Two more candidates have emerged in the race to be Astoria’s next mayor, including a former city councilor.
Earlier this month, it looked like combat veteran Sean Davis might run unopposed after incumbent Mayor Sean Fitzpatrick announced he would not seek a second four-year term.
Now Tom Brownson, a former Ward 2 city councilor who represented Astoria’s South Slope, has announced his candidacy along with Laura Parker, who works as a juvenile probation counselor for the Clatsop County Juvenile Department.
Parker’s family has deep generational roots in Astoria and she has been involved in many aspects of the community over the years. She currently serves on the board of the Astoria Library. The mayoral race marks her first attempt at elected office.
For Brownson, it would be his third time serving on the Astoria City Council if elected. He was first elected to the Ward 2 seat in 2016 and then re-elected in 2020. In 2024, he announced he would not run again and instead made an unsuccessful bid for a seat on the Port of Astoria Commission.
Brownson said he decided to run only recently, after hearing Fitzpatrick wouldn’t. Brownson felt voters should have multiple options to choose from — a sentiment Parker said also influenced her decision to run.
Both Brownson and Parker still need to collect the required signatures from Astoria voters to proceed as candidates and ensure their appearance on the ballot for the Nov. 3 general election. Davis was confirmed as a candidate in early July.
Parker announced her candidacy in a Facebook post last week. She has landed endorsements from former longtime Astoria Mayor Willis Van Dusen, as well as Will Isom, executive director for the Port of Astoria.
“I love Astoria and that’s really the base of it,” Parker said, adding, “I really want to see Astoria be as successful as it can be and should be.”
She lists public safety, transparency at city hall and economic development among her priorities, but said she is still exploring the issues and looking to hear from Astorians.
In an Aug.10 Facebook post, she asked people to tell her what they thought should be the top three priorities for the city right now and provided a list that included housing and affordability, streets and infrastructure, downtown and local businesses, parks and quality of life, among others.
Also on the list were items that have been in front of the City Council at recent meetings, including a citizen-led initiative that would tax houses in Astoria that are left purposefully vacant for much of the year. Revenue generated by the tax would go into a city-controlled community housing fund. Under Oregon law, councilors were required to hear the initiative after it gathered enough signatures. The councilors voted to allow the initiative to move forward to the November ballot without any suggested changes.
In her post, Parker also included “expanding the city council seats,” referring to a proposal — also on its way to voters this November — to add two more seats to the City Council, at-large positions that are not tied to any particular ward.
Supporters feel this could mean more representation for citizens on City Council as well as provide options for people interested in running for a seat who might be renters and more likely to move between wards. Some critics worry adding seats could bog down what they see as already cumbersome City Council processes.
Parker feels her long history in the community and her experience working for government makes her a strong contender for mayor.
Brownson said he is not running with any particular agenda in mind, but argued his past involvement with the city and his understanding of the issues the city faces now make him well-qualified to tackle the role of mayor.
“The issues that they’ve been dealing with are just extensions of issues that I was dealing with for the last eight years,” he said. “None of this is new. One of the things that I bring to the continuing discussion and process is a knowledge of how we got here.”
Brownson also pointed to his past involvement as a city councilor in the partnership with the Port of Astoria on that entity’s waterfront revitalization plan. He believes his experience there could be an asset to keep the project moving forward.
Brownson sees an emerging issue with how people feel they are heard — or not — at city hall, especially in the community development department which oversees building permits, planning, code enforcement, homestay lodging, vacation rental licensing and urban renewal.
He also sees another obligation as mayor: “To be supportive of city staff. To protect city staff, unless they’re doing something wrong. To otherwise help them do their job and be as effective as possible,” he said. “I get the sense that staff has had a hard time the last couple years, that it’s been really difficult for them and that they’re really frustrated.”
Discussions around homelessness and housing have dominated many City Council meetings in recent years. The current City Council has revisited many of the ideas and policies generated by previous councilors, including items Brownson voted on during his time at the dais.
Some of the more contentious recent debates — in the community and in front of and between city councilors — have focused around how to address homeless campers downtown.
Last year, in a 3–2 vote, city councilors shot down a proposal to temporarily exclude people from the downtown area if they repeatedly violated certain rules. Law enforcement and supporters of the exclusion zone policy argued exclusion zones are an important tool to help them enforce city rules. Critics believed the proposal unfairly targeted homeless people and would not result in better compliance.
Parker told KMUN that if she had been on City Council, she likely would have voted in favor of the exclusion zone.
“As long as there are shelter beds available and as long as we’re in the parameters of not being in any legal trouble, I think that having a clean and safe downtown should be a priority of the city and the mayor,” she said, “and I certainly have talked to many constituents in this last week who have really voiced that concern to me. More than I would have thought, quite frankly.”
She said the “shelter first” policy developed by current City Councilors Elisabeth Adams and Andrea Mazzarella, which is in the process of being implemented, seems to be working. The policy outlined a multi-pronged approach to homelessness in Astoria that included, among other things, updates to the city’s camping code and hiring a homeless liaison.
“I would like to delve into it a little more as time goes on,” Parker said.
Brownson was on the City Council when city leaders first established the time, place and manner ordinances for camping in the city, an earlier attempt to deal with camping downtown and in the wooded areas around Astoria — details of which the current City Council has since flagged and revisited.
Brownson said he saw the original time, place and manner ordinances as placeholders.
“It was doing the minimum because things weren’t completely settled as far as where the state was ultimately going to land and where the courts were ultimately going to land,” he said.
“We created a situation where we were compliant with the state, but we did not really do anything to solve the issue overall,” he added. “And we knew that that would have to be dealt with down the line.”
Parker announced a “meet the candidates” event on Aug. 20 at the Astoria Armory alongside two other prospective candidates for seats on the City Council: Justin Grafton, who is vying to be a contender in the Ward 3 race, going up against incumbent Elisabeth Adams, and Jim Forrester, who is looking to fill the Ward 1 seat currently occupied by Councilor Andy Davis.
Davis is moving out of the Ward 1 area at the end of his term and will not be able to run again for his seat.
Parker said she is friends with Forrester and Grafton, but that the Aug. 20 event does not necessarily mean they are running as a united group.
“We’re the ones that announced in a pretty close timeline,” she said, adding, “It made sense for us to have people be able to meet us.”
If they move forward as candidates, Parker and Brownson will also run against Sean Davis, a combat veteran and the co-founder of Rogue Cell, a nonprofit that works to connect veterans to community.
Davis announced his intent to run for mayor earlier this year, running on a platform that emphasizes housing for working families, a coordinated plan around addressing homelessness that moves people toward stability, living wage jobs beyond tourism, emergency preparedness and investments in critical city infrastructure.
After he announced his candidacy, he said he hoped to face challengers in the mayoral race.
Current Mayor Fitzpatrick, who previously served on the Astoria Planning Commission, ran unopposed for his seat in 2022. That uncontested mayoral race was unusual in Astoria’s recent history. In elections stretching back more than 20 years, the seat has always seen challengers.