When incoming Secretary of State Tobias Read takes over as Oregon’s chief elections officer and auditor in January, he will bring with him a number of senior Treasury staff members.
Read, a Democrat elected in November, has been the treasurer of the state for the last eight years. He revealed a list of important personnel for his upcoming administration on Tuesday, including a number of individuals who have collaborated with him at the Treasury.
The deputy secretary of state will be Michael Kaplan, who has been the deputy treasurer since 2019. In addition to working in the administrations of former Democratic Governors Ted Kulongoski and John Kitzhaber, Kaplan was the chief operating officer of the Treasury from 2017 to 2019 and the director of the Oregon Department of Energy from 2014 to 2017.
Dmitri Palmateer, who served as Read’s chief of staff during his two stints as treasurer, will remain in that position at the Secretary of State’s Office. Prior to joining Read, Palmateer served congressional Democrats, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, former Governor Kate Brown, and Kitzhaber.
Read will be joined at the Secretary of State’s Office by two additional Treasury staff members: executive services director Grace Roth and organizational risk and resiliency manager Mary Krehbiel. Roth had previously worked for Brown, Kitzhaber, and Kulongoski, while Krehbiel was a financial auditor in the Secretary of State’s Office and an internal auditor at the Treasury.
Read appointed Tess Seger, the Oregon Senate Democrats’ communications director, as his deputy chief of staff for communications. Prior to entering the Senate in 2022, Seger served as the communications director for Democratic Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential campaign in Iowa and oversaw the 2020 reelection campaign of Nevada U.S. Rep. Susie Lee. Capitol watchers attribute the caucus’ decision to fire former Senate Majority Leader Kathleen Taylor after just a few months in office to Taylor’s attempt to replace Seger and a number of other staff members.
Additionally, Read’s deputy chief of staff for government relations will be Ricardo Lujan Valerio, who currently serves as Western Oregon University’s director of government relations. In the past, he was employed by the Oregon Student Association, Latino Network, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. He also worked for Portland City Councilor Carmen Rubio.
In a statement, Read said the new hires will support his goal of bringing accountability and trust back to the office, which has experienced a lot of turnover recently and is still in shock over the resignation of former Secretary of State Shemia Fagan after it was revealed she worked as a freelancer for a cannabis company that was the subject of an office audit.
According to Read, these devoted and esteemed Oregonians recognize the significance of the job that is still to be done. I’m eager to get my hands dirty and collaborate with them for the good of our state.
— Oregon Capital Chronicle’s Julia Shumway
Established in 2021, The Oregon Capital Chronicle is a nonprofit news outlet that specializes in Oregon politics, government, and policy.
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