is one of the few elected officials at the event. It’s cold out, and she’s wearing a navy blue coat and a colorful scarf. She stands at nearly 5 feet 5 inches. She has a shock of black hair that has a few strands of gray. At times, she wears a look of concern that might be from the cold.
During the march, she introduces herself to people simply as “Marissa,” leaving out that she holds one of the most powerful political positions in the region. She chats with local activist Cameron Whitten about exercise and the benefits of raw pineapple. Noticing that a high school student, who is shadowing a county staff member for the day, looks cold, Madrigal offers her gloves.
“Sorry,” she says to him when he refuses. “I didn’t mean to mom you.”
Madrigal lives in the Woodstock neighborhood in Southeast Portland with her husband and two children. It’s the first home they’ve ever owned. She is addicted to her smart phone. She is gluten-free, which she says makes her feel better, even though she realizes it makes her one of “those people.” She usually starts every day with a protein shake and spends time with her kids before arriving at the office around 8:30 or 9 a.m.
At the sixth floor offices of the county building, Madrigal jokingly says she instituted a rule that no one could burn food in the microwave. She has a friendly cooking rivalry with Communications Director David Austin. Her co-workers got her a grill as a birthday/housewarming gift.
Austin, who has known her since 2007 when he was a reporter at The Oregonian, describes her as a non-politician: someone who is authentic and doesn’t put themselves above others.
“I jokingly call her my younger older sister,” says Austin, who is older than Madrigal, but has still called her for parenting advice.
At 35, Madrigal is the youngest person to become county chair. She’s also the first Latina.
“If you look at political participation for the Latino community, to see someone in that position is an amazing legacy to leave,” says Daniel Ledezma, who chairs the board of directors for the Latino Network and recently took a position with the Governor’s office to focus on education and equity.
Marissa Dominique Madrigal was born in Los Angeles (L.A.) in 1978. At age 3, her father, a banker, was transferred, moving the family to Mexico City. Madrigal says the smells, sounds and language of the country are of her first memories. She didn’t know anyone when she moved there.
Her family moved back to L.A. before she started first grade.
Madrigal says she didn’t feel completely Mexican, nor completely American, and emerged from the experience as a more resilient person. She had to make new friends in new places, which she says made her more open to different people early in life.
She describes her childhood as “pretty great.” She attended Catholic school. She took piano lessons, tennis and gymnastics. She has an older sister, and a younger brother, with whom she fought with like cats and dogs. They’re now close. When she was 14, her family moved to Ridgefield, Washington.
As a child, Madrigal remembers her father bringing home The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She would become upset after reading in the papers about bear poaching or some other wrong. After reading about a boy working in a shoe factory in Mexico, her father got in touch with the reporter who wrote the story, and Madrigal helped raise money for the boy.
“She was a very globally empathetic child, which I think was very unusual,” says her mother, Elizabeth Madrigal. “But not in a wimpy way. She was a crusader.”
Elizabeth Madrigal describes her daughter as inquisitive and observant, and expected her to grow up to be a doctor or scientist. She recalls her daughter once saying to her, “That person is not a nice person. I don’t know why you’re friends with her.” Elizabeth Madrigal remembers thinking her daughter had a point.
“I don’t know if it was my family or upbringing, but I’ve always had a sense of fair and unfair, a sense that people and things and living things need to be protected from bad things,” says Marissa Madrigal.
Worried that she wasn’t being challenged enough in high school, her family enrolled her in a program that allowed her to begin college early. At age 16, she began attending Clark College in Vancouver.
Madrigal entered the University of Washington at age 18 and graduated two years later in 1998 with a degree in zoology. After spending a year in Seattle, she moved to Vancouver with no clear idea of where her life was headed. She worked at an office job, partied on the weekends and published a quarterly magazine called the “Radioactive Pickle” that included poetry and reviews of hardworking bands that got little attention in other periodicals.
“I was a fun person, but I guess it wasn’t a meaningful existence the way I feel like my life is now,” she says.
Madrigal says two events brought more focus to her life. The first was the birth of her daughter in 2003.
“Just the fact that I was a mom made it more difficult for me to get respect from people — an unwed mother, even though I was with the father,” she recalls. “Oh my gosh. People objected so strongly to it.”
