Tracking the package

The latest episode of the State of Oregon's rom-com soap opera, "Take My Wife, or Else," is available. You don't need a Netflix password to watch this series, now in Season 2.

In the new episode, entitled "Everybody Loves You-Know-Who," the person in charge of watching over the state's mental health services on behalf of the governor's office has quit after less than a year on the job. The advisor, Juliana Wallace, isn't saying much about why she's leaving and heading back to the nonprofit industrial complex. But over at the Weed, the Jack Ruby of journalism speculates that it's because like everybody else, Wallace got tired of dealing with the governor's wife, Aimee Wilson. 

It's no secret that anything having to do with mental health has to be run through Wilson, by order of Her Majesty the Guv. Note that Wilson's credentials for this position of power include prominently the fact that she was once a mental health patient herself. I am not making that up.

Kotek made reforming Oregon’s woeful system of providing mental health and addiction services a top priority after winning election in 2022. She included her wife in that work, hoping to draw on Kotek Wilson’s experience as a social worker and her lived experience with alcoholism and mental illness, both of which the first lady has discussed publicly.

But as WW and other media have reported, Kotek Wilson’s desire to be involved in policy and personnel matters created conflict with Kotek’s senior advisers, leading in March to the departures of chief of staff Andrea Cooper, special adviser Abby Tibbs, and deputy chief of staff Lindsey O’Brien. (Subsequently, Kotek’s communications director, An Do, and her deputy general counsel, Lindsey Burrows, also left the office. Although none of those who left has commented publicly, people familiar with the inner workings of governor’s office say all five left for reasons related to the first lady’s unusual role.)

You drive around Portland, look at all the addicts literally dying in tents on the streets, and you wonder how it could be happening. It may be a complicated situation, but it seems to me it isn't going to get any less weird with Kohoutek and Wilson dominating the conversation. I know the governor is obnoxious, and I imagine that her wife is just as difficult to stomach.