Sitting ducks

The Oregon secretary of state, Shemia Fagan, is wasting no time throwing her weight around in her new gig. Today she's got a report out that is highly critical of the state's health and human services agencies for not getting their act together promptly when Covid was raging through nursing homes last year.

Executive Summary: A bunch of helpless seniors died while the bureaucrats held meetings.

It's what happens when you treat public health like the DMV. Killer Kate and the building permit guy made a lot of mistakes.

But we knew that; that's not the news takeaway. To me, the thing to notice is how Fagan's got that lean and hungry look already. Between jumping in on Covid and hiring her own lawyer to reinforce her power, she is overtly ambitious. It seems kind of early for those sorts of moves.

UPDATE, a few minutes later: Oh, and I just noticed she's jumping into the Portland cops fray, too.