Her family was priced out of their neighborhood in Southeast Portland and struggled financially. They ended up moving to a large apartment complex in Northeast Portland that was home to many immigrants. It had “giant, nasty centipedes,” and the landlord began raising the rent and evicting tenants.
Many tenants, says Madrigal, didn’t speak English, and she remembers hearing from one of her neighbors about a Vietnamese family that was put out on the street along with all their belongings.
Around the same time, Madrigal had another experience that put her on her current path: her first immersion in a political campaign. Working on a campaign helped her understand politics as a force that could improve the condition of marginalized people.
“I really began to feel that the people don’t have to put up with this,” she says. “We can do something about it. We can vote for better people. We can raise a ruckus.”
In 2004, Madrigal worked for Betty Sue Morris, a former Washington state legislator who was making a bid for one more term as Clark County commissioner. Morris was looking for a campaign manager and asked her friend Elizabeth Madrigal if her daughter knew anyone. Elizabeth Madrigal suggested her daughter.
After meeting for coffee, Morris, seeing that she was eager to learn and had good political instincts, hired Madrigal. Madrigal says she showed up for work at Morris’ basement and compensated for her lack of experience by simply doing what she was told. She did bookkeeping. She helped get a campaign float in a local parade. She got a helium tank and blew up balloons. She went to house parties. She recruited volunteers. On election day, Morris narrowly kept her seat.
Morris says that politics can be an emotional roller coaster, but Madrigal was steady throughout the campaign.
“Marissa’s got a really good sense of equilibrium; she doesn’t go off the deep end,” says Morris.
Madrigal worked on two more campaigns before she was referred to Jeff Cogen, who was running for a seat on the Multnomah County Commission. With Cogen, she latched on to a rising star that would take her to the top floor of the county’s offices.
The county level of government has a sometimes unnoticed, yet important role, providing services to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people living in the area through its clinics, mental health services and other functions. As the region still struggles with the aftermath of the Great Recession, it has its work cut out for it.
At times, it’s suffered from an image problem. Nearly a decade ago, the county was mired in the “Mean Girls” era, a dysfunctional period that was marked by an ongoing and very public spat with commissioners and then-County Chair Dianne Linn.
In 2006, Cogen was elected to a seat on the County Commission along with Ted Wheeler, who ousted Linn as chair. Their election was seen as setting a new tone and direction for the county. Four years later, Cogen was appointed county chair after Wheeler resigned to become state treasurer. Later that year, Cogen was elected in a landslide to a full term.
Cogen used his time at the county to help open a one-stop center for survivors of domestic violence, a mental health crisis treatment center, secure funding for the county library, as well as other accomplishments.
Affable and well-liked, Cogen enjoyed a harmonious relationship with the Multnomah County Commission and seemed destined for higher office until news broke last summer that he had an affair with a health policy adviser, forcing his resignation.
Austin, the county’s spokesperson, says that the scandal was demoralizing for county employees who worried that their work was being overshadowed.
“When that scandal gets mentioned, people see the county logo; they see us,” he says.
Described by people close to her as smart, knowledgeable, collegial and trustworthy, Madrigal helped restore calm and confidence to the county. Before taking over for her old boss, Madrigal had been a quiet, yet sterling, presence.
“A lot of her accomplishments will go unsung because she’s that type of problem solver,” says Ledezma, who has worked with Madrigal on issues overlapping both the county and city governments.
Felisa Hagins, political director at Service Employees International Union 49, says that Madrigal has been particularly attentive to the needs of immigrants and low-income workers. Hagins recalls telling Madrigal about a check-cashing scam that was ripping off immigrants. She recalls Madrigal reacting rapidly, reaching out to immigrant groups and the sheriff’s office to stop the scam.
“I think people describe her as a ‘non-politician’ because she’s the politician that we all want to have,” says Hagins. “She’s kind of a badass. She’s going to get stuff done and not take credit for it.”
“Marissa is a true believer in the mission of county government, which is about taking care of people,” says Mayor Charlie Hales. “She’s a very good partner. She’s willing to reconsider the status quo, and to roll up her sleeves, with the goal of making things work better for everybody.”
