A former Multnomah County commissioner wants her old job back. Serena Cruz, who represented District 2 from 1999 through 2006 and later served as the county's chief operating officer, is now one of seven candidates competing for the open seat representing North and Northeast Portland, with homelessness and the county's strained budget topping her list of priorities.
The seat became available after Commissioner Shannon Singleton decided to run for county chair instead of seeking reelection, according to oregonlive.com. That chair's race has drawn much of the county's political attention this cycle, even as the District 2 contest has quietly become one of the most crowded on the ballot. Cruz was the first Latina elected to the county board during her original tenure, and she went on to work in county government again starting in 2021, when she was selected as chief operating officer, a post she held until resigning in 2024.
Since then, Cruz has run Adelante Impact, a consulting practice she founded to advise government and nonprofit leaders, according to the Portland Mercury. She has reported raising about $62,000 in campaign contributions, per oregonlive.com's reporting. Cruz is one of seven candidates on the ballot, a field that according to the same report also includes Nabil Zaghloul, Nathan Ong Norris, Bri Williams, Herman Greene, Bruce Broussard and Anthony Robertson.
A Seven-Way Contest Under a New Voting System
This year's election marks a procedural first for Multnomah County. The Nov. 3 election will be the county's debut using ranked-choice voting, with voters able to rank up to six candidates, the outlet reports. KATU's candidate interview with Cruz addressed homelessness and priority-based budgeting, part of the station's broader look at how she is staking out her position among the crowded field.
Homelessness sits at the center of Cruz's pitch to voters. She has called it her top policy priority, telling oregonlive.com it is her top policy priority, particularly for people facing chronic homelessness, severe mental illness or addiction. She has proposed adding what she calls a stabilizing-housing option, pairing shelter with intensive services for people dealing with those overlapping issues.
Homelessness Numbers Frame the Debate
The scale of the problem is stark. A tri-county point-in-time count found 12,034 people experiencing homelessness across the region on January 22, 2025, a 61% jump from the 2023 count, according to a report prepared by Portland State University's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative for Clackamas County, Multnomah County and the City of Portland Homeless Services Department. Multnomah County itself accounted for the largest share, with 10,526 people counted, representing 9,696 households. The county's report notes that changes in how administrative data were incorporated substantially boosted this year's unsheltered tally compared with prior counts.
The same count asked people what might have helped them stay housed. Cruz has said her first-year goal, if elected, would be to bring the city, the county, Metro, service providers and people receiving services to the same table around a coordinated public-health approach, according to KATU.
Preschool for All and the Budget Squeeze
Beyond homelessness, Cruz has pointed to Preschool for All as both a family-support program and an economic development tool, arguing it could help build a future workforce and make the county more attractive to workers with children, per oregonlive.com's reporting. The county preliminarily offered 7,460 Preschool for All seats for the 2026-27 school year, an allocation that came in 65% higher than its 4,500-seat growth target, according to a county media release.
That growth comes as the county grapples with a widening budget gap. The county Budget Office has projected a $10.5 million General Fund shortfall for fiscal year 2027, growing to $33.8 million by fiscal year 2030, according to the Portland Civic Lab voter guide. Cruz has described the structural deficit somewhat differently, telling oregonlive.com in an opinion piece that it is projected to grow from $11 million to $33 million by 2030. To address the gap, she has said she would push to restore priority-based budgeting, an approach KATU reports she favors for ranking county spending against outcomes.
The filing window for county offices, including District 2, ran from June 3 through Aug. 25 at 5 p.m., according to Multnomah County's elections office. With ranked-choice voting debuting alongside a seven-candidate field, District 2 voters in North and Northeast Portland face a notably different ballot than in past county elections, one where Cruz is betting her record from two decades in county government will stand out.
