Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) came to Newport to hold a town hall event. After a brief meeting with two members of the press (your author included) he spent about 20 minutes with local elected officials before entering a lecture hall in the Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building.

Approximately 75-100 people showed up to hear the senator talk a range of issues. 

In our media time , I asked him what types of questions he has been fielding on his various stops. He replied, “There’s a lot of concern about housing, drug prices, there’s concern about forest management; concern about mental health-behavioral health.”

I asked him in what context did the questions about mental and behavioral health arise (criminal or police interactions), he replied, “It comes up in multiple ways: it comes up the challenge our kids have had-accentuated by covid, dissociation of being in groups and the alienation that is coming from a combination of social media and covid.  It’s coming up in terms of the criminal lockup of folks with behavioral health problems-whether they really belong in jail as their only treatment.” He continued, “The insufficiency of treatment we have here in Oregon. We’re near the bottom of the fifty states in terms of treatment capacity and connection to people on the street-homelessness.”

When I asked him what his answer was to the problems he named, and asked what the federal response might be he said, “We have to train a lot more behavioral health care individuals.  I have a bill that would put a lot more school counselors into-in particular Title One schools (Title I schools receive additional funding from the  U.S. Department of Labor to support students from low income families or other at risk factors)-because we have such an insufficiency of folks to work with our children. The training of more individuals is something that’s a number of the community investment programs I’m getting started.”

I asked the senator where exactly he thought those individuals might come from seeing as how we can’t get enough nurses or doctors into Lincoln County. He replied, “That gets to my point about training…” I interrupted to ask, “Training who? Where are these people going to come from?”  His response was that between government grants and private support from various charitable foundations and dedication of our colleges to expanding their programs and encouragement of high school students to consider entering the mental health field.

On a different note, the senator was not only welcomed to Newport by supporters and elected types he also passed by a group of people who greeted him near the intersection of Olive and Hwy 101. Some were waving American flags, some waving Trump flags and some holding placards with messages to the senator-or showing their support for Rick Beasley for county commissioner signs.