For example, after the recession hit, the Oregon Food Bank was strained from increased demand from hungry people. Madrigal came up with the idea of using vacant county land to grow fresh vegetables, which could then be passed on to the Oregon Food Bank. The program called, C.R.O.P.S. (Community Reaps Our Produce and Shares), is now in its second year.
Multnomah County Commissioner Judy Shiprack says she has worked with Madrigal on a range of issues from public safety to the Sellwood Bridge. Madrigal’s past experience running political campaigns has also made her more effective at the county, she says.
“She understands that the county works with substantive issues in the bright light of public opinion, and it requires some savvy, which she’s got,” says Shiprack.
Madrigal, says Shiprack, was particularly helpful in hammering out a new policy with the sheriff to release undocumented immigrants held for low-level offenses, preventing federal immigration officials from deporting them.
“I would not describe her as just a caretaker,” says Multnomah County Commissioner Diane McKeel, noting that Madrigal has been very hands-on as the county begins its budgeting process.
“You can’t just care-take that office,” adds Shiprack. The functions of county government, she says, are so broad and complex that it can’t be passively managed.
Indeed, Madrigal does not treat her job as a nine-to-five. Austin says that Madrigal will call her during the weekend to ask about something she saw in the news. Cogen remembers one time Madrigal went out of her way to connect a homeless woman she met with housing and other resources. When a reporter mentions that he has an elderly neighbor facing eviction, she offers to connect him with senior services and later sends a text message following up about it.
“In a political office, you deal with policy a lot, but you also hear sad stories from people who are really struggling,” says Cogen. “The truth is, for a lot of people, they are easy to ignore. Those aren’t voters. They aren’t people who are going to contribute to the campaign.” Madrigal, he says, does not ignore struggling people.
Last January, Madrigal got a call from an old friend who was having trouble with his landlord. His mother and his cat had died, and he was struggling with mental illness. His apartment had a severe mold problem. His friends helped get a lawyer and an inspector, but his landlord retaliated, putting a fake eviction notice on the door. Worried about becoming homeless, he killed himself.
“His story is a reason why we need to continue doing everything we’re doing at the county,” says Madrigal, who notes that her friend had access to resources many do not.
And the county could be doing more, she says. For instance, mental health funding only reaches 30 percent of the need, and it shows, she says. Madrigal also says that county departments operate as “silos” concentrated on their mission. However, many social problems, says Madrigal, don’t confine themselves to the scope of the county’s departments, and she has tried to foster a more collaborative approach among them. One issue she’s particularly concerned with is making sure the the county communicates with non-English speakers.
“I think a lot of political people talk about, let’s end homelessness or fix mental health, and they talk about those things like they’re these silver bullets,” says Madrigal. “And people are just more complicated than that, and we have to do all of it, and we can’t just pat ourselves on the back and add more shelter beds because that’s not what’s going to give people a healthy chance at reaching their potential.”
Madrigal says that she might run for office when her kids are older, but she’s reluctant to ever work for a politician again. Madrigal explains that when you work for a politician, you lend your reputation to them, and it’s clear that the scandal has had an impact on her.
“A lot of people get into politics for ego, and that is a destructive force,” says Madrigal.
It’s been nearly a decade since Madrigal worked on her first campaign, which taught her the possibilities of politics. The circumstances that swept her into the most powerful position at the county underscored for her another dimension of that lesson: It matters who is at the levers of power.
“For me, what happened with Jeff is a huge setback in my idea of what was possible,” she says. “I thought we were on the right track, and I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching to think is it possible to have good people in politics that will be ethical and will do the right thing? I think it’s possible, it’s just not everyone, unfortunately.”
In May, a new county chair will be elected, and Madrigal is not running for the position. When she steps down she will be taking a job as a manager in the county’s human resources department, where she will work on the finer details of the county’s operations.
“She really smoothed the waters and made sure that the work at the county continues, and its employees could exhale,” says Gail Shibley, who, as chief of staff to Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, has worked closely with Madrigal. “That said, everyone knows that things are going to change again.”
It seems fitting for Madrigal.
“The only constant in my life has been change,” she says. “My experience is that I’ve learned to accept and move with the change. Life happens. Good things and bad things are going to happen in our lives, and the only thing we can control is how we as a community respond to it.”
